ABSTRACT
When John Neerhout took the job of project chief executive at Eurotunnel in February 1990, the row over costs had been running for well over a year. The estimated final bill for the scheme had risen to around £7.2 billion-although contractor and client still could not agree on this-from £4.9 billion. The contract was a legal mess which would inevitably lead to more rows, and four men had died on the scheme in a year. The contractor had been forced to make management changes, as had Eurotunnel, a matter both sides were still smarting over. TML and Eurotunnel were also both convinced that the other side had acted appallingly during the crisis and had brought the world’s best known civil engineering project into disrepute. The only good news was that tunnelling was improving, but even that was still behind schedule.
