Can someone explain to me why almost every procurement programme goes bottom up? It seems that since 1945 no one has been able to bring a project of any kind in on time and on budget.
A fallacy I'm afraid. But it is true senior staff do not want to learn from the successes. It has been suggested many times, but neither they nor Ministers will countenance it, as it draws attention to who failed and why.
There is often a huge difference between 'budget' and 'fair and reasonable cost'. I was once give £95M for an avionics job. That was OR's wet finger for one part of the programme, but they didn't understand that it was only about 30% of the task. (It would amaze you how often they ask for avionics, but don't think of actually fitting to an aircraft). The total cost was around £300M, and delivered what the Service needed, ahead of schedule. Was I over budget? Well, for a day or two until I did the Service HQ's job for them and made the case for the balance. The final cost was fair and reasonable for the work carried out.
As part of that job, the Service flatly refused to quantify the requirement. If it won''t quantify, how can it cost its requirement? The endorsement had a one-liner in the 'schedule of requirements' - 'To be determined by MoD(PE)'. Easy enough, but only if you've been a Requirements Manager when a sprog and held on to your copy of Permanent LTC/EP Instructions and can persuade someone to give you this year's A/B/C Sheets. No, you won't find more than a slack handful who know what these are, 'cos they're not used anymore. But without them you can't cost the job. And who signed the scrutiny to say that the columns added up to £95M, when they were blank? The rules say the project manager must declare planning blight in these circumstances, but if he did that every time nothing would be bought. So, work to rule and eliminate the black hole!