As attention turns once again to Holyrood with Scottish Parliamentary elections approaching, it’s worth remembering that there was a time when the story wasn’t about who would sit there - but when or even whether its permanent home would ever be complete.

Designed by Catalan architect Enric Miralles and inspired by upturned boats, the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh remains one of the most high-profile examples of programme delay and cost escalation in modern UK construction. Early estimates in the late 1990s suggested a cost of around £40-50 million, with this figure later revised to approximately £109m. By completion in 2004, the final bill had reached £414m – 10 times its original estimate and nearly three years behind schedule.

But was Holyrood simply a cost and time overrun - or something else entirely?

An overrun implies failure against a fixed and reliable baseline. Yet early construction budgets are routinely based on incomplete scope and evolving design. If the scope changes significantly during delivery, comparisons to original figures become misleading at best. The real issue is often not poor cost control, but premature commitment before clarity about the project has been achieved. It’s not a true overrun if the baseline wasn’t accurate in the first place.

This pattern is often – too often – repeated across the sector. Client objectives aren’t fully defined at the outset. Design development continues during construction. Planning and consent risks remain unresolved at contract award, with many issues that can cause disruption: working hours, planning conditions requiring redesign, delays in obtaining permits, utility connection problems and third-party access rights. Many common procurement models fix prices before risk is properly understood, compounded by optimism bias in early forecasting.

This issue is exacerbated in refurbishment and complex builds. Existing structures can contain unknown problems from asbestos and contamination to ground conditions that require substantial underpinning. Intrusive investigations can only reveal so much before contract appointment. When contractors are required to fix price prematurely in these circumstances, one of two things happens: risk is heavily priced into the tender, or risk materialises later through change and dispute.

The truth is that risk cannot be effectively transferred unless it is first understood. Developers naturally seek cost certainty. Contractors need defined scope to responsibly assume risk. Both objectives align when uncertainty is reduced before main contract commitment - but this requires an uncomfortable acceptance that ‘early certainty’ is often illusory.

One solution lies in separating pre-construction from construction. Pre-construction phases can then be used to undertake meaningful investigation, obtain planning consent, develop and freeze design – in other words, work out what you want and stick to it. Only after scope has been sufficiently defined should construction risk be transferred. Two-stage procurement models can help; so can accepting that some risks properly sit with the developer.

Certainty comes from knowledge - not from fixing the price at the wrong time.

There is risk in every construction project. The question is not how to eliminate it but how to allocate it to the party best able to bear it - and when the right time is to make that allocation. The lessons from Holyrood aren’t about better contractors or tighter contracts. They’re about honest acknowledgement of what is not known, and disciplined investment in finding out before committing to a price that might later become a headline.