Transcript

Transcript

Participants should have their cameras and microphones switched off during the meeting unless they are speaking. All remote participants will be asked to speak at the appropriate time. If members and officers in Committee Room 2 can ensure that their microphones are at the correct height and when speaking you should speak into them as directly as possible. This will assist with the sound quality for those joining on teams. There is no alarm test scheduled today so if the coaxing goes off in the Committee Room we should make our way to the exit through the door from which you came down the main staircase and out the front reception door. We will head to the heart centre and wait until clearance is given to return to the building. So in terms of Agenda Item 1 I have received apologies from only Alan Wood so far as there are any more. I don't see any hands up. So now turning to Agenda Item 2 appointment of Chairperson. As you will be aware in terms of the standing orders the Chairperson will alternate between the Constituent authorities. For the ensuing year this position now falls to an Aberdeen City Council elected member. Therefore can I seek nominations for Chair of the Joint Committee? Mr Rassen I have indicated that I would be happy to put forward a nomination. Thank you and do I have a seconder? I'm sorry I have nominated, I would like to nominate Councillor Ian Yule please for the Chair. Thank you, sorry and we have a seconder. I have to second thank you. Thank you. So Councillor Yule is just moving to the Chair and he will take us through the remaining parts of the Agenda. Thank you. Thank you Mark and good morning everyone. Agenda Item 3 is the appointment of Vice Chairperson and I believe this now falls to a member, Robert Deanshire Council. Councillor Amard. Yes thank you Chair and I welcome you to your new position as well and would like to nominate Councillor Ann Stirling as Vice Chair. And is somebody going to second that? Councillor Owen. I'm muted. Just nod. Oh she's off. I second that. Thank you Councillor Owen and congratulations to Councillor Stirling who I will be leaning heavily on to give in her experience and knowledge. So that takes us to Agenda Item 4, determination of exempt business. There isn't any so that's easy, determination of exempt business and there's none again so that's easy as well. Any decorations of interest or transparency statements? I see Jennifer. Sorry, Ms. Crow. Thank you Chair. As per normal I would like to declare for those options to know these limited board members who by as part of being part of the one board. Both City and I are directors of ETZ Limited. I am a director of Aberdeen, Food Hub, North East Scotland Limited and a director of Bio Aberdeen Limited and so that covers both Syrian, Wood, myself and also Professor Steve Olivier is also an opportunity North East board member and has will add now as well. Thank you. Any more for any more? Turn to the room. Thank you very much. Just to say that by virtue of being a board member of Opportunity North East and having applied the objective test I've concluded that I do not have an interest to declare and should remain in the meeting. So this is a transparency statement. Thank you. Thank you very much Councillor OWEN. As per Councillor OWEN I would like to make the same transparency statement. Thank you. Professor Oliver. I did declare that the National Subsea Centre is part of Rob Gordon University. Thank you. I see no more hands online or in person. So are we safe to move on? I think we are. Right. That takes us to agenda item seven which is the minutes of our previous meeting. Are we happy that these are an accurate minute? I agree. Thank you all very much. That takes us to item eight which is the quarterly progress update. Mr Buse wants to say a few words by way of introduction. Thank you Chair. The papers have been circulated and I assume it's not any questions that will come forward but there were a couple of points I maybe just wanted to highlight within this course of the programme report. In February we submitted a response to the UK Government's economic growth review questionnaire and that about focusing around the model of the deal, how that's worked and there's been follow-ups from that just earlier this week. I had a meeting with some of the other PMOs and the UK Government which was again looking at how this model has worked and what's worked well and what sort of things we might suggest could be done slightly differently. There will be further follow-ups to that which will include a workshop in around two weeks up in Aberdeen with private and third sector stakeholders and there will be a further session thereafter with chief executives of local authorities and they hope to then publish a blueprint for their outcome of that economic growth review in the summer. Another thing we've also done since the last joint committee, the UK Parliament Scotch Affairs Committee launched an inquiry into city and growth deals. We provided a response to that, very similar to the response on the economic growth review. Both of those were done through the programme board using the delegation that was provided by the joint committee back in I think it was February of this year. The only other thing that I'd want to draw attention to to the joint committee is we've spoken previously about Project Gigabit. The government are beginning the procurement process for that and we think that the lot with regards to Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire should be live on PCS in June. So we hope to give you further updates on that in June of course. Thank you, Mr. Buse. Now, turn to questions. Does anyone have any questions for Mr. Buse? If you do, it would be really helpful if you could refer to the page number from your question arises. I see no hands. Which case are we happy to accept the report? It's noted. Thank you all. Okay, that takes us to the item 9, which is the National Decommissioning Centre, which is a presentation by Professor Nielsen. