Why Do Major Rail Projects Go Over Budget?
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Rail Technology Magazine.
This is the sub-heading.
Experts from the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) will be questioned by the Transport Committee on their work advising the Government on planning major transport projects this week.
This is the introductory paragraph.
The cross-party Committee will ask witnesses, including NIC Chair Sir John Armitt, why infrastructure projects such as HS2 go over budget, how the Department for Transport can manage them more successfully, and the Government’s ability to learn from mistakes or from positive examples in other countries.
In my time, I have written a lot of project management software and it has generally sold well, especially in the fields of aerospace, construction, defence, oil & gas and vehicles. It has also sold well in Australia, France, Korea, Norway, The Netherlands and the United States.
In the UK, two major areas of Government ; rail and the NHS did not use any of my software, despite having large numbers of suitable projects, whereas nationalised companies like British Aerospace, British Leyland and Ferranti were big users. The Chevaline project, which was the refurbishment of the UK’s nuclear deterrent by the Callaghan Government also used my software.
I do find this split strange. A retired MP once told me, that it is traditional.
But Rail and the NHS always seem to get it wrong! Is it because, they are two government departments that deal a lot with the General Public?
On the other hand, the Inland Revenue seem to do better. But my planning software was used to plan the move to Telford!
Perhaps, there is a lot less traditional thinking in the Inland Revenue.
The Anonymous Widower 
As a mining engineer who has been involved in many projects, here is a short list:-
HS2 was built as a ‘design and build’ contract with a ‘cost plus payment’. This means in practice the contractors can build any thing they like using the cheapest materials, charge what ever they like and maximize their profit. By the way the aim any company is to maximize profit. I have not seen on site any project engineers or clerk of works employed by HS2 or Network Rail to maintain standards.
Does HS2 Ltd. even have a cost schedule?
The Treasury thought that spreading out the project would save money!!. Like most things time is money, if nothing else the extra time means extra cost of overheads (the biggest being HS2 management).
The idea of terminating trains at Old Oak Comman with only 4 platforms thus reducing the number of trains to possibly 4 per hour instead of 17 was total stupidity.
For comparison how long did it take to construct the original London to Birmingham railway?
Comment by Ben Oldfield | January 13, 2025 |
Thanks! Were any of your projects managed by Artemis, which I wrote?
Over the years, I must have met well upwards of a dozen project managers, who used the software and spoke of it with affection. Admittedly, several were from British Aerospace and British Leyland, which were early customers, where we put in a lot of effort.
Comment by AnonW | January 13, 2025 |
Have to say when i was in BR i managed numerous small projects without software successfully and to budget. I was then involved on the ECML electrification and that was my first exposure to the dedicated BR Projects organisation who did have some software support which was being run on the mainframe system but can’t recollect whose it was. Again that huge project delivered to schedule and cost. When we moved into Railtrack we were then exposed to or in reality had imposed upon us the so called cost and planning consultants on juicy day rates and a software package called Primavera Project Planner. This is where the rot set in and before long we had a whole organisation growing up to feed the machine and the judgement of us engineers was no longer trusted. The consultants saw easy pickings and before we knew it there more add on roles than engineers on the project like Risk Mgrs, Value Engineers, Environmental specialists. Every project was treated like as though it was a multi year >100m so the overheads started going through the roof and delivery wasn’t improved if anything it went backwards and so did cost.
Comment by Nicholas Lewis | January 13, 2025 |
I’ve heard numerous silly tales of small projects being turned into large ones by unnecessary rules.
I used to know a planner from Taylor Wimpey, who said that for some house designs, they had as many as twenty different designs because different councils wanted different designs.
Comment by AnonW | January 13, 2025 |