Lawyers paradise - 7 years late, 3x the cost... and a city full of lawsuits

Published 7 months ago • 1 min read

Edinburgh, Scotland.
Mid-2000s.
A shiny new tram network was promised.
Fast, green, world-class transport across the city.

Greta was not born yet… but she could be smiling for ours to a project like this.

The vehicle?
Of course…

A complex PPP scheme led by Transport Initiatives Edinburgh (TIE) with multiple contractors, including Bilfinger Berger and Siemens.

Signed in 2006.
Cost? £375 million.
Opening date? 2011.

What actually happened?

Endless disputes between the public agency and the private contractors.
Construction delays so bad that people literally forgot the city was supposed to have trams.
Streets ripped up for years, paralyzing local businesses.
Costs ballooned to £1 billion — almost 3x the original.

Lawyers paradise… Who sued who?

Contractors sued the public agency for design changes and late payments.
The public agency threatened to sue the contractors for cost overruns and missed deadlines.
Residents and businesses started separate lawsuits over lost income and disturbance.

2014 — The first line finally opens.
Seven years late.
One single line instead of the full network.

The political fallout?

Heads rolled.
Public trust in PPPs collapsed.
Edinburgh became a punchline for bad project management across Europe.
Great was born… unhappy.

Brutal lessons:

If the project scope isn’t 100% locked before signing, you're building a time bomb.
Multi-contractor PPPs need wartime-grade governance, not PowerPoint slides.
Political wishful thinking kills delivery discipline.
Litigation isn't a risk; it’s a certainty when your contract is a mess.

Moral:
If your project needs seven years of excuses, lawsuits, and triple the money,
you didn’t build infrastructure.
You built a monument to failure.

I have other interesting and horror stories about my last project in the link below.

$99.90

The 15 Top Lessons of a PPP Project Nightmare

Learn about:
The number 1 killer of Projects
Why this was not going to be just "another construction project, mate"... Read more

Get those lessons now

PD 1: If you liked this email, don't keep it in secret and forward it to a friend. They will thank you enormously one day.

PD 2: If somebody has sent you this email and you want to receive emails like this yourself, visit vicentevalencia.com

PD 3: If you want unsubscribe, click the link below.

What attracts men more: showing or suggesting?

Suggesting beats showing. Always. Just see what happens to women that show too much. They attract the wrong type of men… or probably not. They just attract all men… and then, it’s more complicated to do a good selection. The chances of getting it wrong increase. But if they just suggest, they tend to attract a more sophisticated level of men. Less brutal, savage, and basic. Then, the chances of getting the wrong type of men decrease. And remember, women risked their lives having s€x not long...

about 4 hours ago • 1 min read

After listening, they nailed it!

You can find horror stories almost everywhere. Not just developed countries. And successful ones too… as it’s not rocket science. Before 2010, the Philippines’ PPP program was infamous for all the wrong reasons: legal uncertainty, endless bid delays, weak feasibility studies, and risk allocations that scared investors away faster than typhoons. So they decided to stop, review, learn and repeat. They started to ask the market about what was wrong with the last projects. They noted. And decided...

1 day ago • 2 min read

The Tequila Crisis

You know that moment when a government says: “We’re launching a massive PPP program.” Or… “We are going to partner with the private sector to build roads”! Everyone claps like seals because… wow… private money, shiny highways, “international best practice,”. Re-election secured. Mexico did that in the early 90s. Fifty-two highway concessions. I repeat. 52 PPP fever everywhere. The “future” of infrastructure. And we’ll build Speedy Gonzales speed. Spoiler: It didn’t end well. Actually, it...