In an admission that they have lost control of both the management and the costs of the £55.7bn project, HS2 Ltd are looking for two firms which will be paid £230 million between them, to manage processes and to try and keep costs under control.
Despite the fact that at the last count HS2 Ltd employed over 300 people on six-figure salaries, the company is now looking to outsource both cost control and programme management. The Commercial Management contract is worth £104.5m and tasks would include validating costs presented by HS2’s supply chain and ensuring commercial compliance with contractual agreements, whilst the winning Programme Controls contract bidder would provide cost and estimating services as well as ‘supporting the cost management process’ and be responsible for the ‘assurance of the overall baseline estimate’, at a cost of £125.5m.
Stop HS2 Campaign Manager Joe Rukin responded:
“The entire concept of needing to spend almost a quarter of a billion pounds of taxpayers money to try and make sure they don’t waste taxpayers money could only come from HS2 Ltd, as they waste taxpayers money every day on an industrial scale.”
“It is both laughable and truly depressing that the response from HS2 to the fact they are massively over budget is to throw even more money at the problem. The profligacy and waste at HS2 Ltd is now beyond parody, and someone in Government needs to stop this now before it is too late.”
Maybe they should ask why Network Rail are managing the process from top to bottom. Jim Crawford knows full well that Civils will not finish till 2029 and then testing and commission will start after (2 years). Someone at the Dft needs to start asking the right questions. Jims still telling Mark Thurston that they are on time yet all the in-house data and project management states cleary that they are overrun already.
55 staff as of Sept 2018 were paid over £155,000
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/766814/_150k-2018-Master.csv/preview
and look at the names of the staff and their past roles and the contracts being awarded
The whole project is being run as a cash cow for ex-network rail bosses (check the salaries on who all have a history of overruns on major schemes (Thameslink 2000, London Bridge, Electrification, Reading etc)
It’s a disgrace and HS2 directors are misleading the government and the public
If that is the case, I’m sure there are plenty of journalists who would protect the anonymity of their sources…
There are no words . . .
“Billion” a word so easily mistaken for million. Think what a billion pound coins would actually look like to get a true picture of how much is being spent on this. It’s obscene!