"Broken" MoD Procurement "wasting billions"
 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...ystem-mps-warn

https://www.ft.com/content/98b5e193-...8-cc98c20542ac

this isn't news - it's a constant issue that we kick around on here year after year :(

The paper referenced.

https://publications.parliament.uk/p...5/summary.html

Improving the performance of major defence equipment contracts

…..In 13 of the 20 programmes examined by the NAO, our armed forces must tolerate cumulative forecast net delays of 254 months—or 21 years—for equipment entering service against initial expectations.

The Department talked about the systemic challenges and complexities in defence equipment acquisition. It told us that the majority of the delays resulted from the A400M, Warrior and Marshall programmes, while the position on other programmes is mixed. However, three programmes reported forecast delays of over two years, including Crowsnest which is a key enabler for the Department’s Carrier Strike capability.

The NAO report also details a number of examples where the Department or its suppliers failed to adequately appreciate the degree of technical complexity involved in delivering the capabilities. These examples include the Warrior armoured vehicle upgrade, the Ajax armoured vehicle (outlined below), A400M transport aircraft, Marshall air traffic management system, Spearfish torpedo upgrade, Morpheus and the Crowsnest radar system….

Senior Responsible Owners

23. Senior responsible owners (SROs) have responsibility for ensuring a programme meets its objectives. SROs oversee governance of programmes and steer them through key decision points, assisted by a delivery team. The NAO’s analysis showed that the median time in post for an SRO was 22 months, against median programme length of 77 months, reflecting the career path requirements of the senior officers who fill most SRO roles.

A recent departmental survey found that many SROs did not feel empowered to carry out their roles, while some felt least competent in areas important to the effective management of suppliers.54 We asked the Department what it is doing to ensure that the role of SRO becomes an important part of the CV for military officers. The Department claims it has a good record of putting SROs through Major Projects Leadership Academy training, but some of its own survey respondents reported difficulty in accessing it.

The Department was non-committal on the actions it plans to take, but said that it is looking at personnel policy to ensure project and programme delivery are recognised as military trades in their own right. It also aspires to ensure that SROs spend at least 50% of their time on programmes and said it has experience of some personnel staying on programmes for longer than a traditional military appointment (‘double touring’).

We also asked whether, for military SROs, the Department had thought about moving towards a model whereby the SRO stays in post throughout the term of a particular contract, and promotion is dependent on the successful delivery of that contract. The Department said it had experience of “double-touring” people to get longer terms in office, and that there were examples where it would be happy to see military SROs promoted ‘in-role’ as a programme progressed.

It said that it was having a “range of conversations about unified career management and what that might mean” but would need to come back to us on linking performance to promotion….

Well RW MFTS lasted 3 years before they started throwing millions more at it as the initial contract wasn't hitting the spot.

Is this a problem of VSOs selected on their ability to get their syndicate across the shark infested custard using planks and barrels at 19 years of age, making multi billion pound contract agreements with little business acumen or training? Or maybe the problem is with their advisory panels, a culture of afraid to say no perhaps? Maybe even the 2 years and gone posting cycles leaving an A4 page or two of handover notes for the next incumbent who has come from a completely different AOR?

'trim it out'. I'd suggest your last point is very relevant. A two year duty cycle is far too short in the modern world and needs addressing., especially at these senior levels. Actually, given the small size and structure of the RAF today, I suspect the two year tour idea should be altered in favour of a significantly longer cycle.

I suspect that your first point is also relevant' are VSOs given enough training in project management? Really, this is where the senior engineers should be. Just because someone was good at flying and leading a unit, he/she will not necessarily have developed the skills or interests to direct an expensive long term project well. Not without lots of extra training & experience. The senior operational folk can proved worthwhile advice from their backgrounds.

Unfortunately the Civil Service has a poor record in project management too; they really don't understand money or scope definition and contract specification well. .

Wasn't like this in the 80s. Oh, wait...

CG

My company bid for various sections a multi-disciplinary framework contract with MoD a few years ago - we'd been providing most lots we bid for for years. We didn't expect to get everything we targeted but were staggered not to be one of the successful suppliers for a particular aspect - so were the people who supervised the contracts for that aspect and who had no part in the bid selection process. I can't recall the specifics but there had been some serious errors in marking the bids so the entire process was re-run. Second time lucky for us on the aspect we had expected. I know it cost us umpteen man hours lost to re-bid even though most of the donkey work had been done already; what did it cost the tax payer? Not a lot in the grand scheme of things but how often does this stuff happen?

