Guardian article on rail (& other UK) development competence

[AndrewE]

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...-nhs-britain-rail-electrification-politicians

is very interesting, but too long to quote fully. An example:

A familiar pattern of events ensued. To enable the electrification, the line was closed, at first at weekends and then altogether from last June until February this year. Reopening was scheduled for the end of that month, and it did reopen, though without electric trains. Too much had gone wrong. The masts that carried the overhead wires were incorrectly designed and delivered late; a road bridge had had to be modified; pile drivers had broken through sewers and platforms had still to be lengthened to cope with longer electric trains. To remedy these flaws and omissions, the railway will close again later this year. With luck, the first electric trains will run in late spring next year, only 15 months late.

What the local paper called “an engineering design blunder” has become far from exceptional.

Unfortunately it fails to understand the turmoil created by the change in electrification standards,

"contractors had set the overhead power lines too low when they passed under bridges"

which is explained well here:

https://www.railengineer.uk/2017/02/24/egip-electrification-clearance-woes/

The guardian article is mainly about UK decision-making, which is I suppose exactly what the Rail Engineer article is criticising too.

 

[Senex]

It's an excellent article, very well worth reading, setting as it does the latest railway fiasco in the broader context of fiascos of planning and delivery across major areas of British life and suggesting too much bluster (though it isn't put quite so rudely) and too little deliberation.

 

[Wombat]

I haven't worked for the government but I wouldn't be surprised if it suffers from the same failings as other large organisations. Here's a common IT scenario:

1) A director wants to implement a new IT system and guesses that it might cost £10m.

2) A working group puts a plan together and estimates that it's going to cost something like £50m.

3) The director throws a strop and demands that they figure out a way to reduce the cost to no more than £15m.

4) Under unrelenting pressure, the hapless project manager puts together a best-case "happy path" plan, in which everything goes perfectly, for an estimated cost of £20m.

5) The project is signed off. It ends up costing £50m, and somehow everyone is surprised and outraged.

Perhaps the railway is subject to the same sort of nonsense. In any event, I don't doubt that more deliberation is required but also more listening - yes, if you shout loudly enough you might eventually get the answer that you wanted, but only because you're incentivising people to lie to you.

 

[coppercapped]

The Guardian article is excellent - thank you for posting the link.

I have already seen the Rail Engineer article. What it shows is that the bureaucrats in the RSSB and ORR have signed up for something they don't understand, they have no responsibility for either implementation or costs and are now digging in so they don't lose face.

The engineers have become 'box-tickers'...it doesn't bode well for the future.

(I have concerns about the RSSB. It was set up in the aftermath of the Ladbroke Grove disaster when John Prescott said he wanted to strip Railtrack of its responsibility for safety. It was a nonsense of course - so he stripped Railtrack of its responsibility for writing the standards! Wow, what an achievement! These electrification standards now have little relevance, they might as well be put back on the shelf.)

 

[edwin_m]

(I have concerns about the RSSB. It was set up in the aftermath of the Ladbroke Grove disaster when John Prescott said he wanted to strip Railtrack of its responsibility for safety. It was a nonsense of course - so he stripped Railtrack of its responsibility for writing the standards! Wow, what an achievement! These electrification standards now have little relevance, they might as well be put back on the shelf.)

Indeed, and because Railtrack/NR has to be responsible for the safety of its own operations, the result was simply the creation of another layer of standards.

 

[AndrewE]

The engineers have become 'box-tickers'...it doesn't bode well for the future.

A tragedy across all aspects of life in the UK! 1) We don't have enough real engineers, but lots of technicians (and even worse, bureaucrats and plain clerks) masquerading as engineers, and taking cover-their-backside decisions. 2) Real engineers aren't allowed to exercise any power (unlike Brunel or Stevenson) because the money-men control us. Most risk assessments, safety and financial, are over-cautious (to be polite) because most of the people doing them don't understand the real situation.

I believe that in Germany you cannot be a director of a company with any engineering activity (including computing, I wonder?) if you aren't Dipl Eng, roughly equivalent to Chartered Engineer, I think. If only...!

 

[DimTim]

To quote the phrase - 'follow the money'

Costs are increasing in all these projects - I'm paying for it through my taxes!

Who is getting the money?

 

[Olaf]

It's an excellent article, very well worth reading, setting as it does the latest railway fiasco in the broader context of fiascos of planning and delivery across major areas of British life and suggesting too much bluster (though it isn't put quite so rudely) and too little deliberation.

Unfortunately let down in its conclusion by an an example of the problems the article is addressing.

