Row over new Scots ferry fiasco in delays to modern booking system

But there is growing concern about how long it has taken for the system to materialise, and how it has affected the costs of the project, which some have complained are couched in too much secrecy.

Initial contract estimates had put an eight-year booking and ticketing software contract at between £3m and £9m. CalMac say the “whole life costs” will actually be £18m.

A resurrected attempt to bring in a system which began over four years ago hoped to have a core first phase of a system in place by the summer of 2020. Now ministers have been told that after a series of further delays it is not expected till the spring of next year.

The delayed system is a factor in delays over the production of vital summer lifeline island ferry timetables which have been delayed by up to three months, with new concerns about the affect on tourism.# It comes amidst continuing concerns over whether two key lifeline ferries will ever see the light of day, as they both remain languishing at the nationalised Ferguson Marine Inverclyde yard.

They were due online in the first half of 2018, with one initially to serve Arran and the other to serve the Skye triangle routes to North Uist and Harris, but are at least five years late, with costs soaring from £97m to nearly £350.

The row over the ferries saw tycoon Jim McColl-led Ferguson Marine go into administration in August, 2019 following a dispute with Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd (CMAL) – the taxpayer-funded company which buys and leases publicly owned CalMac’s ships on behalf of the Scottish government.

The Scottish Government then pushed ahead to take full control of of the shipyard company as it went under with blame attached to soaring costs of the ferry contract, with CMAL and Jim McColl blaming each other.

A ferry user group official said: “It is incredible that there could be so many issues with this ferry booking system and what you have found raises even more questions about the standards of procurement relating to our ferries. We have crying out for a new booking system for many years and it the level of communication relating to it has been flawed, to say the least.”

Moves for the provision of a new ticketing system to replace the outdated one first emerged in October, 2013, when the ferry operator issued an invitation to tender.

CalMac had hoped to have a new ticketing system in place for winter 2015 as part of a business modernisation project put in place to help it retain an eight-year contract for the Clyde and Hebrides ferry service.

READ MORE: Workforce fears Scots fiasco ferries won't ever sail

ATOS IT Services entered into an agreement with CalMac’s parent company David MacBrayne Limited two years before the ferry operator won the contract.

It came as David MacBrayne win 2015 was required to negotiate, and pay a very substantial fee for, a temporary extension of the old Compass system that had been in use for 25 years.

That came after the business had slumped to a pre-tax loss of £2.6m in the 2014/15 financial year, with the firm at the time saying that investment in technology had had a major impact on its bottom line.

When announcing the results in 2015 chairman David McGibbon said that “increased investment in developing new technology to improve the customer experience, through more flexible online ticketing and digital platforms” had contributed to the loss.

But the contract ended up being at the centre of a legal row, and in 2018, a judge at the Court of Session ordered the IT firm to pay £1.2m in compensation to David MacBrayne over a contractual dispute over the provision of a ticketing system.

According to court documents seen by the Herald on Sunday, there were significant delays on the project and in July, 2015, there was an agreement to “suspend performance of their obligations” under the contract.

Lawyers for the ferry operator argued that ATOS breached the terms of a contract made with them by failing to provide the new reservation system.

In a row reminiscent of that which has dogged the provision of the two CalMac ferries, ATOS argued it had acted properly and that David MacBrayne had “materially contributed” to delays and failures by failing to fulfil certain responsibilities, including setting out the detail which was needed to full the contract requirements, including approving specifications and requesting items that were not in the scope of deal. This was denied by David MacBrayne.

David MacBrayne terminated the contract with ATOS in July 2016 after the computer specialists failed to show they had taken steps needed to ensure the new system was being installed.

David MacBrayne insisted that ATOS had breached the contract and was entitled to terminate the agreement and sought damages.

In a written judgement Lord Doherty stated “I am satisfied that it was reasonable of (David MacBrayne) to act as it did.”

He rejected a counterclaim that Atos filed against David MacBrayne in a bid to recover the £3.3 million it said it would have earned had the project completed.