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chair, and thanks for the invitation to present what we've been doing. This isn't formally a five-year report, but it will give you a good idea of what we've been doing over the last five years. I'll try and leave enough time for questions at the end of this. I'm Richard Nielsen, part of the University and Centre Director of National Decommissioning Centre. Just to remind you who we are, we're partnership with the University of Aberdeen and the Net Zero Technology Centre through whom we get funding from ACRD. We had about £12.7 million worth of ACRD funding. The University is matching that with £8 million. We launched about five years ago. Hopefully in next month or so, we'll have a five-year report out, giving more detail around some of the works we're talking about. We're very much into disciplinary. We've had any match funding from industry and other sources, and we've had really good support from the Scottish Government, which I'd just like to flag here in terms of the Decommissioning Challenge for and they'll try and flag some of these things as we go along. So when we were launched five years ago, and this was our kind of ambition was to be an R&D group in terms of decommissioning late field or mature field management. A lot has changed in the last five years. A lot has actually changed in the last two years, obviously in terms of energy security. But nowadays, our work is much more in the energy transition and sustainability. We're still doing work in decommissioning, but there are areas which we're working in which do not have the work decommissioning in them, and I'll kind of highlight those and explain why as we go along. The university is a good size, but it's not massive. So when we started, the idea was to link up with port clusters, other early institutions and universities, bring those together as a kind of cluster along with things like UK catapults. We're now involved with the ORE catapults, but obviously because we are ECRD funded, one of the drivers for this was to make a positive impact on the supply chain in terms of delivering the UK and internationally. So I just want to flag up the kind of partnerships we've evolved over the last five years. Our first major partner was Chevron. Interestingly, they joined us just as they divested in North Sea, so a lot of work we're doing then has actually international reach. It's Gulf of Thailand, Australia and Angola, but has implications for the UK as well. And we've been doing a lot of work on marine ecosystem work around fish around man-made structures, a quantification of risk assessment of mercury. There's areas where mercury becomes entrained with the oil and gas and there's potential for contamination. And also a lot of the work around bi-habitats around pipelines and biodiversity around pipelines. We've also been running a couple of more engineering-oriented projects for Chevron. One is longevity and fate of structures left in place, primarily pipelines. So there are cases where pipelines were left in place and we'll gradually decay and we're trying to make estimates how long that will take. And we're just kicking off a new project with Chevron around degradation of plastics. It's a major challenge. A lot of discussion around microplastics in the marine environment. There's a lot of plastics used in coatings of pipelines, both in the UK, C.S. and other basins. So that's literally just kicking off next month or so. So Chevron partnered with us for three years and have joined us for another three, so they run out until September 26. And we're also part of the nuclear decommission authority. This is a little bit left field, but it came out to about three years of discussions between the oil and gas authority as it was then, now the North Sea Transition Authority and the nuclear decommission authority. And what came out of that was a desire to work together on areas which were had common interests. So cost benchmarking, decarbonise of decommissioning, moat operations, oil and gas, obviously hazardous environments in terms of explosive environments, potentially under water. Nuclear, that picture is a picture of one of self-heal storage ponds, so interventions under water in a radioactive environment. Interesting, under water cutting alternatives cement for oil and gas sector, well plug-in abandonment for the nuclear sector, building materials for green buildings and mobilising waste and some generic work-on safety and risk with towns of artificial intelligence and machine learning. We've also had Shells a partner and this has been looking at long-term monitoring. So Shell have a number of assets which will remain in the North Sea and will gradually decay over decades, possibly centuries and they were very interested in looking at how they would monitor these, what they would need to do when and what the benefit would be. So we've completed that project and we're in discussion with operators, the regulator part of the business and also with oil and gas offshore energy in our UK who provide guidelines to see how we take that work and turn it to guidelines which are valid for the whole sector, not just for Shell itself. And we've also just completed a short study on bio remediation of cell contents. There are areas where oil has been stored and there are ways of remediating that using biological materials. I mentioned at the start that there are areas we're doing which are not decommissioning at all and this partnership which started just over a year ago is with the offshore renewable energy catapult. So this is actually looking ahead, this is now not decommissioning, this is looking at deployment of shore floating wind. So we're linked up with ORE, but also they recently started up floating offshore wind innovation centre in ETZ. So this comes out of work we've been doing with our simulator which I'll talk about in a wee while. And we've got three part projects running with them. So one is looking at offshore marine operations for floating wind. It's one thing putting or trying to get some stuff from a vessel onto fixed structure is quite different trying to go from a floating structure onto another floating structure. So we're looking at things like that in major component replacement. We're just starting to look at the environmental impact of offshore floating wind. This will have major effect on