Grayling crossrail failure

[Fundoreen]

Apparently will be another 2 years before we see this line running.
More evidence of what a clueless idiot Grayling is. The go too guy for failure.
You get the impression that one day May and Graying confessed to one another that they had no idea really but would cover for each other.
Soft of pact you see in big companies all the time that are run badly.

[Squiddly Diddly]

How is it his fault?

[ralphrj]

I'm not quite sure how it is Grayling's fault.

Grayling is the 8th Secretary of State for Transport since the Crossrail Act 2008 was given Royal Assent.

Edited by ralphrj on Friday 26th April 16:52

[loafer123]

Shouldn't this be "Sadiq Kahn Crossrail Failure"?

[Nickgnome]

I would agree it is not all his fault, but he is partly culpable.

Any reasonably intelligent minister would have ensured that validatable reports accurately reflected progress or lack there of.

Basics of good Project Management.

[monkfish1]

Neither. Responsibility for failure lies with the chap who was, until recently, in charge.

Whilst, like many, i have no time for Graying, you cant really blame him for most of it.

[Nickgnome]

loafer123 said:

Shouldn't this be "Sadiq Kahn Crossrail Failure"?

Why?

[Nickgnome]

monkfish1 said:

Neither. Responsibility for failure lies with the chap who was, until recently, in charge.

Whilst, like many, i have no time for Graying, you cant really blame him for most of it.

Crossrail is a joint venture overseen by TFL and DoT.

I believe the company is a wholly owned subsidiary of TFL.

[loafer123]

Nickgnome said:

monkfish1 said:

Neither. Responsibility for failure lies with the chap who was, until recently, in charge.

Whilst, like many, i have no time for Graying, you cant really blame him for most of it.

Crossrail is a joint venture overseen by TFL and DoT.

I believe the company is a wholly owned subsidiary of TFL.

I think you answered your own question above!

TfL is ultimately controlled by the Mayor of London

[Nickgnome]

loafer123 said:

Nickgnome said:

monkfish1 said:

Neither. Responsibility for failure lies with the chap who was, until recently, in charge.

Whilst, like many, i have no time for Graying, you cant really blame him for most of it.

Crossrail is a joint venture overseen by TFL and DoT.

I believe the company is a wholly owned subsidiary of TFL.

I think you answered your own question above!

TfL is ultimately controlled by the Mayor of London

But the project isn’t and it’s a JV.

It’s worthwhile looking at the Crossrail structure and board if you are interested.

Finger pointing without evidence is pointless, which is why I said Grayling could only be partly responsible.

[Ian Geary]

So,

Project releases latest update on progress

Uninformed public blame senior politician for this bad news, of which the politician had no influence

And we wonder why politicians don't like to release honest updates of progress?

The worst grayling could be guilty of is not coming cleaning with bad news. Is he supposed to test the signalling equipment himself?

[Dogwatch]

I have seen a suggestion that there was so much political pressure for the line to open on time that no-one dared to point out that the Emperor had no clothes.

Seems even the software isn't ready, and as for the Bond Street fit-out

[Nickgnome]

Ian Geary said:

So,

Project releases latest update on progress

Uninformed public blame senior politician for this bad news, of which the politician had no influence

And we wonder why politicians don't like to release honest updates of progress?

The worst grayling could be guilty of is not coming cleaning with bad news. Is he supposed to test the signalling equipment himself?

Much as I believe him to be pretty incompetent, he is not responsible for the situation with cross rail.

He could be responsible for not trying harder to drill into the situation but that is it.

[valiant]

loafer123 said:

I think you answered your own question above!

TfL is ultimately controlled by the Mayor of London

Whilst there is a question mark on when the Mayor actually knew the opening would have to be put back and whether his officials withheld information back from him, it is quite wrong to blame this on Khan especially as it seems that the project was slipping behind schedule from when Boris was in charge (and to be fair, he is just as blameless as Sadiq).

Blaming Grayling is also a bit strange as he was pretty much hands-off when it came to Crossrail (this annoys me greatly as Grayling is probably the most useless minister in living memory and it’s as if he was in charge of Crossrail as cost overruns and delays are generally his MO ).

It seems that the previous senior management team were oblivious to what was happening beneath them and that junior managers who could see problems ahead didn’t, for a multitude of reasons, either downplayed the problem hoping to catch up later or were discouraged from voicing their concerns. It’s been tagged the ‘Thermocline of Truth’ where problems build up beneath the surface until the pressure becomes too much and then it erupts into a complete st storm and everybody denies it’s their fault and scrabbles for the exit.

What’s important now is that on discovering the real underlying problems, the Mayor has put a new chief in (Mark Wild, ex-MD of LUL) who is highly experienced in bringing big projects into fruition and his team have now set a more realistic time frame on its opening.(Although some stations may still not be ready, namely Bond St). Oversight is now the new watchword and a new culture means problems are aired and confronted rather than just hoping they’d go away.