Biscuit
 

I’m genuinely interested in your statement that it should be senior engineers making the decisions and running projects.

If pilots and civil servants (by your own admission) are no good at it, what would make an engineer so much better?

This might sound like I’m being precious but I’m curious.

The projects the report is talking about are things such as F35, Typhoon, T45, QNLZ, Ajax etc.

How would a military engineer be any better?

I know it’s currently fashionable to bad mouth the aircrew fraternity and attempt to challenge their hegemony at any opportunity, but to state that engineers could do a better job is going to take a bit of explaining!

I’m all ears.

BV

I think you'll find that the civil servants involved in procurement projects are generally paid up members of the Association of Project Management (APM) and as such are required to evidence continuous professional development. The problem occurs with the VSO revolving door churning out new incumbents every 24 months. The new kid on the block barely gets up to speed before the door revolves again. Those same VSO's are generally not members of the APM but rather make decisions behind closed doors based on service loyalty and dare I say it.... under the table agendas and wish lists.
It's easy to hit the civil service with all the procurement problems, particularly where the public image is that of bowler hatted Sir Humphreys. The problem rests with the constantly changing VSO's, each with their own agenda and no commercial nous, but each capable of overruling decisions made by professional project managers employed within the Civil Service.

Own worst enemy
 

So - Leonardo have been pushing an O&G machine painted black and calling it a mil-spec helicopter - that has yet to start out on the military specification journey and only meets 50% of KURs required by Army. The price will be eye-watering for a basic airframe and long-term costs will no doubt be significantly higher and designed to extract the pi55.
Political blackmail raises its ugly head and we end up ordering brand new helicopters for a ‘stop-gap’ measure that will be over before they are up-to-speed - with the promise of an overseas company pumping billions into SW of England which, if previous history repeats itself, will never arrive.
all the while there is the option of purchasing updated ‘pre-loved’ alternative that is battle proven, out performs the new guys, half the price and can be produced in UK - and we still wonder why procurement is in a state??

The report is barely worth the paper it is written on.

Take Crowsnest. Why did they not ask why its predecessor was delivered ahead of time, under cost, and to an infinitely better spec than the RN asked for - so why was that procurement model not used again on this lesser programme?

Was the committee told that the benchmark set by the predecessor was deemed an 'embarrassment to the department' (because it set the bar too high), and the above suggestion dismissed at 2/3/4 Star, PUS, and ministerial levels?

The Australian Black Hawks (assuming those are the "pre loved" helicopters you're referring to) won't make it through to the arrival of whatever NGRC/FVL happens to be in the 2040 timeframe anymore than the current Pumas will.

The whole point of NMH is to bridge that gap , and so a 'new' type is needed. Better to adapt an already existing design (be it the AW149 or H175) with UK kit (and so preserve/create UK jobs) than to reinvent the wheel by designing from scratch an entirely new type.

Either that or we gap the medium lift helicopter capability.

Everyone on the previous project team was probably posted by then and lessons identified lost into the wider Fleet/civilian sector :E

On the subject of project management, not sure what the CTW is pushing these days but LinkedIn provides some amusement when I see former colleagues calling themselves "PM"s after completing APMP online and listing previous "projects" like organising a function or force development event in their portfolio.

It's primarily because in an engineering project that involves design and build of engineering artefacts, engineers tend to have a better idea of what, when and where technical risks may arise in a programme - and what may be required to mitigate them. It's not a slur on the operators - quite possible that many "military engineers" will have little or no experience in design and build (as opposed to maintain and support, which are different things) and would be equally unsuitable. Programme and commercial risks are also sometimes best left away from engineers as well! Which is why good Engineering Project Management is one of the most difficult skills to accrue and involves gaining enough scars to know when you're about to get into difficulty, in time to avoid it.

You wouldn't ask an engineer how to employ/operate a system in combat. Why would you ask an operator how to engineer a system in a design/production environment?

It's primarily this.

The bit in bold refers to the inability to vary finances year by year - which we all know leads to completely nugatory reprogramming of funds in year to hit control totals, while slipping projects to meet the annual spend profile. None of which SRO are able to affect (as far as I'm aware).

APMP/project management/time/cost/spec as a deliverable, should be overseen by a competent and capable, trained individual who has ACCOUNTABILITY throughout the cycle. Some aspects of RESPONSIBILITY can, and must be delegated to Team Leaders, to manage. The difference I was always taught, was that Responsibility may be delegated, Accountability cannot.