the fishing industry and from having fairly open seas there will be areas which will be a tangled area of cables and mooring systems. And we're also looking at optimization of mooring and anchor systems trying to see how you reduce the number of these cables mooring systems but still make things safe. And we also do a lot of work with the ORE catapult around port modelling. We also do technology projects. So we've been working with Clackston for the last, I'm sorry, I've somehow missed off their logo from the ear of my apologies. We've been working with Clackston for the last four or five years and we've completed a project phase one which was tank testing and offshore testing at Kishorn. That video you can see running so it's sort of like jumping on the screen is actually one of our tests at Kishorn then it's 71 meters water depth. So we've cut materials both in the tank and underwater. Phase two is currently running with NZTC funding but also with inquest on Harbor Energy's partners. And we plan to be offshore doing a real decommissioning job with Harbor August this year. If that goes well this this makes the system more or less commercial for for Clackston. The other large project we've got, I should have said that the laser we were using was funded by Decorition Challenge Fund. The other big technical project we've got is what we call our barrier qualification test chamber. This is a £2 million bid funded by Scottish Government's Decorition Challenge Fund. They aim to provide a test system for looking alternative materials to cement for plugging the banding wells. And just to give you an idea of the scale of well P&A, at the moment the estimates probably around 20 billion to plug all the wells in the North Sea. Some of the new methods are quicker and easier to apply and therefore have major cost savings implications. But at the moment a few of them had used the North Sea and there's a requirement to qualify the materials to make sure they're at least as good as cement. So this chamber would replicate the downhole conditions for wells up to 200 degrees C and up to 10,000 psi or 700 bar and giving us a chance to trial some of these new plugging and banding materials in an onshore environment then take the plugs apart and test them for ends of Clack. At the moment our estimated completion date for this is end of Q2 beginning of Q3 this year and we've got a number of interested parties for that. We've also got a local site set up to house this and support it. We've also run a series of PhD programs so we've had quite interdisciplinary work right from these short slides we shared right through from Alex Kemp on the left hand side looking at liability around the cost of decommissioning through various projects with biological sciences around things like marine growth and DNA testing to find out marine ecosystems. To that that box in grey where we've got cluster students been looking at quantification of greenhouse gas emissions, optimization of scenarios and reuse and repurposing all of which feed into a major project funded by the Scottish Government both data for net zero which I'll talk a little bit more about. So the moment we've run about we're either how I either run or are running 16 PhDs. I mentioned that we've got international reach we've undertaken projects with two longer university in Thailand, Curtin University in Australia, University of Aberdeen's got a very strong relationship with that university and we're working more locally with Essex and very strongly with Robert Gordon University and National Subsea Centre on data per net zero, working locally with University of Strathclyde, locally being UK wide, on some aspects of the nuclear stuff we've been doing and also some simulation and testing work on renewables and we've also done some work with University of Western Australia. So good partnerships both within the UK and globally. To lose your chance to visit us our location is up in Newborough and these are the two buildings that we're housed in. The one you can see to the right is the north building where most of our office spaces and our simulators and the left buildings most of our lab space. Giving you the kind of lab stuff we've got and when we took the buildings over we we've inherited some really good testing facilities so we can test underwater down to 7,000 meters water depth. We've got a five meter immersion tank that laser cutting was done in. We've got environmental chambers so we can test down to minus 40 up to 150 degrees. We've done what super computer looks as cool as this but we have access to half the university's computing, super computing power and we've got our industrial laser which is a 15 kilowatt, one of the biggest lasers in university hands in the UK. That's also been containerized for use offshore. So our other large investment has been our simulator. Again this is partly funded through ACRD funds and partly funded through the Scottish Games Decommission Challenge Fund. For those of you who are into gaming or your kids are into gaming this is like an Xbox or a PlayStation or your gaming stage of choice on steroids. We have 22 servers, 16 projectors, four control chairs and this was set up. Let's give you an idea of what it looks like if you walk into it. So the chairs on the right under control under water vehicles or cranes, the chairs on the left control vessels. We've got two sides of simulator. One is the kind of mechanics side, marine simulation side and the other side is looking at data and I'll try and highlight a little bit about these. We've done a number of projects. This is one for a company called Oasis and we'll be looking at setting up a charging system for offshore cruise transfer vessels. So imagine this is almost the equivalent having a Tesla or electric car and a charging point but doing it offshore. So you have a wind turbine, a battery pack and then this charging boy. And the simulations we've done, we've done in different weather conditions to be able to show that this is feasible, that it's a viable proposition and this was done two, three months before the company actually ran this in real life offshore to show it did work. So we were able to de-risk some of these operations