The Monumental C**k Up Thread.

[PeteXXX]

But Nicholas Morrison the sole director who liquidated the company with 22m in debt is still an active director of two other companies. It’s not right

Unbelievable that this is allowed 😡

 

[Jenkins]

Most UK Public Infrastructure projects seem to go over budget and run late. Does nobody in charge learn from the previous mistakes?

 

[Drago]

Most UK Public Infrastructure projects seem to go over budget and run late. Does nobody in charge learn from the previous mistakes?

It's the British way. Cost plus contracts are widely used for some reason, which gives little incentive for financial control or efficiency.

M.O.D. are masters at this. The bureaucracy is enormous, roughly one M.O.D. civil servant for every two soldiers, and having wasted money before they've started they then typically go vastly over budget and end up with sub optimal gear. Constant political interference and micro-managing doesn't help.

The French military are a third bigger than ours, for over a third less cash.

So I hereby declare M.O.D. procurement a monumental cock up.

 

[Dogtrousers]

Crossrail was in a much worse state during build. 5 years late?

Delays etc will get forgotten or generally forgiven if the thing is a success, which Crossrail the Elizabeth Line now is. See also the Hubble space telescope, the Victoria line (at least, that's what I've read), the Millennium bridge. All had famously problematic starts but recovered. Maybe Berlin Brandenburg will end up on that list too, I don't know.

 

[Drago]

Although Hubble required further billions in development, engineering, and multiple launches for rectification before it became a success. Indeed, some wags have observed that it might have been cheaper to build another, but do so properly, than all the faff and expense required to fix the original.

So it was a monumental cock up, salvaged only with huge lashings of time, effort and cash.

 

[BrumJim]

Although Hubble required further billions in development, engineering, and multiple launches for rectification before it became a success. Indeed, some wags have observed that it might have been cheaper to build another, but do so properly, than all the faff and expense required to fix the original.

So it was a monumental cock up, salvaged only with huge lashings of time, effort and cash.

My experience is that the "it would be better to start again from scratch" argument is regularly brought up when problems start to mount, but it is generally based on the premise that if we did it again, we wouldn't have any problems. Which is largely the over-ambitious optimism that got them in the mess in the first place. i.e. starting again from scratch will, in reality be more expensive, more embarassing and later than trying to solve the existing issues.

 

[BrumJim]

Delays etc will get forgotten or generally forgiven if the thing is a success, which Crossrail the Elizabeth Line now is. See also the Hubble space telescope, the Victoria line (at least, that's what I've read), the Millennium bridge. All had famously problematic starts but recovered. Maybe Berlin Brandenburg will end up on that list too, I don't know.

Very similarly the Sidney Opera House. It was only recently that I found it that it is a textbook case of how not to run a project, but is now so iconic that very few know of the pain to build it.

 

[Dogtrousers]

The Garden Bridge, a proposed pedestrian bridge across the River Thames in London,

I'd class that as a success, of sorts. Idiotic thing is proposed. People notice that it is idiotic. Proposal is binned. Admittedly it would have been better and cheaper not to have wasted time and money on it at all. But to be a real monumental cock up they should have at least have started building it. And then maybe given up half way.

 

[PK99]

To be fair that's a pretty good example. £33 billion spent and not a single mile of track in operation.

In the same period of time China has built 12,500 miles of new track.

To be fair on that one, the Chinese government decides and it happens. Here people and property owners have rights and spend years in the courts enforcing them

 

[Drago]

To be fair on that one, the Chinese government decides and it happens. Here people and property owners have rights and sped years in the courts enforcing them

There is that, although billions were spent buying property which is now no longer required as the route was either modified over time or political meddling in how far north it would go - not something that would be happens in China.

The Chinese do have the advantage of not having so much problem with compulsory purchase and the like (although their citizens  do have rights and youll occasionally see a small holding next to a tower block because the court sided with them).

However, their biggest advantages are in thinking properly about the objective in the first place and then sticking to it. They get stuff done besause there's no perpetual moving of goalposts.

 

[PK99]

The whole of the UK Nuclear power industry from start to finish.

1 reactor site in each region with no overall nuclear management structure below CEGB board level

11 Magnox reactor sites. All to different designs built by different consortiums. Fuel design was different in each reactor - giving rise to the reprocessing problems at Sellafield.

 

[Dadam]

I've a volume dedicated to military cock-ups. Nothing new, there... You'd think that Hitler and his generals would've learned from Napoleon's experiences of the same. Whoops!

Invasion of the Dardanelles in WW1 was another...

The English Armada

 

[Dadam]

Leeds Mass Transit
Upto £100 million has been spent so far and we've got no trams and no trolleybuses either, though we did get some purple bendy busses for a couple years. Theres a long list of reasons why nothing has been built, and now the latest proposal is some sort of 'West Yorkshire Mass Transit' which I predict will amount to didly squat.

Special mention to the Leeds Park and Ride schemes (2 out of 3 are closed on Saturday, go shop online I guess) and to the White Rose Railway Station which can be seen but not stopped at after contractors ran out of money last March.

Just to rub salt in the wounds, here's a map of the old tram system which was closed in 1959 despite being one of the largest and most advanced in the UK at the time.

Yes still the largest city in Europe without an underground or light rail system.
The Elland Road park and ride used to be OK

 

[roubaixtuesday]

Fuel design was different in each reactor

That's quite extraordinary!

 

[Dadam]

Post Office, Fujitsu and Horizon