The report found that, in 13 projects for which time performance could be measured, the total forecast slippage amounted to 139 months – much of it caused by recurring problems such as delays in software development.
However, appearing before the Public Accounts Committee on Monday, chief of defence materiél Bernard Gray said these delays have been inevitable for some time. They have only been publicly acknowledged now, he said, because a recalculation exercise he’s overseen has produced much more sensible estimations of projects’ duration. “It is a more realistic estimate of how long it’s going to take,” he said.
Also appearing before the committee, MoD permanent secretary Jon Thompson admitted that original estimates for the time of the projects had been inaccurate. “There has definitely been an optimism in the past, where people wanted to believe it cost less than it did,” he said. “Also, the industry was saying it could do things that it couldn’t.”
Gray identified a particular problem with the ability of officials to ensure software projects were on track, referring to one case where delivery was late. “The MoD was pressing and nagging” the supplier, he said, but it was “denying there was a problem until a month before [the work was] due to be completed. Unless you march in and take control of the factories, there is a limited amount you can do.”
Committee chair Margaret Hodge pressed Thompson on reports that a hike planned in the equipment budget is now being delayed to 2016, rather than 2015. The perm sec responded that unless equipment spending does rise in 2015, the MoD would have to re-open the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) and “curtail our plans”.
“If that were to happen, depending on the reduction, we would want to revisit the SDSR to see what the policy outcomes were,” he said, acknowledging that this could mean further military job cuts.