using the simulator. Interestingly most of the work we've done the simulator so far has been offshore renewables and not decreasing. We're just running our first decushion job at the moment. We've also done some work around new floating wind concepts. So this is a light weight or relatively light weight and single-point-murd wind turbine by a company called Tomega. We've looked at the wave writing of this. We've looked at its deployment from harbors and so quite a number of things we can do with the simulator. And I mentioned the Strath Cloud. Actually the reason we worked with Strath Cloud was to verify our model. So on the right hand side you can see our model and on the left hand side you can see their tank simulation of the same thing. So we've been able to justify and verify our models are good from test data. Also work, I mentioned about port infrastructure. We've been building trialling new floating concepts, hopefully wind concepts from harbors. This is already south harbor but we've also got models of Nick, Peterhead, Port Talbot and we're building some others at the moment. So we can trial new renewable technologies from these harbor systems. Just as I finished fairly soon, the other big project we're around just now is called Data Burnett Zero. It's joint between ourselves and the National Subsea Center. And this is looking at decision making. So we're looking at a concept called Smart Cities, which is where you instrument city, get data, find how the data sets interact and then make decisions around that. Our idea was if you took the whole of the North Sea Basin you instrumented it up, you look at how the data sets interact, forget about who owns what and then see how you make better decisions. So that was a concept we brought to the table when we set up this project. So we're running three projects around this, particularly around decommissioning. So we have one around reuse and repurposing of infrastructure, one around decarbonizing and one around decision making and trying to see how different actors within the North Sea might come together and reduce carbon emissions or make better decisions. And those better decisions might be financially better or they might be environmentally better. If you try to plot out all the data in the North Sea, you end up with a mess like this. So this covers all of the kind of wind, oil and gas infrastructure, wrecks and various other things. So we've come down to another smaller area so we've got an area around the Gannett field, Scott field and a smaller one up East of Shetland and we started building those within our simulator. So this is a kind of fly through of the infrastructure in the Gannett area. So Gannett we've chosen because it's got a wind farm license for the modern wind farm. The green area you can see there is a marine-prected zone and it's got oil and gas infrastructure which is running but also stuff which will be decommissioned fairly shortly so that all kinds of things we are interested in looking at in this. So the moment we kind of mapped this out including the wind farm, nobody knows how many turbines will be there at the moment but we've made our best estimate. But we can also add labels data, visualizing data on this on these systems as well which allows us to interrogate the system in the simulator in real time. And because we look at emissions rather than just having tables of data we start to look in at how we visualize carbon emissions and actually what we've done here is build spheres which actually show the volume and mass of carbon emissions and so black is CO2 and green is methane emissions and so on. We've also been looking at decision-making around vessels so we've got so seven years of vessel data for the area round off Aberdeen and we're using that to look at emissions from vessels but also to track vessels so we can see who's been doing what in terms of life soft power points not responding. We have a glitch I'm afraid. Sorry about this folks. I mean if you're okay I'll probably just describe what I was going to talk about in experts rather than hoping so. So I was actually just about going to end of this so one of the things we're trying to do is take all this data, pull it together and make decisions around it. Some of the decisions are around what's called comparative assessments. This is trying to pull together for particularly interesting the environmental bit, the economic piece, the technical feasibility, the societal benefit or detriment of making a particular decision and the safety aspects. So one of the key tools that come out of this data in net zero project will be a multi criterion decision making process. So all of this stuff and be sure you so far is data that we will take and process and feed into that system. I've only got a couple of slides left so it's can you just leave that for a second. So yeah that's kind of core of where we're going. Just then summarize and what I think we've done in the last five years so we've got successful interdisciplinary work center, working across multiple sectors so oil and gas, renewables and nuclear. We've had very strong delivery and we've got about 9.2 million pounds of additional R&D funding and since we started 32 projects completed 21 projects ongoing, I've mentioned 16 PhD projects either completed or ongoing. We've employed about 12 research staff, we've got 35 scientific publications, about 45 industry partnerships and other strategic partnerships, some of which I've mentioned and about 500 industry and stakeholder engagement activities over the last five years and I think that was just kind of where I was going to get to so I think we're not far out so I'm happy to take questions if there's time. Result, thank you very much for that and there's always time for questions. Having said that, I'm not seeing any hands at present. Oh there's one now just popped up. Ms Croft. Thank you, I was really good presentation and it's always a shame when it stops working at the point you start talking about digital isn't it? But I think in terms of getting an insight to the the work of the centre going beyond the big big challenge that the North Sea definitely has in terms of cost of decommissioning and looking to