I am a lawyer who has worked in finance and in infrastructure projects. The problem is not the people per se, I don’t know why we all love having a pop at each other so much between jobs in the UK! Many of us work very hard in whatever jobs we do. It is how resource is used and whether the ratios are right. Lawyers, finance people etc are enablers to ensure the engineers proposals can be implemented. I would agree I see the ratios being wrong too often.
The Conservative Government has become absolute experts it making it look like they are doing something and generating headlines by commissioning this study or that study, or even worse, serious amounts of project development before cancelling things. It is appalling how much money they have thrown down the drain because some idiot or other made an ill-considered promise of a very grand scale to bag some votes. Yes we always expect a bit of this from our politicians but it seems to have become all about this now. Not how do you govern, how do you wind people up in the short term to fool them into voting for you before you revert to type.
The Conservative Government has also long been an expert in outsourcing, where these skills sit too remote to cost centres and the engineering priorities. Often this is outsourcing of the engineering roles not legal, finance etc. Let’s be really clear, the Conservatives are at their worst point ever in not believing that the public sector can or should be asked to do anything. They don’t believe in local government, they don’t believe in public bodies, they have an amazingly high opinion of themselves despite most of them never having worked in the real world.
Outsourced consultants, whilst individually very good sometimes, don’t have skin in the game in the same way that an internal team does. Their bosses are also most loyal to the bottom line of the consultancy and not, in this case, the railway. It is also hard for external consultants to stay efficient if they are not led by a really strong client team. To a made point above there is a big difference between development consultancy and delivery contracting. As the poster intimated, all public sector bodies enter into a range of contracts with the private sector to deliver things. The NHS has never built hospitals, contractors do that.
The Conservative Government needs to stop micro-managing stuff it doesn’t understand, even have the first clue about in many cases, the DfT needs to withdraw to its proper position and Network Rail needs to be left without stupid constant political distraction and instead held to account on basic engineering performance.
The transpennine lines are some of the oldest in the country/world, connecting the biggest population centres in the UK outside London. One bit is literally the oldest in the world. All Governments have failed to sort them out, but as the Conservatives have been in power for the vast majority of the last 4 decades, it is to them the award for Chinese water torture goes to. Just get on with it and show just a tiny bit of ambition, just a tiny bit.
It is seriously pathetic stuff from a seriously pathetic Government.
