George McGregor, a former procurement manager at the ferry agency CMAL, has voiced his discontent over the handling of and inquiry into a contentious £97m contract awarded to Ferguson Shipyard. In a scandalous sequence of events, the contract, aimed at procuring two ferries, is presently £260 million over budget and already six years overdue.
In a bid for transparency, McGregor shared his concerns with an official inquiry, revealing that senior personnel had bypassed procurement regulations, thereby leading to Ferguson’s unjustifiable shortlisting. KC Barry Smith, the lifeboat appointed by CMAL to navigate through this stormy affair, defended his inquiry as being both independent and exhaustive. It was based on the documents presented to him, he declared, but he remained open to considering new and pertinent information, should any arise.
CMAL rejected any negligence in presenting the relevant documentation, and professed ignorance towards McGregor’s concerns. The agency commissioned the inquiry following a BBC documentary’s expose of the potential unfair practices involved in the 2015 procurement of two ferries – Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa. The BBC’s probe suggested that the contract was potentially tipped in favor of Ferguson Marine Engineering Ltd (FMEL), the company managing the shipyard at the time, under the stewardship of Jim McColl. A successful businessman and economic advisor to ministers Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, McColl had steered the company clear from bankruptcy just prior to the independence referendum.
KC’s report, released last month, absolved CMAL of fraud, a claim that hadn’t been raised during the original BBC coverage. But Murdoch’s investigative instincts suggest that not all documents related to the ‘Great Ferries Scandal’ were disclosed to Mr Smith.
McGregor’s job as a procurement manager at CMAL was to uphold an equitable balance among all bidders. He raised concerns, including claims that the procurement process was flawed from the outset and that FMEL was given unwarranted preferential treatment. Further, he alleged that despite evidence of the procurement process being fraught with rule breaches, none of his submitted evidence was featured or acknowledged in the released report. He even contacted the BBC after receiving what he deemed a frigid response from CMAL’s lawyers.
McGregor signed on as procurement manager at CMAL in early 2015, taking over from a predecessor who had initiated the questionable pre-qualification questionnaire (PQQ) stage of the tendering process. After in-depth scrutiny of the entire process, McGregor found enough wrongs to resign from his role in 2019, and in the aftermath consistently highlighted the procurement of the overpriced and overdue ferries as a prime concern.
In a calamity of errors, the production of these ferries has gone severely awry, with CMAL and FMEL mutually blaming each other for the fiasco. The ferries, costing an exorbitant £360m and still unfinished, were originally priced at £97m. The shipyard was nationalised post going into administration yet again in 2019.
In response to McGregor’s allegations, Smith iterated his adherence to the instruction parameters defined by CMAL. He further invited the BBC to share any newfound information for his careful perusal.
CMAL mirrored the same sentiment, maintaining ignorance towards any procurement-related complaints by McGregor. Reiterating confidence in the investigation, CMAL affirmed the disclosure of all pertinent information to Smith, denying knowledge or comment on McGregor’s interactions with Smith during the investigation.
