Hopefully lessons will be drawn from this for future projects, OK maybe not.
Any “lessons learnt” process depends on three things;
- The Post Project Evaluation report (or whatever they call it this week) is a collation of all the interim reports identifying lessons to be learnt, not just a single paper after the event.
- It is written by someone who actually experienced (and preferably anticipated) the problems/risks and successfully solved or mitigated them.
- “Management” has the will to implement recommendations, or give reasons why not.
MoD does none of this, not least because the PPE is (or was) only required 2 years after ISD, by which time the “procurement” officers are long gone and applying their skills (?) to new projects. I have written many PPEs, but not once has
anyone spoken to me, asked a question or even commented. Not once. The only acknowledgement I’ve ever had was one boss who threw a PPE back at me telling me, if I’m still in post in 2 years, try again – knowing very well that I wouldn’t be and neither would he. (Try forwarding a PPE to your old IPT 2 years after you’ve left, asking them to elevate it – they’d bin it). Funnily enough, that PPE mentioned Nimrod as a potential beneficiary.
The real lesson to be learnt is this. While Nimrod was slipping, other far more complex projects in the same Directorate General, with a fraction of Nimrod’s resource, were delivering ahead of schedule, to a better performance than requested and under “cost”. The Director’s reaction? “You are an embarrassment to the Department”. What he meant was, dumb down as your competence merely emphasises incompetence elsewhere. This is the ethos one should bear in mind when seeking reasons for other screw ups, like Chinook Mk3.