the future. So my question is how are you going to balance those two as we move forward because certainly from an industry perspective and a you know a cost in terms of future abandonment and doing that in a very sustainable way, that is still a key driver so I'm just kind of keen to know how you're going to balance the two moving forward. There is so much of a focus as we know on net zero but actually that legacy cost and the stewardship to be honest of the North Sea and how it ties into those opportunities for net zero are equally important but I understand strategically that makes me quite a challenge to balance the two out. That's Ms Croft. I'm very good question. I think in some cases there is a win-win because in some cases like the well-plugging abandonment the the cost reduction will be alongside an emissions reduction and so the cost reduction will be because we use smaller vessels with less emissions shorter time skills to do things. Again the bigger question in a longer term would be whether if you want to really go net zero whether people will move to sustainable fuels. So a lot of interest I know around the with the investments on the green energy side of things in terms of a term to fuels because I think that's by the only way most of the offshore most of the decommissioning cost or most of the decommissioning emissions is from vessels so if you're going to try and get towards net zero it means either going electric or it means going alternative fuels which are green and that's quite a big challenge because that's that's quite a big investment for the sector but I think it'll need to come. We haven't looked at alternative fuels particularly I mean we've probably been more looking at the technologies which will reduce time, reduce vessel time and reduce costs and therefore reduce emissions. Does that help? If I could come back in June I think you've exactly explained my slight concern that we somehow think we've tackled the cost of decommissioning it is a huge burden from a tax perspective the you know government has a huge commitment as we see late life as it fails as we see late life and some of the independent companies in the current environment under stress I put it that way then actually we do need to remember we have the stewardship commitment and management to decommission the current oil and gas North DC infrastructure so I suppose actually your answer kind of adds to the dilemma in my head that there's so much focus on let's decommission let's make sure the vessels doing that work are net zero when actually this the big issue still is the cost of decommissioning that infrastructure so I guess it is it's to can it be reassured that the expertise that's built up in both research knowledge and knowledge transfer with industry remembers to keep that as a as a high level priority because we have not solved that as a country and I suspect there's no global oil and gas and province that has solved that either so I suppose it's it's my my ask that when it was set up as a decommissioning opportunity within the original OGTC as was business case it was because the industry and both governments understood the cost of actually making the marine environment if you like good repurposing in terms of net zero is good but if we focus just on making sure the decommissioning vessels have green energy we might miss the bigger flies which is reducing the cost of decommission overall so I get I understand there's a repurpose and there's a net zero emissions element to it but just a reassurance that we're going to keep that focus on how do we reduce the cost as a country of decommissioning within the industry in partnership so it's more a comment it's I know it's I know it's difficult in the current strategic environment and policy environment and but it is actually a huge challenge for for this country so but thank you I'd really appreciate a copy of the slides in the presentation and it'll be quite a big file but if there's a way to share that that would be great really really interesting and really good work thank you thanks the plan is to share the presentation with all members of the joint committee which means we'll be able to see the last couple of slides as well yeah I probably can't share all the videos because it's about two gigabytes file file just come back I mean why would say is we are still focused on on construction because the barrier qualification system is in directly at alternative barrier materials which will then reduce time reduce cost and reduce well smaller vessels lighter vessels shorter times and our laser cutting project as well and just give an idea again it's probably both things it's probably cost and emissions because we take about a third of the deck space of a typical cutting spread so less transport requirement therefore less cost less emissions and probably a third of the power so if he compares to an abrasive water jet cutting spread it's a win-win in terms of both costs in terms of emissions so that that focus on cost is still there and actually we had NSTA out meeting with us last week and it's still venture focused on theirs as well and there have been a little bit I mean there's been a lot of work since 2018-2019 and there's been about something around a 20 billion saving estimate it's crept up a little bit again but that's primarily due to fuel costs and various other things moment thank you I don't see any other hands in which case professor thank you very much for your presentation it was fascinating it's been a pleasure and thank you for your time and I'm sure that we all look forward to receiving a copy of the presentation perhaps minus the videos yeah so so we passed on a PDF file that's fantastic going to be all okay thank you and with that and again thanks can we move to item 10 which is digital connectivity Mr McCarry do you want to introduce this at all thank you chair the digital engagement team which is which we've funded over four years now has been incredibly successful as a report outlines in terms of the the promotion and digital connectivity across the region and there have been some changes lately as we move through the deal and this report seeks to secure the employment of our digital