A council is considering legal options against a contractor to ensure it does not face an unexpected £20m bill following a “design error” on a road bridge.
The Grantham South Relief Road will cost between £10m and £20m more, and will open a year later than planned after the boob, Lincolnshire County Council said.
In a statement released on behalf of the authority, Richard Davies, the council’s executive member for highways, claimed the authority was “let down” by an unnamed contractor which “made a mistake along the way” on phase three of the project.
The alleged error relates to the installation of the bridge – over the River Witham and the East Coast Main Line – which now cannot be pushed into place due to concerns around the specific wind conditions.
The mistake slipped through the cracks despite an extra “mandatory, additional layer of independent checking” associated with bigger construction projects, Davies said.
“Safety comes first, so the work was halted so our designers and contractors could address the problem,” he added.
Galliford Try is main contractor on the second and third phases of the project., which already experienced a cost increase in 2022 when the ground was found to be too soft for the bridge’s installation.
It is not known whether the council is blaming Galliford Try or a different contractor involved in the scheme for the alleged error.
The latest increase will take the cost of the relief road project to between £158m and £168m.
Davies said: “Let me be 100% clear: while we may need to cover these extra costs initially, we will ensure that those responsible for this are held accountable and that every penny of taxpayer money will be recovered.
“We are pursuing contractual and legal processes as a result of this error so are unable to comment any further on this at this stage for legal reasons.”
The project – originally expected to cost £133m – is meant to reduce congestion around the town of Grantham and reduce carbon emissions in the area.
Davies said that the complexities of designing and constructing the relief road, and in particular, this bridge are “far beyond what we as a council can do directly”.
Due to that, the council has relied “on our suppliers’ combined expertise” moving forward with the project.
Galliford Try declined to comment.
