Decision Maker: Cabinet Procurement and Insourcing Committee

Outcome: For Determination

Is Key Decision?: Yes

Is Callable In?: No

Date of Decision: February 3, 2025

Purpose:

Content: RESOLVED:   To approve the Contract Variation of £1,459,067.78 which covers work to replace the failed tile roof, renew the flat felt roofs, and associated works to adapt any gutters.   Reasons For Decision   1.  During the erection of the scaffold, which was being installed to undertake the original façade project at the beginning of the contract on 3rd May 2022, it was evident that an area of roof had slipped (image above). This area was not visible during the original scoping survey. A subsequent report was undertaken by the Council’s (project consultants), which determined that the majority of the tile roof exhibited nail sickness and that the tile roof was very close to failing and would need to be fully replaced.   2.  The original completion of the contract was 29th July 2022. The proposal is to extend this to May 25.   3.  As part of this contract, the Council appointed a contract administrator , as part of the team. This role includes the day-to-day administration of the project, scrutiny of costs provided by the contractor, all variations submitted for this project and throughout the entire façades programme up to director level.  The contract administrator uses the prices for the works provided in the tender returns as well as similar projects as a comparison. Once this review has been done, the contract administrator provides a short summary advising on value for money.   4.  With regards to the benchmarking value for money; we have a similar roof replacement on a similar school property, (Millfields primary school), which has been tendered separately. This was awarded to a different contractor and is being administered by a different project consultant company and has a similar tender amount to the variation being sought here and is comparable.   Alternative Considered and rejected   Two options were considered with regards to this variation, they are;   1.  The do nothing option would be to leave the scaffold around the whole school indefinitely with the ongoing hire costs being picked up by the Authority. This would not have removed the risk, merely reduced it as the façade would have continued to deteriorate.   2.  The other option would have been to complete the current contract with the existing contactor and then to go out to tender for the roof replacement, this option was rejected for several reasons namely: the time that this process would have taken, leaving the school surrounded by scaffolding, the duplication of work between the facade repair project which had some minor roof repair included as well as the works to replacing rainwater downpipes and gutters in the existing contract would have to have been redone. It was evident that this would not have provided value for money and, as mentioned above, it was felt that the comparison with a similar project confirmed that this contract variation was competitively priced.