ways on lead I think post called for a further two years and tell us to continue on that good work recognizing that previously it was a team three and both both streamlined that team and then to single post now and the postholder has done a great job in promoting digital connectivity but also causing the the connectivity gap especially in the more rural parts of urban danger and so we would very much be grateful if the joint committee could support the recommendations in the report thank you thanks mr McCarry are there any questions or are we happy to agree the recommendations i'm seeing nodding heads and i okay that is agreed thank you mr McCarry takes us to item 11 which is external transportation links to Aberdeen south harbor mr McCarry do you want to do an introduction or are you happy just to move to questions and it was just good do you have any brief introduction if that's okay chair of course yeah and so just to say this is a progress report as requested by committee new requested decisions today and just highlighting in what has happened since we last met but very briefly the stage the assessment and outline business case which are approved last time have been submitted to governments for the review we're anticipating their comments in the if it in your future also in the exhibition a public exhibition of the stage three design has been underway and concluded including a in-person event the Tory Free church and i've had a reasonable amount of interest both online and in-person asking questions and explaining the further detail of the project also as explained to committee last time around in the project has been to Aberdeen say council full council to receive first use compulsory purchase which were granted in April and the intention is that that order will be made this month also in the very near future this month the planning application for the for the project will also be lodged and this will be see another major step forward in the project and keeping us within the current program as planned so thank you for that chair happy to take any questions thank you um questions for mr makai councilor allard thank you very much and thank you very much for the report mr makai and for a surveyable update i think it's important to recognize that we are cracking on with compulsory purchase orders and and that's good to see i have to say that i assisted to the public and stakeholder engagement as a Tory unit free church and it was very good feedback i'm just getting a bit concerned about one thing first of all i'm not going to get concerned about financing because i seen that on the page 14 of our paper he said that we it should be covered by the strategic transporter appraisal funding which which which is very very good he can reassure everybody around the table but regarding uh so surprise that you make to both committee communities cove and tarry and you maybe remember me having bringing that before it's about the closure of the coastal road i do know that we we kind of said that we will try to limit as much as possible the closure of the coastal road during the work unfortunately we don't seem to be the only one while i thinking you were closing that road so i wasn't being dismayed to to to realize that the road is closed just now and it was closed since it it was closed on the 29th of april and it'll be closed until the 17th of May so i'm a bit concerned that there will be successive closures by different amenities on the top of our own closures and i think that both communities we need to have them with us on that particular project so it will be good if we could contact everybody concerned and making sure that what we said to limit the road closure is what we did at the end so i would like to have some feedback on that mr makai yes quite happy to to come in on that too and so the more the project has enclosed a close road or hereness as part of any of the preparations so i think as i mentioned there that have been closures by others just along with it the normal use of the public road by utilities and operational maintenance issues as well as we've informed committee that is the detailed design progresses through this year and the intentionist return to september committee around the buildability and options on the construction sequencing and one of the focuses will be around how accesses maintains to those along the immediate part of the worksheet but also the implications of closures and diversion routes that follow on from that and as we stated in committee before we'll certainly be looking at how to limit that but also making the progress with the the project construction as well and it's been very clear from stakeholder and public engagement that's definitely a feature around the disruption that will occur in construction and certainly we're going to be mindful of that through the development of the finalisation of the design thanks mr kai any other questions or comments i see no hands and i i'm assuming that we are happy to to note as proposed noted thank you very much that takes us on to item 12 which is the MOU housing annual update and mrs booth have you anything you want to see on this one shall we just go straight to questions um good morning thank you um you'll see the report details recent conversations that we've had with scottish government regarding the housing infrastructure fund joint committee will be aware that there's been many conversations regarding this funding over recent years including letters that we've sent to the relevant ministers scottish government have again confirmed that it's a side agreement that included flexibility over a five-year period from 2016 for affordable housing and this included a notional 20 million pound infrastructure fund that could be made available should any qualifying projects be identified unfortunately neither abadene city and abadene she counsels have been unable to identify any sites that are eligible for the funding but both local authorities are committed to identifying projects and utilising the funding and the report does however highlight the successes that have been made in relation to delivering affordable housing across the region and i'm happy to answer any questions