Not so good at meeting our deadlines?

[whole diary]

[grahame]

From Rail Magazine - a sidebar on the article about delayed fleet changes on the Gospel Oak to Barking line.

Of the 11 operators introducing new trains this year, six were due to put them into traffic last year.

We might be very good at lots of engineering stuff in this country, but we don't seem very good at meeting deadlines, do we?  Why is this?

[Dispatch Box]

From Rail Magazine - a sidebar on the article about delayed fleet changes on the Gospel Oak to Barking line.

Of the 11 operators introducing new trains this year, six were due to put them into traffic last year.

We might be very good at lots of engineering stuff in this country, but we don't seem very good at meeting deadlines, do we?  Why is this?

Waiting for the outcome of Brexit, I feel it has got everyone fed up by now.

[stuving]

From Rail Magazine - a sidebar on the article about delayed fleet changes on the Gospel Oak to Barking line.

Of the 11 operators introducing new trains this year, six were due to put them into traffic last year.

We might be very good at lots of engineering stuff in this country, but we don't seem very good at meeting deadlines, do we?  Why is this?

There may be big answers to what is one of today's big questions. But one smaller answer is to ask whether we are very good - too good - at shortening deadlines until they can't be met. The reason for that is to cut budgets, since in projects time and money are very nearly the same thing. It's a kind of Peter Principle thing - or an inverse Parkinson, perhaps - budgets (and timescales) are pruned until even a politician doesn't believe them.

But there's a secondary reason for wanting to trim back timescales, which is that they do seem to be so very long as originally proposed. OK, noone should be surprised that the original plan is more realistic than the shortened one, but still...

[Rhydgaled]

ask whether we are very good - too good - at shortening deadlines until they can't be met. The reason for that is to cut budgets, since in projects time and money are very nearly the same thing.

But what about the old adage that you must pick two from the following three things: do it well, do it fast, do it cheap? In other words, if you want something done well but want to reduce the budget, you need to take it slowly.

[Noggin]

From Rail Magazine - a sidebar on the article about delayed fleet changes on the Gospel Oak to Barking line.

Of the 11 operators introducing new trains this year, six were due to put them into traffic last year.

We might be very good at lots of engineering stuff in this country, but we don't seem very good at meeting deadlines, do we?  Why is this?

It's not just us. Off the top of my head there's an order from Bombardier for SBB that is years late, then there's the mess that Ansaldo made for trains for both NS/SNCB and DSB, and I seem to recall a number of cases where locos/units that could run quite happily elsewhere talking a while to get approved for use in certain countries.