Network
Contributing Writer rail@bauermedia.co.uk
WEAK management and a small team of civil servants who were out of their depth have been roundly blamed for the £4 billion overspend on London’s Elizabeth line (Crossrail) and its opening four years late in May 2022.
These are the principal findings of a damning joint report by the Department for Transport and the Infrastructure & Projects Authority (IPA), published on March 18.
For major future projects, it says that people must be found who are suitably qualified to take on the lead roles, having proved that they have done a good job on similar large schemes.
The report notes that danger signs that Crossrail was drifting seriously off-course were detected back in 2016, and that the target opening of late 2018 was not going to be achieved.
However, little was done, and it was only following new skilled appointments to the Crossrail board that it got a firm grip, with daily meetings held to resolve many of the deep-seated issues. No individual names are mentioned.
The searching investigation, which included interviewing more than 100 people involved in the cross-London rail project, discovered a team of just ten to 15 people described as “junior”, compared with 160 for HS2.
The report says the central DfT team was too small and lacked “a combination of strong, recent, and relevant practical delivery experience, senior stakeholder management skills, credible sector experience and astute leadership”.
The team failed to react to poor performance or overspend, and vast contingency funds were swallowed up because no early warnings were given.
The report continues: “The Civil Service career path does not regularly produce such people and potential conflicts of interest may deter private sector organisations from expressing interest in a sponsorship role. The challenge is to attract highly experienced people into the Civil Service and retain them.”
Nine key mistakes are highlighted. They include a lack of regular checks from a high level that the senior team was up to the mark, an inability to act quickly enough when things changed, failure to tap outside expertise, and a lack of performance incentives for problem solving.
Other faults were that the government was ultimately unclear what it wanted from Crossrail, that the contracts were inflexible when changes were required, and that there was poor control of digital design and construction data because it was held onto by individual suppliers.
IPA Chief Executive Nick Smallwood concluded: “Review teams must make site visits during construction and interview suppliers, future operators, regulators and third parties with valid insights.
“They should meet those at the front line to hear about progress first hand and talk to the peopl
