How to deliver a project on time

HAVING experienced the delivery of construction projects here and overseas the news of a question mark over HS2 after much money had been thrown at it came as no surprise: nor for that matter does the money wasted in preparing for “Brexit”.

These incidents seem to go hand in glove with an inability to properly plan and cost this type of project: the Welsh example is of course the abandonment of the M4 project around Newport.

What has been a surprise vis a vis HS2 is the news that knowing the plan was insufficient before the first sod had been cut the movers and shakers ploughed on with it: in that respect it has something in common with the first post-war shot at constructing the Channel Tunnel before it was abandoned: this was after companies that I had represented had spent time and money tendering for the project.

The UK record compares unfavourably with an overseas project with which I am proud to be associated. It is the $3.6bn Phase 1 of a project executed across two former British colonies: Lesotho (formerly Basutoland) and South Africa. The project is the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (“LHWP”) which was completed on time and within budget to international acclaim, including that of the World Bank. Ironically, given the UK’s less than flattering home record, the acclaim extended to British companies and their personnel who included a number of my Welsh compatriots.

The key to success was that the project’s planning and pricing was sufficiently robust not to be thrown off-course even by an attempted coup in Lesotho. Speaking of robustness, if my memory is correct, the Basotho and South African powers rejected the lowest tender on Phase 1B as being inadequate to deliver it on time. In other words, they were realists, whereas those delegated to fill the same role here are less so.

It also occurs to me that the reason we have rarely, if ever,

emulated the LHWP experience is because the planning and pricing is too inadequate and unrealistic on the employer’s and contractor’s side of the equation. This is also why so many “names” have gone to the wall here and, in the process, have taken so many lower down the supply chain with them.

In addition, compared with the inquisitorial approach in play in other legal systems (including Lesotho and South Africa) the adversarial system in England and Wales is not conducive to the collaboration which constitutes the motto of Constructing Excellence in Wales (“CEW”).

Maybe Wales should lead the UK out of the construction wilderness by adopting an inquisitorial approach, which is more in keeping with the motto attributed to Lesotho’s founding father, King Moshoeshoe I, namely: “Give me peace: Peace is the rain that makes the grass grow: war is the wind that dries it up”.

It would be nice if, for once, Wales were to lead the rest of the UK to the hallowed land of projects completed within the appropriate time and for the appropriate price. Derek Griffiths Cardiff