TIO

Worse. They were told, at interview, that their experience on AEW Mk7 was completely irrelevant to (at the time) FOAEW and then MASC.

Related to your second excellent point, they were also told that having managed 125 projects or programmes, in every phase, across Air, Land and Sea, and all to at least time, cost and performance, was 'inexperienced'. It is unclear how many in MoD today (or even then), at any grade or rank, meet that criteria.

NaB is on the money. Literally: the fundamental problem is the mismatch between aspiration and resource. When the effects of international and industrial strategies (or political interference, if you prefer) are added, the SROs are effectively reduced to managing failure in either cost, time or performance amidst undeliverable constraints handed them by the ministry. Programmes hardly ever get cut entirely thanks to the power of industrial lobbying. And if it ever looks like a programme is doing well, its resource gets taken away, either to bail out failing programmes or to increase the overall Departmental aspiration yet further. Who could blame SROs for wanting out of such a toxic mess? Frankly I'm surprised the average is as long as 22 months.

Thank you 'Not_a_Boffin', that answer to 'Bob Viking' nicely encapsulates my thoughts - arguably, better than I'd have expressed them.

That later part of your answer is, I think, a major issue. To be fair to (some) civil servants, that lack of real control of variation of finances also concerns many of them; the impression I have is that the Treasury has a very limited and restricted view of finance, which inhibits a lot of things.

'Bob Viking'; I was not intending to cast aspersions at aircrew, junior or senior. I know, like and admire the flying skills of quite a few of those, both currently serving and retired. It was simply that running a major project is not, typically, the same as running an operational unit. Quite different challenges, which may not necessarily be readily realised, nor the necessary skills assimilated. (It may also not be a cost effective way of using the experience and skills of those officers! )

Both 'reds and greens' and 'Easy Street' make darn good points. Ideally a capable competent individual should oversee the whole thing, from start to finish. The ultimate 'leadership' role may be held elsewhere, but unless sufficient authority is delegated to permit continuous adequate resources to be maintained, it's a poisoned chalice. Needs clear authorisation backed up at the highest (political?) level and a very strong character!

There are some excellent "subject matter experts" present and correct on this thread, and I would not dream of wading in with my miniscule subject knowledge in their area of expertise....however!

I know what I saw and I know what I heard and my memory is crystal. So you can take this to the bank.

I flew my entire RAF career in in an aircraft at the heart of not one, but two monumental procurement SNAFUs. The first one I was mere bystander...I'll not pointificate on it, but I'm fairly sure the resulting NAO report was blunt and led to a review of MOD procurement...other's will know more and can illuminate.

Humour inject...I recall at the time (in my native "knocker" wit) asking a VSO if Nimrod AEW stood for, "Nimrod, Airborne Elephant, White!)

On the second Nimrod SNAFU I was no bystander. And I am well aware that programme has it loyal supporters here (to this day). But nobody should ever be under any illusion that there were not plenty of serving aircrew of all categories, and heaps of engineers too, that called it out at the time (back then it was Nimrod 2000...lol). The airframe was glaringly deficient in any number of ways (internal capacity was way too small for starters) and there is absolutley **** all hindisght here...plenty of us predicted it would be a SNAFU from the get go and some of us...yep yours truly...had to do the soft shoe shuffle on the Staish's rug for expressing our views too forcibly.

When you make a dumb as **** decision on day one, the rest of it don't matter too much, the tax payers gonna pay.

I could give you more, but then I'd be ranting. What is written above is not a rant.

It's history.

Biscuit
 

I am almost certainly not au fait enough with the process but I’m still not getting it.

If we take the A400 programme for instance where does either a senior RAF engineering officer or pilot get involved anyway? And how would one be deemed to be better than the other?

The RAF guys don’t build or design it. They just state the requirements and oversee the entry to service surely?

When we are talking about this, how is the engineer better suited?

I’m sure I’m missing some fundamental details but I’m happy to be educated.

BV

All true. But the problem is also that no committee (PAC, HCDC, etc.) ever takes the next step, setting out what's meant to happen, and what actually happens.

Who has the aspirations, and who makes materiel and financial provision (the resource)? And what is the mechanism by which they speak to each other, and produce a viable equipment programme (or whatever it's called this week)?

