I did go through the Bowe report, if not thoroughly, to see what it contributes. As expected, it is primarily about the management and inter-departmental aspects of the
CP5▸ programmes, and as such may be a useful guide to
DfT» . It obviously excludes all engineering aspects of the work, but even so it rather misses the point about how Network rail got into its hole.
For one thing is considers the whole of CP5, and does not really concentrate on the areas that went wrong. It does find some relevant programme issues, for example:
Governance and Programme Management
4.39 Scheme immaturity should not of itself result in cost escalation and delays to the
programme. But the lack of definition of schemes is symptomatic in my view of the
shortcomings in the project, programme and portfolio management practices followed by
both Network Rail and to a lesser extent by the Department. These include, in planning:
^ unclear scope definition, coupled with inconsistent change management. The
Review has found evidence that scope changes were not always managed though
formal processes, leading to scope creep, a cause of some of the cost escalation
(and identified by Network Rail in its SBP as responsible for the majority of a ^300m
increase in costs on Great Western between the HLOS▸ and the SBP, see illustrative
example 2);
^ inconsistent assurance of project management products, as reflected in the poor
cost estimates used at Final Determination;
^ inconsistent understanding, management and in particular escalation of risk; and
^ the failure to recognise the full impact of schemes and to integrate projects into
programmes.
But she does not go any further into the management practices that allowed such misleading estimates to be shown to the DfT and
ORR» . That last point is about inter-project interactions, like the
GW▸ electrification and the resignalling that is not being all done first, but extending to much bigger combinations of infrastructure, rolling stock, and franchising into "programmes".
It is true that Great Western Route Modernisation is used as an example, but its treatment is very brief. It ends with:
There was no effective mechanism for risks to be identified and escalated within Network Rail or the Department until a cross-industry programme board was instituted in early 2015.
If that's true, it's staggering for any engineering organisation, not just in this century. I suspect, however, that some project management methods, standard or not, were used to handle risk and uncertainty within
NR» . I could believe that, if those didn't match the way senior management felt they had to deal with the DfT, risk and uncertainty information might get "lost". But I might be wrong about that - and it would have been interesting to find out.
She also finds the reclassification to be very relevant, in that it removed NR's ability to borrow to fund overspends and worry about where the corresponding income would come from later. But nationalised industries used to be able to borrow - it's a matter of how they are directed by the department, not that status per se. And while averaging under- and overspends across a control period should work OK, does she really imagine there will be enough underspends to cover a ^2Bn hole? So being able to borrow to fund the overspend would (1) leave a future funding problem, and (2) not speed up delivery significantly. None of which issues are examined.
