Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
80-99)
DR ROGER
DIGGLE, MR
ROBIN SOUTHWELL,
MR SHAHID
MALIK MP, SIR
KEN KNIGHT
AND MS
SHONA DUNN
8 FEBRUARY 2010
Q80 Mr Betts: How much for?
Ms Dunn: Some of that information
I believe is commercially sensitive. Some of that information
is included within the NAO Report which you have received. There
is a figure around the November 2008 date of a package worth around
£10 million in extra services and reduced service charges.
There was another package put together around the July 2009 delay.
Q81 Sir Paul Beresford: What in broad
terms was wrong with the original contract that you had to redesign
it and start again?
Mr Malik: I have alluded to it
at the beginning. The problem was that there was a concept and
a vision but the detail was not there. In the spirit of continuing
in candid mode, we had not engaged the Fire and Rescue Service
in the development of the concept and that was one of the gaps.
It is a gap that we have since filled. We have a lot of stakeholders
now engaged in the project moving forward in a way that was not
true when this project was first initiated. There was a gap between
the vision and the reality on the ground. The truth is that once
we started to engage with fire and rescue services it then became
apparent that their needs had not been catered for in a 100 per
cent fashion. That means that there were a number of changes to
the specifications that were required. At the offset, it was an
unhealthy start, mainly because it was a concept and vision and
because people who were crucial to the success of the project,
the Fire and Rescue Service, had not been included and incorporated
in a way that perhaps would have been ideal.
Q82 Sir Paul Beresford: Did these
organisations explain this to you at the very beginning?
Mr Malik: We always had some element
of stakeholder involvement.
Q83 Sir Paul Beresford: It is just
yes or no. Did they? You said at the very beginning they were
not spoken to. They were not involved.
Mr Malik: It could be a difficult
one to answer given that I am the eighth Minister in eight years
and nobody else has been here at the beginning of the project
either, but I am happy to write to you on that[3].
Q84 Sir Paul Beresford: There is
an Australian phrase. You do not know whether you are Arthur or
Martha, do you, Minister?
Mr Malik: It is well known in
Lancashire and Yorkshire as well.
Q85 Chair: Do you accept it should
have been CLG who should have done the detailed end user requirement
analysis?
Mr Malik: I am very clear that
for this to succeed the Fire and Rescue Service ought to have
been much more involved at the beginning.
Q86 Chair: That is not the question
I asked. Was it the responsibility of CLG to do that detailed
end user analysis requirement obviously in conjunction with the
fire and rescue services?
Mr Malik: I think it was absolutely.
I take responsibility. We ought to have done that. We ought to
have engaged key stakeholders in a way that was adequate. It was
inadequate.
Q87 Andrew George: You said you were
being candid. I just want to be clearer on the point of fact that,
when you said earlier that the project commenced in 2007, in fact
of course the project commenced in January 2004. Certainly a letter
from the then Local Government Minister, the Rt Hon Member for
Greenwich, to me on 4 April 2005 says that the estimated total
net cost of delivering the regional control centre network is
approximately 72 million. This covers the cost of setting up the
new fire control centres from the start of the project in January
2004 until the last regional control centre goes live during 2008.
It is very clear that that is when the project commenced. That
cannot be air brushed out of the history of this.
Mr Malik: It is not my desire
or intention to air brush anything. In fact, quite the opposite.
I think what I said is actually that the contract was awarded
to EADS in March 2007. The concept and the outline business case,
this vision thing that I have been speaking about, started in
November 2004. At that time the estimate was £120 million.
That is what I have here. Because of our engagement with the Fire
and Rescue Service and others, there were some significant changes
to the specification both on the IT side and on the needs of the
Fire and Rescue Service as well as to an extent on the buildings.
Q88 Chair: Mr Southwell, we have
been pressing the Minister about the details of the contract.
To what extent do you accept that your company and/or your various
subcontractors are at fault in not complying with the contract
and not fully understanding the technical complexity of FiReControl?