It may surprise some that both are Service jobs. Nothing to do with procurers, who are given the output. Importantly, if you have not done at least one of these jobs (as a civilian or serviceman) BEFORE being promoted to the most junior grade in procurement, you are at a distinct disadvantage. This is the answer to the question I posed above on ASaC Mk7. The PM had done both jobs many years before as a sprog, and was able to cope with the RN's HQ withdrawing all support from the programme, and around 60% of it being unendorsed or funded. (Think about that). The pivotal point in the programme was DOR(Sea) inviting the PM to act as RN Customer 2, with authority to speak for the RN, and state its requirement.

So, the system can work, but you need to avoid parachuting people into unfamiliar posts based on their rank or status. Chinook Mk3 is a good example. Nimrod MRA4 was slightly different. The correct people were there, they were just ignored, as rank can never be wrong. And there is a tendency to forget that a civilian engineering project manager is required to be able to do EVERY job in the team, but this is not applied to servicemen or non-engineers. Again, there is a disconnect between this rule and reality, with the ASaC job perhaps being the last example on a major programme.

Having accepted the evidence of all this, Mr Haddon-Cave's recommendations were excellent, although mostly mandated policy anyway. One day MoD will get round to implementing them, but not soon.

I would suggest that if you have service personnel having longer than the usual 2 year tours, you would find a lot of PVRs as that’s not really why they joined up. A longer time in post is almost certainly what is needed though.

As is proper specifications in the first place. Many a time I’ve been evolved in projects where the customer has wanted ‘something’ but we’re not quite sure as to what and left the supplier to spec it because they are the experts. What happens then, is one company gives them exactly what they need and the other company offers something considerably cheaper but exclude most of the things required (BAES?). They get the contact as it’s perceived ‘best value’ knowing full well that they will bump up the price when the excluded is included.

Worse is that they end up providing the finished product at a much higher price than the original company that offered it all up front and much much later.

I find that surprising. Single personnel early in their career maybe, but once people start a family a longer tour length is less stressful. I left my PC at my 38/16 option point because my family life had become extremely difficult. A major factor was uncertainty caused by constantly changing short tour lengths….but also because on three occasions I was told how my career for the next few years was going to run, only for it to be changed again at very short notice, more than once to the benefit of others who seemed to live a charmed life when it came to preferential postings.

'Bob Viking' - I was thinking more of aeronautical design engineers and production engineers, supervising from a project engineering/management perspective. RAF engineering officers are more oriented towards maintaining the operational equipment, not generally towards design. Of course good design should include listening to & taking on board, where possible, the views of the operational engineers. (A very common users complaint in all spheres is that designers don't think enough about the ****y maintenance aspects.)
These are quite different disciplines - and several disciplines of engineers will be involved in the design and construction, just as in maintenance. The views of the direct users, the aircrew, should also be of interest of course, for similar reasons - the designers may well not understand operational challenges as well as they'd like.

Any significant engineering project involves a lot of compromises.- that is one of the major challenges of project engineering, trying to find the best practical balance of compromises. This also means disappointing as few people as possible, you hope ! (Virtually no-one will be totally happy, especially the main design engineers. They can always see the opportunities they had to forego because of lack of time, lack of information or lack of cash. That's engineering.)

I hope that helps.

I am glad there is now some comment on the two year tour. It has long seemed to me a most inefficient way to run the organisation, given the length of time required to get properly up to speed on any complex operation and the lead time involved in making effective changes. For much of my engineering career three to four year tours of duty were the norm, except where 'hardship' postings were involved. Those were either shorter by design or compensated otherwise.
Do many of today's RAF personnel really want to move every two years? Where to - there aren't the wide choices there once were!

My intro. to MOD(PE) ,as it was in the early 70's, was a three day course run by the Civil Service, which appeared to concentrate on claiming allowances (most of which were not available to a serving RAF officer !). The rest of the two and a half year tour in central London (with many visits to contractors) was interesting but very frustrating,as many of the contractors ideas/offers were ignored/rejected by my Civil Service bosses. Many of the reasons I understood - many others appeared to to have little or no sense behind them (and cost the taxpayer a considerable amount of money!). This was the early days of MRCA/Tornado simulators.

Bill

Item 7 page 10

Interesting, is that the first public admission that 9 MR aircraft is too few?

This is a multi faceted issue. the 2 year rotation is a weakness but it could also be a bonus, in that if you get a complete bell-end in post or as your boss, you know they will be gone in due course.

