It was not so much that Ferguson Marine messed up. It was that it did not even keep track of where and when.

The last commercial yard on the Clyde was supposed to build two state-of-the-art new ferries for £97 million.

It failed. The final bill, it was confirmed yesterday, will be more than twice as high. The Scottish Government will now spend more to fix the vessels – essentially now unusable hulks – which it ordered than it initially budgeted for their construction.

Officials yesterday published a detailed and damning report of what went wrong in the project and what needs to be done to get it back on track. It predicts another £110m in costs.

A key issue: nobody at the yard was properly recording defects. One of the ordered ferries, code name 801, has been named Glen Sannox, and sits rusting at the dockside in Port Glasgow.

It was already supposed to be ferrying vehicles and passengers between Arran and the Ayrshire mainland.

Instead the Firth of Clyde island faces regular delays as the 26-year-old MV Caledonian Isles struggles to stay in service. The hull of the second vessel, 802, lies rusting in the yard.

Tim Hair, turnaround director for the newly nationalised Ferguson Marine, has spelled out the problems, including hundreds of poorly recorded and tracked defects.

His document, a report on the updated cost and programme for vessels 801 and 802, pulls no punches about who was responsible for the cost overruns and defects.

It cites three main reasons:

l“A lack of project management, particularly critical on 801/02 which are complex ships where no one person has understood and controlled the overall programme”.

l“An absence of project planning and control systems has resulted in a lack of integrated working, out-of-sequence activities and no useful management information”.

l“Engineering processes and controls are weak. Specifications from the customer were not fully understood before design work was carried out resulting in an incomplete design and causing significant rework”.

Ferguson Marine, Mr Hair said, “does not operate a full defect management system. As such, there is no record for defects identified and managed to a conclusion”.

The yard’s managers only inspected structural steel and paint, he said. That means information about defects comes not from the manufacturer but from its customer, CMAL, the Scottish Government company which owns ferries operated by CalMac.

CMAL logged what are called Owners Observation Reports, or OORs, around 350 of them.

Mr Hair wrote: “As a result of the immature design and out-of-sequence working there has been a significant number of defects raised by the customer which have all been reviewed and where required included in the cost and programme.

“These include a major departure from the specification, the widespread use of axilock couplings, which together with other work, has driven the decision to remove most of the pipework within the engine room.”

There are now also real concerns that both ships are deteriorating. Mr Hair suggests the two hulks have not been properly cared for. Paint on Glen Sannox has degraded. Rain has got inside. It is now being cleaned and engineers are looking at what damage has been done.

The ship will be dry-docked early in the remediation programme.

Engineers want to know exactly what has happened to its hull underwater as it sat at its Clyde berth for two years. There is rust damage to 801 too. The primer on its steelwork has degraded. Water is getting in. The yard itself is a mess, Mr Hair suggested.

He wrote: “Housekeeping and cleanliness is of poor standard with excessive debris and disregarded construction materials, equipment, consumables, uninstalled pipe work, fittings, flanges, general waste and disregarded rubbish.” There are also concerns about the whereabouts of parts and materials ordered for the incomplete ships.

Earlier this year Mr McColl backed calls for a full parliamentary inquiry into the Scottish Government’s role in the shipyard’s financial collapse. In a briefing dossier sent to MSPs, he said he was more than willing to give evidence at Holyrood and blamed a lack of ministerial leadership for tipping the yard into insolvency.

In his document, Mr McColl said he felt “constantly frustrated and at times bewildered” by the Government’s actions over the last two years.

He said: “I’m aware of the current calls for a parliamentary inquiry and I would be happy to participate. I remain confident Ferguson Marine will be vindicated in its management of this contract and its claim for additional costs.”

Mr McColl also criticised CMAL. He said its behaviour was “unbecoming of a company wholly owned by the Scottish ministers” and blamed it for the many changes and its refusal to allow an independent expert to assess the deal and the responsibility for costs.

CMAL has strenuously denied wrongdoing, and said it had a fixed price contract, blaming the shipyard for the vessels’ “design errors”.