Well well, I wondered how long it would be before this thread was back!!
My personel view from being involved on the infrastructure side since the start (DiiA) - DiiF, Ive never seen such a flagrant waste of money. The award of the contract to EDS and then to Atlas has to go down as one of the biggest mismanagements of a contract that Ive seen in many years!! DiiC wasnt perfect but the management was far more cost effective.
For example: The idiot idea of employing one company to survey and do a design, spend in most cases 12 months (!!!) discussing it and going through various stages of sign off only to employ a totally different company to carry out the work. Problems, a) its become obvious to the installer that the design company often never visited the site or all the buildings and did the design off usually out of date drawings which didnt show any existing infrastructure so that 2nd company cant actually install to 12 month old and multi signed off design or b)the units that occupied said buildings 12months earlier have long gone and said design is now totally useless to new units (this happend many times particulary with Army barracks - dont you know theres a war on was the oft received comment! DiiC with an intagrated management\design\installation team from survey through sign off to start - max 12 weeks.
I have been stunned at some of the pre-start meetings. DiiC had an average of 8 (relavent)people - DiiF, well the first I attended had 18, the worst was an unbelievable 22 - mainly contractors all on between £150 - £400 a day and most of them couldnt make a decision to save their lives - it always had to be 'refered' - never mind it'll be another meeting - ie more dosh. I went to one site way up north, the job was worth say £x to my company to install it. To comply with the Atlas methodology of meetings and sign offs etc etc the cost of all the attendee's I worked out to be £x times 6.25!!!
I went to one army site where 2 years earlier a new DiiC duct system around the site was installed. The 'brilliant' Atlas design company gave me a design (signed off!!) that replicated 75% of the total existing route all for 2 cables!! When I queeried it I was told that I should mind my own business and that this was DiiF mate, as much new as possible!! In this case someone saw sense and stopped it, the 2 cables went in the DiiC duct BUT I know of many installation companies that would simply just put in duplicate duct systems, or new containment etc. Eventually MOD realised they were going to run out of money long before the Increment 2 work was to be complete. ALL TO LATE.
I could go on but I find it so depressing - in a nutshell, MOD had been taken for a ride by EDS and 'we' all paid a heavy price (we = military and taxpayer). A much earlier comment about how the contract was awarded was exactly right.