THEY say that timing is everything, but for troubled manufacturing firm BiFab time itself could prove to be more important.

Having been saved from closure by a Scottish Government loan at the end of last year, the Fife-based firm is just weeks away from potentially winning a contract that will keep its yards open - and its staff employed - for at least the next year.

Winning the contract would be good news in itself but it would also buy the firm more time in which to keep itself in the running for other, bigger projects that are due to go out to tender later this year - projects that BiFab could already be working on had they not taken more time than was originally planned to come to fruition.

The problem is that while this lifeline is tantalisingly close to BiFab’s grasp, the firm is now less than two weeks away from the end of a redundancy consultation that was launched with its entire permanent workforce in the middle of last month.

Without the promise of any new work in the interim it is likely they will all be laid off before the firm goes on to close its yards.

Put like that, the timing of the announcement of who has won the work on the Kincardine Offshore Windfarm will be everything. But, with insiders saying the award might not be finalised until the end of next month, time could well run out for BiFab first.