Mr Southwell: On reflection, I
agree and understand exactly where the Minister is coming from
in terms of when we initially established and started to gain
some momentum in this. In hindsight it is easy but it is not unusual
for projects of this complexity that you learn some of the lessons
and there is an iterative process going along. I do not know of
many, if any, projects where you have really locked in what the
requirement is at day one, particularly a project where you are
involving a number of stakeholders across the whole of England
and you are asking people to put their minds to it, actually to
think about how behaviours need to change, how people need to
transform their processes and organisational structures. There
are many factors. To expect at the very beginning every single
one of those factors to be readily understood completely and then
put into an end user requirement to be delivered without change
over a period of time is a tall order and one that probably is
nigh on impossible to undertake.
Q89 John Cummings: That is a rather
slack sort of answer when you consider the hundreds of millions
of pounds involved. Have you no regrets at all?
Mr Southwell: No. I am simply
explaining that, if you have a project of this scale and complexity
involving a number of parties who need to become involved and
buy into it, there is an element of locking down the final requirement
as you go through the early, iterative stage. That is the only
point I am making.
Q90 Chair: Do you think the early,
iterative stage of this one went on for rather too long?
Mr Southwell: Yes. I have to agree
with the Minister that in hindsight we should have done a little
bit more work earlier and we should have done a little bit more
work after we had been selected in terms of bringing in the various
stakeholders, defining their requirements, understanding the behavioural
issues as to how it actually works on the ground, to allow us
to gain the traction and momentum which we all wanted. I agree
fully with the Minister.
Q91 Chair: What about the situation
now? We were hearing in earlier evidence from the first set of
witnesses that they find it unhelpful that communication at the
moment seems to go on through a train of yourself to CLG to the
stakeholder. Would it be better for you to communicate directly
with stakeholders?
Mr Southwell: I am pleased to
say that, having learned the lessons reasonably quickly from where
things were not going right—that is a healthy phase in a
project that you are not in denial; you are picking up what is
going wrong and reacting to it—we instigated a number of
changes quite quickly. Two of those which were quite fundamental
and which are showing some very improvements are, firstly, that
we have co-location of ourselves as EADS, the Fire and Rescue
Service and of CLG at one location in Newport, South Wales. That
is proving to be really, really advantageous. The parties are
working in a team, in a partnership arrangement. The second thing
is we are having end user workshops, solution workshops, on a
regular basis. In fact, I believe a few of them are working today,
involving the end user on an operational basis so that we are
real time ensuring that we have that dialogue which was missing
at the beginning and which is now taking place. The combination
of those two factors as well as a very, very impressive relationship
and a very robust but healthy relationship with us and CLG at
a project management level, the combination of those three factors—and
at all three levels it is working—gives us increased assurance
cautiously that we are now on track in that area.
Q92 Chair: Two quick questions. Since
when and who exactly is involved in that, apart from CLG?
Mr Southwell: Since when?
Q93 Chair: Since when have you been
doing this close working in Newport?
Mr Southwell: We co-located last
August in Newport, South Wales, and the workshops commenced in
August. Now they have ramped up. How many are taking place today?
Dr Diggle: We have run workshops
almost every day since last August.
Q94 Chair: Involving who apart from
CLG?
Dr Diggle: Involving ourselves,
CLG, the fire and rescue services and whichever supplier has been
appropriate to that workshop.
Q95 Mr Betts: Sir Ken Knight has
sat there as an interested observer so far. Can I ask whether,
if he had been appointed to the post at the beginning of this
project, he might think now he would have a happier story to tell
about how it might have developed?