There is more to this - approximate GBP 6 Billion "over-spend" already, and there are still two years of CP5 to go. There will be more to come following the completion of the review that Grayling touched up last week.

 

[Olaf]

The Guardian article is excellent - thank you for posting the link.

I have already seen the Rail Engineer article. What it shows is that the bureaucrats in the RSSB and ORR have signed up for something they don't understand, they have no responsibility for either implementation or costs and are now digging in so they don't lose face.

The engineers have become 'box-tickers'...it doesn't bode well for the future.

(I have concerns about the RSSB. It was set up in the aftermath of the Ladbroke Grove disaster when John Prescott said he wanted to strip Railtrack of its responsibility for safety. It was a nonsense of course - so he stripped Railtrack of its responsibility for writing the standards! Wow, what an achievement! These electrification standards now have little relevance, they might as well be put back on the shelf.)

The ORR's Rail regulatory role:
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/office-of-rail-regulation

The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) is the independent safety and economic regulator for Britain’s railways. It is responsible for ensuring that railway operators comply with health and safety law. It regulates Network Rail’s activities and funding requirements, regulates access to the railway network, licenses the operators of railway assets and publishes rail statistics. ORR is also the competition authority for the railways and enforces consumer protection law in relation to the railway.

 

[Olaf]

A tragedy across all aspects of life in the UK!

No, the failings are clearly within the Program Management office which is responsible for delivery.

 

[coppercapped]

The ORR's Rail regulatory role:
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/office-of-rail-regulation

Thank you. I am aware of the Office for Rail and Road's regulatory role.

I am not sure why you made the post as my comment was about the RSSB. And I also know what it is supposed to do.

Nobody comes out of these events very well - assuming you are referring to the cost overruns on the electrification work. But certainly part of the issue is with the late change in the electrical clearance standards which was the responsibility of the RSSB and the ORR. The Rail Engineer article states:

RSSB advised Rail Engineer that, during the development of GL/RT1210, the energy standards committee, which includes representation from Network Rail, agreed that this standard should reflect the updated BS EN 50122 by specifying the European practice of a 3.5 metre minimum clearance unless an appropriate risk assessment was undertaken.

RSSB also mentioned the extensive consultation exercise for the standard that had attracted over 400 comments and that they understood there to be an industry consensus for this proposal. A senior source in Network Rail, however, commented that removing Annex G was a late change that they had not agreed to and that no one in the company had been consulted. Their view is consistent with the impact assessment for GL/RT1201 not mentioning standing surface clearance and stating that it will retain the use of Annex G.

Furthermore, there was also no assessment of the economic consequences of this decision as required by the TSI implementation strategy. In particular, there does not seem to have been any consideration of a minimum clearance of slightly less than 3.5 metres which, as will be seen, would have significantly reduced the impact of this standards change.

One could argue that NR should also have been all over the RSSB and the ORR to ensure that this Appendix was not removed and the economic consequences had been considered. Maybe it it did drop the ball - but on the other hand one expects the other groups to have done their jobs properly as well.

If indeed the clearances have to be as stated for safety reasons so people can wave their selfie sticks and umbrellas around with impunity on the UK's high platforms - then electrification of the existing infrastructure is indeed dead.

The future is diesel - get used to it.

 

[Olaf]

The future is diesel - get used to it.

Quite true.

Costs relate to combination of NR failures to deliver.

All problems fall to the Program Office for failure to adapt plans to change of circumstance; the buck stops with them - that is why they are paid so much.

 

[plcd1]

Not sure that article is particularly inciteful. It seeks to criticise politicians - fair enough - by highlighting the project management failings of Network Rail. I don't see how, in anyone's wildest dreams, that a politician is directly responsible for poor project management or bad decisions about design resources or adopting equipment designs that only a couple of companies can supply.

Politicians like Osborne and McLoughlin *are* responsible for letting loose excessive public and political expectations about what NR could deliver, when and at what cost. A properly managed, progressive programme of electrification could have been created by the politicians if they'd managed expectations correctly. The strategy and policy were wrong just as Grayling's decision to unravel / cancel these schemes is wrong for other reasons. He's simply cutting costs now and trading bi-modes to replace wiring. None of this helps NR get to a point of establishing trained, competent engineers and contractors who can deliver electrification properly. The issues on standards, waivers and compliance require attention, some of it possibly political in terms of managing those expectations again to give time to get standards and related costs and risks under control.

About the only point I can agree with is that politicians do need to take time to think on some issues. However it is trite to suggest they never think about issues - they clearly do. They seek advice but they have to take the decisions and have to weigh the politics which most people never have to consider.

