we can’t deny that Hitachi have ripped off the Government and by extension the taxpayer with this contract.
Not sure it’s that simple
The government agreed terms with hitatchi, without anyone holding a gun to anyone’s head
The Government (aka Network Rail) ‘a problems delivering the pledged CP5 electrification commitments meant that the Government had to seek new terms (more running on diesel etc)
It’s the same with many tales of public sector procurement - you have a budget to deliver so much but the goalposts move and you find there are other things that are desirable to include, or that become necessary)
In hindsight it seems obvious that you need to get platform layouts / signalling etc resolved before it’s worth sticking wires up, because otherwise you’re creating further problems (and the need to take down wires to adjust platforms makes everything more expensive again)
However, for whatever reason, we rushed into trying to deliver everything without understanding what that’d cost (seems to be entirely between various bits of public sector from what I can see, Network Rail/ DfT/ Treasury etc), burned through the budget and kept going, then acted surprised when other posts of the government decided that the overspend meant there was no money for things like the MML electrification and “paused” / cancelled then
I think that most firms would have done what Hitachi did, given the way that the government needed them to deliver a lot more than the initial specification had insisted on
The lessons to learn are that:
You need to be very clear from the start about what is in scope/ out of scope (because once a project starts, there’s always someone wanting to expand the remit, in the way that a plumber might be called out to fix a leaking kitchen tap but once they are in the house the homeowner tries to get them to look into a problem flushing the toilet…) - you need to be clear about what you are demanding beforehand
You therefore need to review things before contractors put their boots on. Otherwise you’ll be surprised by ground conditions/ flood defences/ the crumbling walls inside a tunnel/ how poor the record keeping was last time the line was renewed. These problems become much more complicated to “fix” part way through a project (because they weren’t budgeted for)
Be honest about the set up costs that you need to cover. IET liked a horribly expensive project, but once the innovation costs had been paid for, it’s enabled Hitatchi to win contracts for hundreds of carriages of 802/ 803/ 805/ 807/ 810s, beyond the initial delivery of 800/801s promised. So it looks like a good product, but one where the development costs for a 125mph electric train that could also do 100mph on diesel mode needed to be paid for by someone in order to make it happen. Whereas the high costs of the New Bus 4 London (aka “Borismaster”) seems a bit off a disaster because only TfL have ordered them, and the high capacity urban vehicles don’t look attractive for routes in other big cities.
