As part of one of the companies involved with installing the basic cabing infrastructure I can only agree with so many of the comments especially Post 30 which did bring a smile to my face as it appears to be so true (Points 2, 4 & 6). Ive been involved with Dii for many years especially DiiC which whilst it may not of been perfect but in comparrison to F ran like a well oiled machine.
Some of the main differences Ive noticed;
1) From Design survey to actual start on site - DiiF between 12 and 18months - DiiC between 8 and 12 weeks
2) Our pre start meetings - DiiF, 18 people in attendance for a job of 38 TAPs and fibre links to 9 buildings - DiiC, 6 people (Bare in mind that a number of these 'representatives' are on between £250-£400 a day so quite an expensive meeting - one meeting I went to the job was worth in total to us a quarter of the cost of all the people who turned up to look at it!!!).
3) The DiiF idea of using one company to do the design and then asking a totally seperate company to do the installation (some 18 months later!) has proved to me to be a foolhardy one and one that untill only very recently has one of the main companies attempted to correct as a trial on one site. The delays and additional costs attached to this novel way of working has been very expensive to say the least. Note that the terminals, screens, printers etc are delivered and installed by a third group. DiiC one company co-ordinated all three aspects of the deliverables.
4) In the early days of F I attended pre-site starts where the Design Company was trying to convince us that it made sense (Value for Money!) to install a new pit and duct system to run in parrallel with one that we installed in DiiC 2 years earlier as 'it wasnt good enough for F'. As the money has run out these bizzare comments have almost disappeared.
I wont bore you people out there with other novel ideas that have sprung up with F but if you think your getting less for you ££££'s take it from me - you are. Dont think that the installers are raking it in either, so many have dropped out as they cannot make any money - I would look at the main managing company. Based on the performance of F should they have been awarded the contract over the managing company of C hmmm???