Sir Ken Knight: It would be arrogant
of me to believe that the fact that the Government did not have
a Chief Fire and Rescue Adviser in 2004 and indeed until 2007
meant things might have been different. This of course is a high
profile and a complex project. You know my background because
I have been here before. This is a real opportunity of step change
for the Fire and Rescue Service. It is an opportunity as disparate
fire controls have appeared at different rates with different
technology since the Second World War. It is part of a £1.1
billion programme that the Government is spending on the Fire
and Rescue Service. I recognise and welcome it alongside the New
Dimension and Firelink projects. What it does for me, Mr Betts,
is offer real opportunities at two levels: opportunities for increased
fire fighter safety by information directly to the cab about incidents
that fire fighters need to go to and at an interoperable level
allowing fire engines and fire fighters to cross boundaries seamlessly.
These matters have been very significant as we have seen over
the last five or ten years. I have been in charge of three fire
brigades, from one of the smallest to the very largest, and seen
how fire controls are operating, this project is a prize that
the public will recognise is worth having.
Q96 Mr Betts: I know you probably
will not want to get drawn there but when this project began you
were still in a position where you could see what was coming and
how it was going to affect you and the brigade which you were
in charge of. Did you have reservations at that time about how
the whole project was being developed and were you sat there thinking:
"It could be done better if only someone bothered to ask"?
Sir Ken Knight: It would be pretty
complacent at that time of course because I was in charge of the
London Fire Brigade which already had a Regional fire control.
20 years ago it merged four separate fire controls into a single
region control. All of the doubts about people not knowing the
addresses, people not knowing where they were coming from and
the technology were dispelled to what I think is one of the most
effective FiReControls that is operating today with some 220,000
calls a year. I had no doubt at all that the concept of interoperable
regional fire controls would work with the right technology and
the right effort.
Q97 Mr Betts: We are not in that
concept, are we? We are talking about actual delivery and the
design of a system that would work and deliver that concept. Surely
from the beginning you would have been talking to colleagues in
other brigades at the time. Did you not instinctively have a feeling
that things potentially could go badly wrong with the way they
had been constructed and developed?
Sir Ken Knight: London was somewhat
easier because it was a single fire brigade control mobilising
a single fire and rescue service. The complexity was outside London
where there were a number of fire brigades being brought into
a regional control. I still do not think it is beyond the wit
of either fire authorities or the service to be able to have this
integrated approach. We know it works elsewhere. We know that
the subcontractor that EADS has selected has very successful systems
elsewhere in the world. There is no reason why this integration,
which is the resilience that is going to be built into this potentially—
Q98 Mr Betts: There is no reason
therefore why it has not so far. What has gone wrong?
Sir Ken Knight: I share, I suspect,
both the first session you had and I am sure my Minister's disappointment
that it has not been delivered so far. I suspect I share much
of the fire service's disappointment. I cannot account for the
beginning part of the project. I would like to see its successful
conclusion, frankly, in the interests of fire fighter safety and
resilience.
Q99 Mr Betts: Why has it gone wrong?
Mr Malik: I think it is more straightforward
than we think in many ways. If anything starts off really badly
planned in terms of the detail, you are storing up trouble for
the future. The important thing is that today, sitting before
you, we are in an infinitely better position than we have ever
been before. The technology, as Sir Ken has said, is technology
that the NYPD (New York Police Department) uses. It is technology
that the fire service in New Zealand uses. It is technology you
use if you are RAC members. It is tried and tested technology.
Our commercial position is much better than it has ever been.
The tragedy really is that we are in a much better position than
we have ever been before, both from an EADS perspective and from
a CLG perspective. I hoped some of the stakeholders that spoke
prior would have said things were not perfect but they are much
better than they have ever been. We accept that it started off
in an inadequate manner but I think we are in a much better position.
It is a very complex business change project. They are always
difficult and they are always complex, but we are just starting
to get over the hill now and get to the downhill side of it. We
are quite confident and I hope that the Committee is more confident
than it has ever been before—perhaps I am mistaken—in
thinking that we might deliver this by mid-2011. As I said, I
cannot sit here hand on heart and say 100 per cent but everything
I have seen so far tells me mid-2011 is the point at which we
will have some go lives and we will be in a different world to
the one we are currently in.
3 Additional information is provided in FIRE 26A Back
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