Water Industry - Scottish Government Investment Group - Committed List performance progress report: quarter one 2023-2024

4. Overall Project Progress Water Portfolio

The Water Portfolio comprises 3 sub-portfolios: SR15 Completion; Water Quality; and Water Supply. Detail on progress within each of these can be found in Appendix A. Although the Gate 100 Acceptance milestone remains challenging, performance on the Start on Site and Financial Completion Milestones means that the Q1 overall performance in the water portfolio is within the target range (Figure 5) with 334 points achieved to date; against a range of 316 to 387.

Start On Site

Performance on the Start On Site milestone (Figure 6) remains strong with all 3 of the sub-programmes achieving the central forecast. 94 projects have now started on site, against a target range of 77 to 103. 13 of these started on site in Q1 2023/24.

Acceptance

8 projects achieved acceptance in Q1 (Figure 7) delivering benefit to customers taking the total to 117 projects that have now achieved acceptance against a target range of 124 to 143 at time of commitment.

7 projects in the SR15 Completion sub-programme have been reforecast. 2 of these projects are now substantially complete and forecasting acceptance in Q2. Reasons for reforecasting:

• 2 projects have been reforecast due to third party issues: Yarrowfues WTW main-out and Dalwhinnie WTW - TTU.
• 3 projects have been reforecast due to construction risks being realised: South Edinburgh Service Resilience, Ringford WTW and Wick East.
• 2 projects have been reforecast due to design issues: SR15 ES - Uig WTW - SR15 WQ and SR15 TE CM Staney Hill North - Q Sandy Loch WTW.

17 projects in the Water Quality sub-programme have been reforecast. 6 of these reforecast projects are now substantially complete and are forecasting acceptance in Q2 with a further 5 forecasting acceptance by Q3. Reasons for reforecasting:

• 2 projects have been impacted due to additional scope being required to complete the projects: Whitehillocks WTW and Howden WTW.
• 1 project has been impacted by third party issues: Burncrooks WTW Quality THM
• 14 projects have been impacted by construction risks and supply chain delays.

The Water Supply sub-portfolio remains on track with milestone achievement within the target range.

We continue to work to understand, and learn from, risks to improve the forecast and delivery of new projects. When committing to the delivery of a project we balance the likelihood of delay due to risks against setting an over cautious target with the potential to lose focus on the need to drive delivery.

Financial Completion

Performance on the Gate 110 Financial Completion milestone (Figure 8) remains in the target range with all 3 of the sub-portfolios being in the range. 123 projects have now achieved Gate 110 against a target range of 115 to 141.