[Ridgemont]

I happen to know someone who was involved in a round of the submission of numbers for replanning last year. He was scathing of the process: essentially a date had been set and the numbers had to match. Everyone knew the numbers being submitted were bogus.
Project Management 101: the numbers are the numbers. Fudging it to fit timelines is going to screw up planning, reporting RAG and RAID and budgeting.

The supervisory process seems fked.

[snuffy]

What generally (i.e. always) happens is that the software is always blamed for the project being late. It's because it's the last part to be installed, commissioned and tested and it never gets the agreed time to do so.

I've seen this happen time and time again (30 years working in industrial automation systems and software myself).

The software will be written and tested as far as it can using simulation code, test harnesses and so on. It gets to the point where it has to be installed on the target (i.e. actual) hardware.

But until all the hardware is installed, wired (correctly !), communications up, powered and so on the software can't be tested on the live actual system. Now say a project has allowed 6 months onsite control system testing. What always happens is that the installation work is not completed on time. But the advertised end date does not change. So that 6 months site testing ends up being about 3 days.

And at the end of those 3 days, what happens ? "Software is late" is the cry. No it's not - the installation is late and software testing has, as always, been squeezed and then gets the blame because it's the last part of the chain.

[Nickgnome]

snuffy said:

What generally (i.e. always) happens is that the software is always blamed for the project being late. It's because it's the last part to be installed, commissioned and tested and it never gets the agreed time to do so.

I've seen this happen time and time again (30 years working in industrial automation systems and software myself).

The software will be written and tested as far as it can using simulation code, test harnesses and so on. It gets to the point where it has to be installed on the target (i.e. actual) hardware.

But until all the hardware is installed, wired (correctly !), communications up, powered and so on the software can't be tested on the live actual system. Now say a project has allowed 6 months onsite control system testing. What always happens is that the installation work is not completed on time. But the advertised end date does not change. So that 6 months site testing ends up being about 3 days.

And at the end of those 3 days, what happens ? "Software is late" is the cry. No it's not - the installation is late and software testing has, as always, been squeezed and then gets the blame because it's the last part of the chain.

Ditto construction.

It always the Testing and commissioning that gets squeezed at the end.

The concern would be if they may short cut any of the commissioning.

[Fundoreen]

Well I happy with that. Way too complicated for a politician to interject themselves into the middle so best hide under the desk
till the next election.

[Murph7355]

Nickgnome said:

snuffy said:

What generally (i.e. always) happens is that the software is always blamed for the project being late. It's because it's the last part to be installed, commissioned and tested and it never gets the agreed time to do so.

I've seen this happen time and time again (30 years working in industrial automation systems and software myself).

The software will be written and tested as far as it can using simulation code, test harnesses and so on. It gets to the point where it has to be installed on the target (i.e. actual) hardware.

But until all the hardware is installed, wired (correctly !), communications up, powered and so on the software can't be tested on the live actual system. Now say a project has allowed 6 months onsite control system testing. What always happens is that the installation work is not completed on time. But the advertised end date does not change. So that 6 months site testing ends up being about 3 days.

And at the end of those 3 days, what happens ? "Software is late" is the cry. No it's not - the installation is late and software testing has, as always, been squeezed and then gets the blame because it's the last part of the chain.

Ditto construction.

It always the Testing and commissioning that gets squeezed at the end.

The concern would be if they may short cut any of the commissioning.

Burning the left hand side of the plan and not being open and honest about it. Nor managing it correctly at the time.

[The Li-ion King]

Nickgnome said:

Ian Geary said:

So,

Project releases latest update on progress

Uninformed public blame senior politician for this bad news, of which the politician had no influence

And we wonder why politicians don't like to release honest updates of progress?

The worst grayling could be guilty of is not coming cleaning with bad news. Is he supposed to test the signalling equipment himself?

Much as I believe him to be pretty incompetent, he is not responsible for the situation with cross rail.

He could be responsible for not trying harder to drill into the situation but that is it.

TfL peed money up the wall and overspent on the project, ended up buying trains with no proven history of reliability, riddled with software problems (they sit idle in a siding near Harlesden, NW London), and Sadiq Khan, not wanting to lose even more credibility promised it would be running from last year even though most of the stations were still building sites. He cut bus routes thinking everything would be okay, wasted more money trying to pedestrianise Oxford Street, wasting more money.

They even took 4 years to do a 1 year job to electrify a short train line between Camden and Barking. The wires are there, but no trains (software problems again). Rather than buying the better Siemens ones, they went for the Everyday Value option. Buy Cheap, Buy Twice...

Hence the attempted claw back of funds via the laughable ULEZ (Ultra Low Emission Zone)...

Grayling has responsibility as being responsible for DfT and could have intervened (he's doing the same with HS2), these joint venture schemes are great for making money with no real accountability