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I want to ask about the wider issues that apply and the criteria that assessors use to set rateable values. You have clearly explained that assessors will provide a set of equivalent or adjacent addresses on which the assessment was based. Are current economic circumstances ever a factor in the equation? You can imagine a scenario in which adjacent shops are shut. In that case, why should a rateable value go up, and how does that represent market value, as opposed to there being an assessment of the practical circumstances that are evident in a local economy?

Okay. Thanks for that.

Do we invest enough time and effort at the beginning of capital programme processes to make sure that the specification, design and cost estimate work is thorough, good, reliable, deliverable and all that? There are examples of great delivery, but there are also spectacularly bad examples. I am interested to know why we cannot spot issues early enough to stop a project becoming a bad one. Key ingredients must be wrong in certain projects. People must be familiar with all the tools at our disposal, but what are the secrets to finding out as early as we can that something will, potentially, go wrong?

Does that not tend to happen after the event? The thing was built and installed; it was done. Why did we not spot that there was an issue before it was done?

I have a final query. The principles that Lawrence Shackman described are applicable no matter what people are building. The question for us is whether those principles are being applied across the board to other sectors. I mentioned a range of things that we might build in this capital programme. If that level of depth, rigour, investment, time, effort, design and specification is replicated across the board, we stand a good chance of delivering all the stuff in the programme on time and on budget. Andrew Watson, can you give the committee an assurance that that is your understanding of the whole range of what is in front of us and what is in the programme right now? Can that depth and rigour across the board, which Lawrence described in his sector, be applied to all the capital programme, so that we can look forward to all the projects being delivered on time and on budget?

Good morning, everybody.

I will take Andrew Watson back to the beginning of all processes for all projects. Over many years, the committee has been focused on quality standards and their application in the design and specification part of projects. We are believers in the idea that, if you get it right at the outset, you are likely to get it right at the end. The opposite is also true: if you do not get it right at the beginning, you are unlikely to deliver anything on time and within budget.

We have mentioned a couple of examples; Lawrence Shackman mentioned the Queensferry crossing. We can see the success of the Queensferry crossing, the Borders railway and even the A77 Maybole bypass, but at the other end of the scale we see the ferries issue.

Do you insist that quality standards are in place for all projects, no matter what we are building? It could be a bridge, road, school, piece of software or ferry. Do we look specifically for the presence of such standards in the whole range of projects that are on the books? Do we require that of all such projects? It seems to me that, if we do not, we are at great risk of projects running out of kilter and over cost. Do we require quality standards at the outset?

I understand what you say, and I am familiar with that, but these issues keep coming to us; the Auditor General discovers them and the committee gets oversight of them. Committee members are always left wondering, “Why could we not spot these things earlier?” Is there a lack of rigour in the design phase? We heard the example of the ferries where the cables were not long enough to reach where they should have reached. Why can we not see an issue like that earlier, even in a design document, in order to avoid doing that? It tends to be the case that something happens and then we try to correct it, learn the lessons at the end and feed those back into the next process. That is great and it is the right thing to do, but I am curious about why we cannot see the issues at an early enough stage to prevent the initial errors.

Those are very helpful answers.

I have a supplementary to Paul McLennan’s question about zero valuation, which we discussed last week. We think that it was based on the EWS1 standard—using external wall systems form 1—which, we discovered, disnae have any legal basis in Scotland. We think that it is not a statutory process. We were left wondering how people in Scotland can have a zero value attached to their property from a scheme that is not a regulatory standard in Scotland, and that potentially does not legally apply. Could you offer the committee any clarification on that issue?

Does anyone else want to come in?