Defence firm Babcock foots the £140 million bill for reworks on Type 31 frigate
The firm building the new Type 31 frigates for the Royal Navy has revealed it paid £140 million in extra costs for late-stage reworks of the warships.
Babcock is currently constructing five of the vessels at its dockyard in Rosyth, Fife.
The company said the extra costs are due to "higher than expected levels of rework as a result of changes to the design" and that the work "is being performed in the later stages of completion, and therefore is more complex and more costly".
The first two ships in class, HMS Venturer and HMS Active, are already in the water with construction on the third and fourth in class, HMS Formidable and HMS Bulldog, also underway.
The ships will replace the ageing Type 23 vessels currently in service, with the first expected to be in service by the early 2030s.
Babcock said the £140m charge reflects the revised costs needed to complete the design and building of the Type 31 programme, including an estimated £100m worth of revenue reversal.
A statement from the company said: "During the outfitting stage we have experienced higher than expected levels of rework as a result of changes to the design and the long-term impacts of out-of-sequence build activity earlier in the programme.
"Whilst the number of such rework events is not entirely unexpected, the work is being performed in the later stages of completion and therefore is more complex and more costly.
"The ability to enable the work to be performed to support increasing levels of programme productivity has also been impacted.
"As the build of ship two is close behind ship one, there is also some crossover in the design – related rework necessary to this ship.
"With ships three and four still in the early construction stages, the extent of impact on these and future vessels is comparatively reduced."
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