According to the National Audit Office, the final bill for refurbishment of Broadcasting House in London is expected to end up £55m over budget at £1.05m and will have taken over four years longer than scheduled.  It is now expected to open in April 2013 compared with an original target date of December 2008.

 

Its Pacific Quay development in Glasgow was to have cost £126m and be completed by June 2006. However, the building was delayed by a year and cost £188m.  

 

A third project in Salford Quays is expected to be completed on time in December 2011 and be £76m under budget at £877m.  But before applauding, perhaps we should wait and see the final outcome!

 

If that project profile, with such dramatic swings between over and under expenditure is not scary enough, typifying projects totally out of control – it is not all.   For the ‘licence payer’ has undertaken the commitment for funding such profligacy in the Broadcasting House scheme as two statues, one set in a piazza engraved with lines of longitude and latitude, costing no less than £2.5m! 

 

It could be funny if it was not so very, very serious.  But this behaviour is not unusual in major public sector building projects.  Portcullis House Parliamentary Building was to be £165m, but after building cost inflation and 12 months of delays, the price increased to £235m; the Welsh Assembly Building was nearly six times over budget and almost five years late; the Holyrood Project had an original estimate of £50m, and an eventual cost £195m. Considerable controversy surrounds the total cost of the Olympic project and it is to be hoped it is not delayed!

 

Surely, there really has to have been some astonishing failures in business planning and management for so many major public construction projects to have become so seriously overspent and delivered so late? 

And, it seems that it is becoming endemic, increasing in number, regularity and magnitude, with an acceptance that such a result is inevitable – and acceptable.  But, at whose expense?

 

Apart from the public accountability issues, resulting in questionable value for money, the misappropriation of funds is completely unacceptable.   

 

Indeed, it could only ever happen with an assumption of limitless public funds, for such recklessness in a private company would, without doubt, have only one result, that those responsible would be out of a job, very, very, quickly.  But have we seen such accountability in the public sector?  I think not!   Perhaps, a feeble and ineffective report at the very most, without anyone being publicly identified as having failed, be they high profile figures, civil servants, consultants or contractors – or all of them.  And, in most cases they go on to do it again and again and to get massive pay-offs and/or public honours. But, in the current financial crisis, can the country really afford such management ineptitude to continue? 

 

So, is it that insufficient care is taken at the outset about the conception and feasibility of the projects?   Or is it that that there is ill-considered haste in their implementation that has led to imprudent and naive procurement strategies.  It is not that we do not have the knowledge and expertise to manage and deliver projects on time and on budget it is just that the right discipline and rigour is not exercised consistently throughout the project. 

 

There can only be one real way to establish and manage a successful project and that is with the proper degree of care and control at the outset and for it to continue with total discipline throughout its lifetime.

 

But more importantly, the culture has to change to make it clear that overspends and over-runs with public money will absolutely not be accepted.