The real issue here is that DE&S has no commercial imperative to get the job done efficiently and effectively. I have witnessed first hand, comments from those in the sheds at Bristol, 'That's 5 year's work that is'. They are career civil servants with little reward or imperative for doing the job well and equally, no implications for getting it wrong. Most of them would have been sacked in a commercial organisation. Many a time those contractors say they could do the job tomorrow, on cost and on time but they are often the ones who throw the towel in from frustration or do not get selected in favour of the lowest compliant bid. I realise I am generalising here but the report and those that were written before it, right back to the days of Samuel Pepys, shows that Military procurement is broken and only during times of crisis, when the bureaucracy, prevarication, delay and stubbornness of those civil servants can be bypassed, do projects like SeaKing ASaCS get delivered. There will be many of those VSOs and others who were totally frustrated in their efforts to do the right thing.

I seem to recall a suggestion that procurement be given to the likes of KPMG or Deloittes. Sack the lot of them and bring it on.


Edited: I did recall it in Bernard Gray's report
.

https://publications.parliament.uk/p...dfence/9/9.pdf

The really dispiriting thing is that it's a certainty that a similar report will come out in 10-15 years saying exactly the same thing. Repeat ad infinitum. :(

DoD Program Management review from 2011.


https://dbb.defense.gov/Portals/35/D...ers_2011-4.pdf

Widger


Have a look at the Jonathan Bayliss thread. The RAF has taken over 3.5 years to do a few days work on a critical safety risk, and DE&S haven't seen an endorsed requirement yet.

But I'm being kind. The system is deliberately set up so that if the RAF doesn't do its job correctly, a named individual in the project team is trained to do it and does so without being told.

It is also set up so that if the above MoD staff don't, or won't, do their job, the Design Authority can commit MoD funding without seeking approval.

Multi-faceted, I agree. But it's not rocket science and the regulations and procedures are set out very clearly. I suspect the incumbents simply don't know their job or that these rules exist. But even then, there is common sense. Where does the fault lie? Sacking them all won't help, as everyone has failed. Sacking those with oversight, and who have made formal declarations that all this is working? Yes. Quickly.

Little thread drift...sorry

That caught my eye too. Leaving aside grammatical interpretations as to what they are or are not implying here, it does reflect the reality that what in 1995 was going to take 24 aircraft (and 21 after some turn of the century smoke and mirrors accounting practices) now needs only 9. I am of course aware of force multiplier factors, but then Nimrod 2000 AKA Nimrod MRA4 had heaps of them too did it not??? (Well, the folk building it told me that to my face at BAE in May 1998).

Given that it's not just airframes, its human resource too, one suspects the such things as SAR, 6 hour Stby etc have all long since been reinvented (as indeed they needed to be - no dinosaur here), one can but hope some of the PITA strains on the aircrew cadre, like losing folk for a ****ing month long guard commander duty, have been **** canned too as the bodies can no longer be spared.

No doubt the job will very different, but maybe it will nearer to the what we had in the seventies and eighties (in terms of operational flying and doing the job which we were trained to do and which we loved) than all **** we endured in the nineties.

tl/dr If the scarcity of maritime aircraft and crews means the folk on them will spend more time in the air and less time being *****ggered about on the ground, it will great and I'm insanely jealous.

:)

Have fun and sorry for the thread drift

Here’s an idea, why not buy a type still in production that we know would suit requirements

AS332 Super Puma H215

doesn't keep the development and sales teams in business!

Look at the B-52 - 60+ years service and they'd probably buy more if the line was still open

Likely too big for the requirement, which also includes three smaller types. That's why Airbus is now focused on H175M, despite earlier touting possibility of both NH90 and H225M.

AW149 is a mil-spec helicopter originally designed to meet a (Turkish) military requirement. It is in military service with Thailand and Egypt.

The Egyptian AW149s have even operated from their Mistral-class carriers.

So how exactly does this aircraft still need to start a milspec journey?

And since the MoD have thus far failed to issue a requirement, which are the 50% of KURs that it doesn't meet?

Can only speak for light blue, but 3 yr tours now. Still not ideal as takes 6 months to get up to speed!

"Broken" MoD Procurement "wasting billions"

This has all come as a terrible shock

Ohhh dear, there goes some of the budget, MOD fined

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/mod-...hout-approval/

Fixed. Free of charge.

Good God, it was posted on the site just recently