I agree it is annoying when people talk of overspends. In my experience the two most common issues are:
- Failure on the part of the Service to quantify the requirement. To cost, one must first quantify. On one of my last projects before retiring, the Service (Army) actually articulated the technical requirement very well. They’d costed the unit cost accurately, at £xM. I was given £xM. But the “requirement” spoke of multiple users so I asked “How many do you want?”. “20”. One of the programme elements was a 9 month development task, yet the required ISD was 3 weeks after approval. By the time I added in little things like systems integration, training, spares, demonstrating it actually worked, vehicles to hump it around, buildings, etc. the actual endorsed funding was about 2% of the fair and reasonable cost. Yet it got through every level of so-called scrutiny (and given the requirement, CDS would have been tea boy at the approval meeting, which is why we were kept out of it until after approval); but of course we were to blame.
- Resourcing projects or programmes to cost, not content. The RN once had an aircraft programme that was just under the Cat A limit of £400M. Had it succeeded in getting one more aircraft upgraded, it would have been over £400M and the job would have been afforded a honking great team. As it was under, it was allocated as a minor task. The extra aircraft would have made no difference to workload, the only difference being an extra cab fed in to Fleetlands for conversion, long after the procurer’s job was finished. This failure to differentiate between volume and non-volume related tasks is common.
I agree with most of what is said, but a couple of the examples chosen are poor. The reasons why Nimrod failed, and Chinook Mk3 was delayed for 10 years, were well known, and advised to senior staff – Nimrod in 1995, Chinook a year or so later after the job was split Mk2/Mk3. 20/20 hindsight doesn’t apply when MoD’s own auditors, and the RAF’s Director of Flight Safety, have flagged the precise problems years before the programmes were approved. And then the latter again, in 1997/8. And one must always bear in mind the role of the Chief Scientific Advisor, who advises the Chief of Defence Procurement on technical risk. Any inquiry should start with what this advice said and, if different to the advice from MoD(PE) and RAF engineers, why did CDP heed CSA?
I’ve never known anyone in procurement set out to screw up. But I’ve known plenty who were told they were about to screw up, but hubris made them carry on. I’d say Nimrod and Chinook are classic examples, and the people who had to deal with the fallout have been castigated ever since, when one should be looking a little farther back in time at those charged with management oversight and scrutiny.