thank you mrs booth do we have any questions no oh councilor can't see your number one is into petri i need new glasses councilor petri thanks to not a question as such but i think just a point in terms of the recommendations which is to take off a yearly report um i think my preference would be that we keep a yearly report on this um i know it's been difficult to get the money spent but i think that means it's really important that we keep it on the agenda and in front of us to make sure that we continue to try and make progress on this um and the engagement continues with the government as well to make sure we find a way um to utilize the money because i think we all know the housing situation across the northeast um across scotland and i think it'd be really useful to make sure that we're on top of it so i think my preference would be to keep it as an agenda item councilor sterling yeah really just to pull you got your speakers on sorry sorry we're getting feedback here um i i would i've said um much the same i would support cancer petri's uh proposal that we do keep that annual uh update on the agenda and we continue to pursue um the the issue but uh i would certainly agree with cancer petri that we should continue to receive the annual update thanks i do i don't see any other hands are we happy to um agree that the recommendations as modified by cancer petri suggestion i see nodding heads i've no see no shaking heads thank you all that takes us on to the next item which is item 13 which is the mou transport progress update what no mr french yeah thank you very much chair i was just wondering if you could bring the in or not there so um so that's fine thank you very much uh committee the report before you updates it provides the regular six-monthly update on the two transport mou projects which are running alongside the city region deal they uh concerned the 200 million commitment for the upgrade or the tuning time improvements between Aberdeen and the central belt and also the commitment to fund or support the implementation of the trunk road improvement project at Lawrence Kirk the report before you just provides some overview of the progress on both of those reports and we have uh representatives from both of those projects here from transport Scotland and network rail who can answer detailed questions on that just say on the rail uh project since we last met there's been a correspondence with the cabinet secretary in terms of recent announcements that were made in the Scottish Parliament about the the progression of the project the last mou update we were able to provide confirmation that things seem to be keep going reasonably well with both the business case and the implementation of the the blockades and the signaling work that was required i think it's since been uh confirmed in in the Scottish Parliament that the implementation work for this current year has been paused due to budget constraints of the business case preparation works and design work to continue but that ultimately will perhaps impact on the on the deliverability of that scheme from a city region dual point of view or wider economic impact for the region that is obviously a concern just because of the the work that this does brings wider benefits in terms of rail freight journey time improvements local connectivity and also impacts on the future strategies for for rolling stock renewal that these things will be picked up i'm assured in the business case work that transport Scotland and network rail are doing the other good news from the from the side of the Lawrence Kirk project is the progression that has been made between Aberdeenshire Council and Transport Scotland has enabled the Aberdeenshire Council's objection to that scheme to be lifted formal objections do remain on a couple of the other projects a couple of little story on on on that scheme which requires still to be worked through but still it's a good milestone to see that that formal ejection has been lifted and that's testament to the ongoing work between officers of Aberdeenshire Council and Transport Scotland going forward so that's in summary the update of the of the covering report as we say we have representatives from Transport Scotland and Network Rail to to to to to to ask any questions on the rail side of things and also Transport Scotland on the on the Lawrence Kirk project. Chair thank you very much happy to take questions. Thanks Mr Finch questions for Mr Finch or Network Rail or Transport of Scotland? I'm not seeing any. Okay can I on that basis can I I thank Mr Camelford and Miss Goldblatt for their attendance even though you didn't get to see anything thank you both. Are we happy to agree the already to denote the report and Mr Finch's update just now? I'm seeing nodding heads take that as a yes thank you all which takes us to the final item on our agenda which is the internal audit report 2020 for I couldn't ask Mr Buys if he wanted to introduce this then we can move to questions for Mr Buys and Mr Dale as as appropriate Mr Buys thank you Chair as is required by the the terms and conditions of the city deal an internal audit takes place every two years the internal audit has been underway since around quarter three of last year and was concluded a couple of months ago the report is before the committee today in line with the columns protocol of the city region deal and that ensures all partners are made aware of any reports which relate to the deal the report will now progress into both local authorities audit committees and thereafter an action plan would be developed which would identify which actions are required to be taken and how they will be taken and when and the recommendations that we have set out within the report they explain that that process has happened to date and they also note some of the progress that we've made in terms of some of the recommendations you'll see within appendix say the actual full audit report is contained some of those we've been working on and at the previous committee we received approval from the committee for a number of actions which we think will will fully resolve some of the recommendations in the report the third recommendation it makes