Agenda item

Report of the Chief Operating & Financial Officer.

The Committee considered a report of the Chief Operating & Financial Officer concerning a project to replace the Theatre Main House Dimmers and the Pit Theatre Dimmers and Control.

Members stressed the importance of ensuring that lessons learnt were recorded and used while preparing future projects, so as to avoid errors being repeated. The Head of Projects confirmed that a report had recently been drafted providing an evaluation of lessons learnt from all projects conducted by the Centre in recent years, with the Director of Operations & Buildings reassuring Members that processes were being tightened to ensure that a programme of continual improvement was in place.

In discussing the particular tendering issues that had been associated with this project, Members expressed concern that the weighting of the scoring matrix was insufficiently nuanced to allow for tenders that were markedly over budget to be discarded. Concerns were also raised over the fact that the overall budget had had to be disclosed as part of the second tender, which might have had the unintended consequence of resulting in tender submissions being inflated. The Head of Projects undertook to raise these concerns with colleagues in the Procurement Team.

It was also confirmed that the “anti-grope” lighting referred to in the report was low-level background lighting used when the theatre was dark for performances. This allowed for audience members to find their way around during performances should they need to leave the theatre, for technicians backstage to see what they were doing, and so on.

RESOLVED: That the lessons learnt be noted and, following the end of the defects liability period and payment of any retention, the project be closed.