It is five and a half months since our last appearance before the committee in mid-September of last year. During that time, we encountered spells of remarkably good and remarkably bad weather, and the unexpected closure of the Forth road bridge. The effects of those events have been well documented in the media. Notwithstanding those factors, the FRC project has continued to make highly visible progress. The project budget has been further reduced to a new outturn range of £1.325 billion to £1.35 billion. I am sure that the committee will recall that, at the time of the financial memorandum to the Forth Crossing Bill in November 2009, the expected cost range was £1.73 billion to £2.34 billion. At the time of the award of the principal contract in April 2011, it had reduced to £1.45 billion to £1.6 billion.
During 2015, the site workforce averaged 1,191 people with a peak of 1,287 last November. To date on the project, over 10,000 site inductions have been carried out as the works have progressed through their various phases and different skills have been required. The site team has risen to the challenges of the past few months and, through their efforts and the effective management of equipment and resources by the contractor—the Forth crossing bridge constructors—the principal contract for the Queensferry crossing and approach roads continues to be on target to open to traffic by the end of 2016.
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I will focus on the progress on the principal contract. On the south side, the old B800 bridge on the South Queensferry to Kirkliston road has been demolished, with closures of the main A90 from Saturday evening through to early Monday morning over two weekends last October. That allowed progress to be made on the new southbound public transport link, such that southbound traffic could be diverted on to it before Christmas, with northbound traffic being rerouted on to the old southbound carriageway at the same time. That created working space for the construction of the northbound public transport link to the B800 and the final tie-ins of the new mainline road alignment.
On the Queensferry crossing, all three towers have been completed, with just the remaining climbing jump forms to be removed. The first deck unit was lifted into place at the north tower on 7 September—just before our last appearance before the committee—at the south tower on 28 September and at the centre tower on 16 October. Since early September, we have lifted 43 deck units—14 units each at the north and centre towers and 15 units at the south tower. FCBC, the contractor, used every available opportunity to lift deck units, and on three occasions we lifted two deck units in a single day. In the marine yard at Rosyth, all 110 steel deck units have been delivered and 57 of them have had the concrete deck cast on to them and been fitted out with internal walkways and the initial mechanical and electrical works. The final two piers, S1 and S2, which will support the deck fan on the south side of the south tower, will be ready just before the deck units reach them.
On the viaducts, installation of the concrete deck on the south approach viaduct is progressing northwards from the south abutment. The centre section of the first two spans is completed and the side cantilevers are in progress. On the north side, the preparations for the launch of the 222m-long north viaduct approach structure, which weighs nearly 6,000 tonnes, were completed in January. They included the installation of more than 47 miles of strand for the king post and the pulling jacks. The launch commenced on 5 February and should be completed within two or three days.
On the north side roadworks, the Ferrytoll viaduct is structurally complete. Work on the bridges to carry the northbound M90 across the new Ferrytoll junction has been completed and traffic has been running on the new alignment since November. Southbound traffic will be moved on to the same alignment later this week, and there will be road closures on the existing Ferrytoll roundabout over the weekend of 12 and 13 March to allow demolition of the existing bridge. That will allow the construction of the new southbound carriageway and the second half of the new bridges for the Ferrytoll gyratory. Significant work has also been undertaken on Hope Street in Inverkeithing and King Malcolm Drive in Rosyth.
The closure of the Forth road bridge in December, although obviously disruptive to many land-based activities, provided an opportunity for FCBC to carry out some work on the roads both north and south of the bridge during the daytime, which otherwise would have had to be carried out at night. That reduced potential disturbance to local residents.
We held our annual update briefings at the end of January, with specific sessions for elected representatives, media and wider stakeholders. We also held six sessions for the general public. They were well attended, and a lot of positive feedback on the progress of the projects was received.
It is important to remember that, when the FRC project was first considered in early 2007, a 10-year timescale was considered extremely challenging for a project of this size and complexity. There is now just under 10 months to go until the end of 2016 and, having overcome all the challenges of project scoping and development, the parliamentary bill process and procurement of the four FRC contracts, having successfully delivered the first three of those contracts and while continuing to make progress on the principal contract, we are still focused on achieving the original target date for opening to traffic and expect to do so to a significantly reduced budget.