an acknowledgement of some of the wider controls that are in place from external organizations this is purely an internal audit so it focuses purely on the internal controls of the local authorities which operate as the PMO for the deal the fourth recommendation that we have within the report is acknowledging the process that will follow with both local authority audit committees and seeks to instruct the chief officer of city development and regeneration at Aberdeen City Council to bring back a report to the joint committee which we'd update on those next steps following the audit report. Thanks Mr Buse we now move to the questions I see Councillor Stirling has her hand up. Councillor Stirling. Thank you sorry Paul just get me to the echo and before we do that I would be I think it would be helpful if we can hear from our officers Mrs Beatty's on the call and Mr McCarrie's in the call for example so I think before we go any further chair is it possible to hear from the officers? Of course Mr McCarrie do you have anything to add? Thank you Chair I was going to let Mrs Beatty come first as section 95 officer. Mrs Beatty do you have anything to add to Mr Buse comments? I do Chair I think it's important for me to be able to give a little bit of history around the financial governance of the city region deal so as a joint committee may be aware the governance framework including the financial information requirements was established in consensus amongst all stakeholders at the start of the deal agreement in 2016 and that was to reflect the principles of the public private partnership. Within the financing structure Aberdeenshire Council possesses the capacity under an open book accounting arrangement to obtain comprehensive access to all financial data relating to all projects. However this provision hasn't been utilized by either me or the previous chief finance officer excuse me. We prepared to take assurance from the internal governance and scrutiny arrangements associated with each of these projects. I think joint committee will be aware that these projects have the own financial governance and control frameworks which are subject to annual external audit reviews and these reviews evaluate the adherence to the grant conditions as part of the assessment of going concerned and an ongoing viability of these projects and every time a grant claim is submitted each project lead is required to sign a declaration of compliance. So the robustness of these existing procedures has precluded in our opinion the necessity for further review. However as the internal audit report highlights we are not complying with our own internal procedures and the main risks as I see them are firstly with the introduction of subsequent city region deals both government bodies have articulated additional requirements and secondly the known compliance with our internal controls and while these stipulations can be implemented respectively I think the retroactive application poses logistical challenges and that's something that I'm discussing with both the governments. Furthermore from an internal control standpoint our danger council has instigated open book accounting reviews for the projects and our project leads have provided unrestricted access to all financial records for council colleagues and this has been in place for the last two grant claims and the expenditure reviewed during these discussions aligns with the original business cases goals and objectives. Thanks for that chair. Thank you that was really helpful. Hey are there any questions or comments? Councillor Stirling. Yeah thank you very much and thanks to the officers for that and also thanks to the internal audit team for the report which is before us today. From my point of view I think that Ms Beattie has given us some assurance I think that's very helpful but I do think that we should accept the report before us with the recommendations I think officers are minded and also that that would be progressed and in terms of the recommendation to bring back a report I would like to add the words next because I think it would be helpful for this joint committee to get a report to the next meeting with the update on the progress of the implementation of the recommendations so that we can be further assured that things are moving in line with the recommendations as set out in the report so if you're minded chair then if we can add that to the recommendation that we get the report back to the next meeting of this joint committee and I think that would be helpful thank you. Thanks I think that's a very sensible suggestion. Councillor OWEN. Councillor OWEN. Onion muted try again. Can you hear me now? Yeah good sorry I'm having a few little issues about pressing buttons and who presses buttons and who doesn't press buttons so it's my turn to press the button I just wanted to support Councillor Stirling in that and I think we need to be proactive and give Jamie the the the the due deference that he deserves in terms of that report and I think as the reports come to us I think we really do need to have some sort of report coming back to us for the next meeting and I'm very happy to to to to to support Councillor Stirling's comments. Thank you for that. I see no more hands are we happy to agree the recommendations with the addition that the report back to this joint committee comes to our next meeting which is in September. Okay I'm seeing no shaking heads I'm seeing some nodding heads I'll take that as unanimous agreement thank you that it includes the agenda thank you all for your attendance can I see a special thanks to Councillor Stirling for her I almost said Stirling work but that's a really old pun for her a dedicated work over the last year that was a genuine mistake and dedicated work over the last year as the joint committee's chair and as I said earlier I know I will be relying on her going forward in her her new role so thank you all for your attendance. I will see some of you before the 6th of September but I look forward to seeing those that I don't see before the 6th of September on the 6th of September thank you all bye. Thank you very much Chair and I wish you every success. Thank you bye bye. Thanks.