 

[coppercapped]

Quite true.

Costs relate to combination of NR failures to deliver.

All problems fall to the Program Office for failure to adapt plans to change of circumstance; the buck stops with them - that is why they are paid so much.

But that's exactly what the 'Program Office' did. The increase in the electrical clearances mandated by the changed standards after the projects had started - for which the Programme Management cannot be responsible - made the electrification in many areas unaffordable.

So the Programme Management did it's job and stopped the work.

NR's Programme Management (its Infrastructure Projects division) has made many, many other expensive mistakes which have not contributed positively to the situation, but by all reports the clearance issues were not of NR's making. These issues lies squarely with the RSSB and the ORR - and I noticed that since the story broke both of these organisations have been very, very quiet on the matter.

 

[AndrewE]

This all illustrates the debate that we should be having about the competence of decision-making in the UK.

Once upon a time clever/able, long-serving - i.e. knowledgeable - and technically-competent civil servants advised their ministers of the pros and cons of decisions that had to be taken. They may have slanted their advice to steer the minister, but decisions were based on evidence. Then we had the advent of "Special advisors" whose role was to dream up some media-savvy headline-catching policy and the Minister then just told civil servants to implement it regardless of the wisdom of the change being made [or resign]. A colleague told me that he knew of a demand that "Policy-based evidence" be produced! (as opposed to our traditional development of Evidence-based Policy.)

Trickle-down from the presidential style of prime minister, if you ask me.

 

[PeterC]

I haven't worked for the government but I wouldn't be surprised if it suffers from the same failings as other large organisations. Here's a common IT scenario:

1) A director wants to implement a new IT system and guesses that it might cost £10m.

2) A working group puts a plan together and estimates that it's going to cost something like £50m.

3) The director throws a strop and demands that they figure out a way to reduce the cost to no more than £15m.

4) Under unrelenting pressure, the hapless project manager puts together a best-case "happy path" plan, in which everything goes perfectly, for an estimated cost of £20m.

5) The project is signed off. It ends up costing £50m, and somehow everyone is surprised and outraged.

Perhaps the railway is subject to the same sort of nonsense. In any event, I don't doubt that more deliberation is required but also more listening - yes, if you shout loudly enough you might eventually get the answer that you wanted, but only because you're incentivising people to lie to you.

Certainly seen that in the IT industry and have been pressurised to give unrealistically low estimates. I was dropped in the proverbial on my first IT job where the project manager moved on at the end of testing with a "success" on his CV leaving me to try and pick up the pieces.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Certainly seen that in the IT industry and have been pressurised to give unrealistically low estimates. I was dropped in the proverbial on my first IT job where the project manager moved on at the end of testing with a "success" on his CV leaving me to try and pick up the pieces.

Preceded by the salesman who put the bid together (and collected his bonus before it all went wrong).
Been there, done that.

The NR quarterly project milestone reports are master classes in salami slicing.
I don't envy the job of putting that together.
It's probably a good thing they don't report finances there as well.

 

[33Hz]

I believe that in Germany you cannot be a director of a company with any engineering activity (including computing, I wonder?) if you aren't Dipl Eng, roughly equivalent to Chartered Engineer, I think. If only...!

Look where that got Volkswagen Audi Group...

 

[YorkshireBear]

This all illustrates the debate that we should be having about the competence of decision-making in the UK.

Once upon a time clever/able, long-serving - i.e. knowledgeable - and technically-competent civil servants advised their ministers of the pros and cons of decisions that had to be taken. They may have slanted their advice to steer the minister, but decisions were based on evidence. Then we had the advent of "Special advisors" whose role was to dream up some media-savvy headline-catching policy and the Minister then just told civil servants to implement it regardless of the wisdom of the change being made [or resign]. A colleague told me that he knew of a demand that "Policy-based evidence" be produced! (as opposed to our traditional development of Evidence-based Policy.)

Trickle-down from the presidential style of prime minister, if you ask me.

Now we just base decisions on public will....

 

[AndrewE]

Now we just base decisions on public will....

I take it that comment was sarcastic... and most dogma-driven decisions are disasters in the longer term, and as someone [American] said, you can't lose money by underestimating the brain of the masses, or something like that. Oh for a politician with the spine to actually lead! - and maybe make it clear that for a referendum to be valid it has to either have a thumping great majority or more than 50% of eligable voters in favour.

