HS2 price increase

[macafee2]

How can this be?
Surly companies bid to do the job for a price?
If the price is allowed to go up and up then there is no incentive to get the price right in the first place.

With so many unemployed and in prison don't we have a workforce?
Chain gangs and working for your unemployment money? We also have those that have to do community service.

Is bidding below the actual price a deliberate ploy, are back handers being taken?

macafee2

[Snetty]

Originally Posted by macafee2

How can this be?

Is bidding below the actual price a deliberate ploy, are back handers being taken?

macafee2

Without a doubt, yes

[topman]

Its all the faffing about and delays that drive up the cost. People love changing their minds, all drives costs one way!

[steve-45]

Originally Posted by topman

Its all the faffing about and delays that drive up the cost. People love changing their minds, all drives costs one way!

Could not agree more. With the mega queues at the Dartford crossing yesterday we are still holding yet more enquires as to if we need another crossing and where it should be sited.

Went to an exhibition a couple of years ago and was told build time would be about 5 years from project go ahead.

So we are looking at 2024 if they start this year.

[Rev Jules]

Originally Posted by steve-45

Could not agree more. With the mega queues at the Dartford crossing yesterday we are still holding yet more enquires as to if we need another crossing and where it should be sited.

Went to an exhibition a couple of years ago and was told build time would be about 5 years from project go ahead.

So we are looking at 2024 if they start this year.

If the Dartford crossing is computerised, meaning either pay up front, or pay within 24 hours, so why is there mega holdups.

Rev

[Les4048]

Like that wasn’t a dot on the cards. Every major undertaking is now over budget or behind time. Should have clauses built in to stop all this

[steve-45]

Originally Posted by Rev Jules

If the Dartford crossing is computerised, meaning either pay up front, or pay within 24 hours, so why is there mega holdups.

Rev

There always seems to be a queue for the tunnels - a total of 4 lanes, but the bridge which is also 4 lanes rarely seems to have a queue.

Even though both directions have a 50 MPH speed limit, the speed through the tunnels is normally nearer 30 MPH.

Maybe this is what contributes to the normal north bound queues ?

[grivas]

Originally Posted by macafee2

How can this be?
Surly companies bid to do the job for a price?
If the price is allowed to go up and up then there is no incentive to get the price right in the first place.

With so many unemployed and in prison don't we have a workforce?
Chain gangs and working for your unemployment money? We also have those that have to do community service.

Is bidding below the actual price a deliberate ploy, are back handers being taken?

macafee2

A white elephant to serve as a reminder of how our democratically elected politicians waste our hard earned cash, they should all be horse whipped ( oops, that should read all be given knighthoods) for outstanding contribution in public office. If you want to build a railway look to countries who can actually build a railway, and have a proven record of delivering a working system on budget and on time, that means outside the UK. Oh by the way you actually need engineers to build this things not prisoners etc...since we no longer value engineers in the UK preferring instead shopkeepers and bankers then why are people surprised when things go pear-shaped.

[MSS]

Originally Posted by macafee2

How can this be?
Surly companies bid to do the job for a price?
If the price is allowed to go up and up then there is no incentive to get the price right in the first place.

With so many unemployed and in prison don't we have a workforce?
Chain gangs and working for your unemployment money? We also have those that have to do community service.

Is bidding below the actual price a deliberate ploy, are back handers being taken?

macafee2

I am going to break my self-imposed withdrawal from this forum section in order to give the answer that your question, the basis of which is fundamentally flawed IMHO, deserves.

Firstly, whether a company bids a price/timescale against a requirement is dependent on the basis of the contract. It is all to do with uncertainty and risk and where the associated impacts are to be absorbed contractually. To use the terminology of a famous American, all major programmes have known knowns, known unknowns and unkown unknowns. These define the risk profile of the programme. Fixed price contracts can only really deal with the known knowns as the timescale and cost of these can be estimated with a degree of certainty. The timescales and costs associated with the other two categories cannot be estimated for obvious reasons. If a bid process requires fixed-price and timescale bids, the bidders have no option but to include maximally pessimistic timescales and prices in their bids for the unknowns thus making the whole process unviable.

HS2 is following best practice for large programmes in that there is the government's high-level estimate of the likely overall cost but individual contracts are placed as the unknowns turn into knowns. As this happens, the overall high-level estimate is regularly updated. I can guarantee that the estimates will change again many times before the HS2 programme is completed.

Had a single fixed price/timescale HS2 contract been placed at the outset, I would guess that the estimated cost would have been 2-3 times the current estimate in order for the bidders to manage the cost of the unknowns. Fixed price/timescale contracts just do not work for large/complex programmes.

Let's deal with some of the points that have come up in response to the OP.

1. Changing requirements - a major programme is unlikely to produce a useful outcome unless its requirements evolved (under strict change control) during the course of the programme. Take the requirements for the self-protection platforms on a new warship design. This would probably be a programme of circa 10-year duration but no one really knows in detail the offensive capabilities that the Russians and the Chinese will be fielding on their anti-ship weapons in 2-3 years time let alone when the ship build is nearly complete 10 years down the line. The requirements have to evolve as time progresses. The maturity of a programme's leadeship framework is best indicated by how it manages changes to requirements.

2. MOD programmes and associated over-charging. Let's take the example of the water-proof switch that has been cited. A switch offering this capability from a DIY chain and costing £5 carries the risk that if faulty a house could burn down and perhaps 1 or 2 occupants die. Cost of the house say £250k plus the claim for the occupants. If a ship catches fire whilst out at sea, the cost could be £1billion plus say 100 deaths. The testing and qualification that such a switch would undergo before being fitted in a ship and the post-fitting qualification would take weeks of work. Then there is the cost of teh associated insurance to cover the risk should the worst occur. You can hopefully see a picture emerging.

This is similar to purchasing a SMPS for the processor element of a core node in a telecomms network. For a home PC, the cost of the SMPS would be £50 to £100 depending on the spec. For a core node, it would be £5k to £10k. It's all to do with the impact of failure and associated cost - imagine even a broadband edge node going down during the Olympics due to SMP failure.

3. Whether the UK needs programmes such as HS2 - I would say we need more of these mega programmes in order to put the population to productive work instead of paying large percentage of the population for being on the dole or worse still becoming professional critics.

The UK runs all its major government programmes in accordance with the government's (formerly championed by OGC) MSP methodology. This is good enough that it is used on most non-government infrastructure programmes e.g. UK's major telecomms infrastructure programmes and has been adopted across the world. I would recommend a read of the MSP manual to gain appreciation of best practice in estimation strategies for major programmes etc. Better still, get trained and then take the exams and years of programme delivery to become an accredited practitioner (like moi ).

Link to methodology publications. https://www.gov.uk/government/public...nment-commerce

IMO our problems are not with perceived cost overruns and delays (they are actually updates to estimates) to major programmes, but the perceptions created by armchair experts who critique and criticise everything without having an in-depth understanding of anything of practical value.

Finally, here is a list of some major programmes that were considered by the critics and auditors to be over budget, delayed and representing poor value for money.

F15 fighter

B1 Bomber

Sukhoi Su27/30/35 fighter

AMRAAM missile

Eurofighter

They have all gone on to achieve "best in world" and "most effective weapon of its type and time" status.

[macafee2]

mss, you spent a lot of time on that

how many job are unfulfilled and how may eligible people are on the "dole"
You think all these projects will clear the dole queue, lol, no it wont.
Where do you get the money from to keep financing these projects?


macafee2