The case meant that the ticketing system was put on hold and CalMac were expected to re-examine the project to replace the Compass ticketing system, before any tendering process restarted.

READ MORE: Jim McColl: FM should have known about ferry crisis five years ago

Despite not having the new ticketing system in place, David MacBrayne, which had faced stiff competition from private company Serco, won the £1bn tender for the Clyde and Hebrides service.

The latest attempts to find a contractor to supply a “modern, commercial, off the shelf and market-proven ferry booking and ticketing software solution” can be traced back to 2018 when ministers were told procurement was delayed.

A contract award worth £2.75m was eventually made to company called E-Dea in December, 2020.

At a supplier meet buyer event in August, 2019, Graham Laidlaw, head of the ferries division at the Scottish Government's Transport Scotland agency confirmed that the contract activity had been begun after having been suspended in the past and apologised. He said it would be a "Transport Scotland-funded contract asset" having approved an investment.

"Now the stars are now aligned, and the money is there," he said. "We are on exactly the same page with CalMac."

CalMac chief executive Robbie Drummond told suppliers that what they had was "antiquated" and said he wanted to "convey the urgency of this".

CalMac told suppliers that the first phase of the core ticketing and reservations implementation was hoped to start in the summer of 2020.

The project was supposed to be complete by October 2021, then it was to be up and running by February this year but then was put back to the end of March, before it was announced there would be an October start date. But that again was put back.

A report prepared by CalMac Ferries managing director Robbie Drummond at the start of the year said: "The solution will offer customers greater choice over the purchase, management and use of tickets, including the ability to carry tickets on a smart device.

"It will facilitate a range of enhancements including multiple vehicles on a single booking, an online process for pet tickets and selected concession fares will be available to purchase online for the first time.

"Core to any major change is to ensure our staff right across the business are fully trained which involves training about 700 of our colleagues.

"We must get this right and the training must be face-to-face to enable staff to use the new software and devices confidently.

"We had planned to implement the new system in the first quarter of 2022.

"This is no longer possible but provided the Covid situation improves in the near term, we anticipate we will be able to deliver the system during the first half of 2022, but carefully avoiding peak holiday periods."

Among those concerned about the delays is Richard Leonard, the convener of the Scottish Government's public audit committee who has questioned Scottish Government officials about how a project that was started in 2016 is still not live.

In a response from last week, Sharon Fairweather, director of internal audit and assurance at the Scottish Government said: "The system is not yet live. CalMac Ferries is planning for that to go live in the spring. There is currently staff training—the company is training up about 700 staff on the new system. We do not have an exact go-live date yet. The company has another pre-go-live gate review coming up post-Christmas.

"CalMac Ferries did all the assurance processes that it was due to do, and it did user acceptance testing over the summer, which raised a number of issues that it wanted to resolve before the system went live. It has now resolved the user testing issues that came up. You would not do staff training until you had the final product that you were going to roll out. The company needed to iron out those other issues first."

Asked why it had taken six years, she said: "I do not have enough detail on the project to be able to answer that question."

Attempts on July 2020, to get information about the funding for the Ar Turas project and the business case were blocked by Scottish Government officials.

They said that the release would "potentially substantially prejudice" the commercial interest of both (CalMac) and the Scottish Ministers.

"We recognise that there is some public interest in release because the public has a right to know that we are spending public funds in an appropriate manner. However, this is outweighed by the public interest in allowing the ongoing procurement to happen without releasing the commercial information of the business case, ensuring that a level playing field is maintained during the procurement. Should the procurement be compromised, there would be significant additional costs shouldered by both Transport Scotland and (CalMac).

One ferry user group official added that the progress of the system had been "couched in mystery" with poor communications over when, if ever, it would materialise.

"Nobody seems to want to talk about it," he said. "Yet an updated booking system would solve a lot of operational issues. The current booking system is archaic and does not do a good job."

CalMac said it hoped to have the system in place in "early 2023".

A source said: "The pandemic impacted the progress of the project as face-to-face training was unable to take place and, with the successful company being based in Italy, the project group was unable to meet in person."