 

[snowball]

as someone [American] said, you can't lose money by underestimating the brain of the masses, or something like that.

http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2011/09/no-one-ever-went-broke-underestimating.html

 

[snowball]

Once upon a time clever/able, long-serving - i.e. knowledgeable - and technically-competent civil servants advised their ministers of the pros and cons of decisions that had to be taken. They may have slanted their advice to steer the minister, but decisions were based on evidence. Then we had the advent of "Special advisors" whose role was to dream up some media-savvy headline-catching policy and the Minister then just told civil servants to implement it regardless of the wisdom of the change being made [or resign].

Wasn't it career civil servants who kept the DfT opposed to electrification for years on the grounds that bionic duckweed would take over?

The civil service seems to have a policy of rotating senior civil servants to another department every few years with the result that they can't become too knowledgable about one department. It would be interesting to know when that policy started.

 

[AndrewE]

http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2011/09/no-one-ever-went-broke-underestimating.html

Thanks for that, it was well worth reading in full. Now I know!

 

[AndrewE]

Wasn't it career civil servants who kept the DfT opposed to electrification for years on the grounds that bionic duckweed would take over?

The civil service seems to have a policy of rotating senior civil servants to another department every few years with the result that they can't become too knowledgable about one department. It would be interesting to know when that policy started.

I thought it was just the Treasury [civil servants] that had an implacable opposition to rail spending, and we do have to admit that a lot of public money has gone down the drain over more recent years. However the Modernisation Plan is irrelevant, as it was Govt direction to use lots of test-bed diesel locos and at that time the railways had no choice what traffic they carried. Also I don't see why the survival and financial performance of BR through the Thatcher years didn't get it a massive bonus!
The current structure is a botch to try to make the railway fit the dogma-driven politics of 20 years ago, and I guess too much money is being made on the sidelines for any politician to dare to do it differently. I'm considering moving to Scotland!

 

[coppercapped]

I thought it was just the Treasury [civil servants] that had an implacable opposition to rail spending, and we do have to admit that a lot of public money has gone down the drain over more recent years. However the Modernisation Plan is irrelevant, as it was Govt direction to use lots of test-bed diesel locos and at that time the railways had no choice what traffic they carried. Also I don't see why the survival and financial performance of BR through the Thatcher years didn't get it a massive bonus!
The current structure is a botch to try to make the railway fit the dogma-driven politics of 20 years ago, and I guess too much money is being made on the sidelines for any politician to dare to do it differently. I'm considering moving to Scotland!

I think you are mis-interpreting history. None of the books I have read, including Terry Gourvish's magisterial Business History, claims that the Government instructed BR to order lots of small diesel locomotives. Your posts are the first to suggest a link. Government in those days was not involved in the minutiae of railway operation, only that the deficit was increasing rapidly and something had to be done about it.

As the pilot scheme diesels were being designed and built at the time, and as one obvious way to reduce running costs was to get rid of the steam locomotives as quickly as possible, it was the British Transport Commission acting alone which made the decision to order more and in what power classes.

 

[northwichcat]

I haven't worked for the government but I wouldn't be surprised if it suffers from the same failings as other large organisations. Here's a common IT scenario:

1) A director wants to implement a new IT system and guesses that it might cost £10m.

2) A working group puts a plan together and estimates that it's going to cost something like £50m.

3) The director throws a strop and demands that they figure out a way to reduce the cost to no more than £15m.

4) Under unrelenting pressure, the hapless project manager puts together a best-case "happy path" plan, in which everything goes perfectly, for an estimated cost of £20m.

5) The project is signed off. It ends up costing £50m, and somehow everyone is surprised and outraged.

Perhaps the railway is subject to the same sort of nonsense. In any event, I don't doubt that more deliberation is required but also more listening - yes, if you shout loudly enough you might eventually get the answer that you wanted, but only because you're incentivising people to lie to you.

From my experience timescale also comes in to it. For example:

1. Managers wants completed product by September to replace existing product. Developers won't commit to finished product before Mid-November.

2. On 15th September developers have a product ready for beta testing. Managers launch product prior to proper testing to annoyance of developers because an unreleased product is not making them any money.

3. Company inundated with criticism about product. Managers criticise developers for spending so much time working on producing a product which is not better than the previous version.

 

[snowball]

Wasn't it career civil servants who kept the DfT opposed to electrification for years on the grounds that bionic duckweed would take over?

I thought it was just the Treasury [civil servants] that had an implacable opposition to rail spending, and we do have to admit that a lot of public money has gone down the drain over more recent years. However the Modernisation Plan is irrelevant, as it was Govt direction to use lots of test-bed diesel locos and at that time the railways had no choice what traffic they carried.

I was talking there about the 1990s-2000s rather than the Modernisation Plan.