Memorandum from the Fire Brigades Union (FIRE 27)

 

 

1) The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) represents approximately 45,000 members covering all ranks and duty systems in the fire & rescue service including approximately 4,000 officers, 11,000 firefighters working the retained duty system and 1,500 firefighters (control). This represents over 85% of all uniformed operational personnel currently serving in the fire & rescue services. The FBU welcomes the opportunity to submit evidence both written and verbal to the Select Committee and this submission deals with some of the key issues. We would also welcome the opportunity to appear before the Members of the Select Committee to support our submission and to attempt to answer any questions they may have upon it.

 

OVERVIEW

 

2) The Government originally 'sold' the FireControlProject on Invest to Save principles. The result, it was asserted, would be a much better and more resilient system which would be delivered in a staged cutover between 2006 and 2007 and pay for itself within 5 years.

 

3) FireControl is now massively over the original cost estimates, there are significant problems and doubts about the technology, what it can deliver and whether the system will be 'resilient'. The Project will not be complete, even on current timetables until the end of 2012 at the earliest, if at all. There will be no savings, it will cost more.

 

4) The problems must be put down to lack of foresight, major errors at the beginning and since, poor project management, lack of stakeholder engagement or genuine 'sign up', an inability to take proper note of real concerns and the dismissal of doubters and sceptics out of hand.

 

5) Costs and timescales became totally out of control, leaving some FRS's with ageing systems that require imminent replacement. Many had not upgraded because of the expectation that a new RCC system would be in place by 2006/2007 and then later 2008/2009.

 

6) Many have no planned Control facility going forward. The responsibility of the fire authority remains to ensure control systems are fit for purpose to fulfil its statutory duty irrespective of the FireControl Project which may or may not be concluded.

 

 

 

7) Such is the state of the Project and lack of confidence in it that a fundamental independent review must be undertaken involving all stakeholders and utilising and upgrading current controls, the FBU's preferred option, must be considered as part of that process.

 

 

8) Assertions about the resilience of the new system are now central to the new Government 'spin'. There is no evidence to support claims of greater resilience or that the end result will be a much better system.

 

9) It is important to temper the Government 'spin' with a dose of realism about what has been achieved and what could be achieved.

 

PROGRESS SO FAR

 

10) The RCCs buildings are nearly all built. None are close to being operational and their costs are a significant drain on the Project.

 

11) Supposedly 'resilient', they are red brick construction with considerable areas of glass situated behind wire-fencing in open business parks. Some are based on flood plains, flight paths or close to airports and major motorway junctions, all of which undermine claims of 'resilience'.

 

12) There have been numerous delays and cost-overruns. Morale has plummeted, confidence in the Project has nose-dived across the service. There has been immense pressure on senior operational managers. Some key staff have left.

 

13) The adoption of the LACC model has created major problems and a whole cottage industry of additional FRS/Regional Management Board advisors replicated across every region in England. A simpler, and cheaper solution would be a secondment model for control staff, that would be real progress instead of the current uncertainty for staff and close the gold mine for consultants giving HR and legal advice on the employment issues.

 

14) All RCC Directors have been appointed. The first four appointed had no fire service background, let alone a fire service control background. This was the preferred outcome of CLG.

 

15) In 2008 there were 130 project risks on the FireControl Risk Register, eight of which were rated 'high' or above. On 16 December 2009 in a Parliamentary Answer in response to a question from David Drew, fire minister Shahid Malik said there were 176 project risks, "of which sixteen are rated 'high' or 'very high'."

 

16) There are major concerns with the technology.

 

 

 

Command and control

 

17) FireControl was intended to produce a 'stripped down' version of our current emergency fire controls. The FireControl concept was based, as we pointed out, on a roadside assistance control model - call-handling, mobilising and limited incident monitoring and support.

 

18) The lack of a proper command and control role or function in the RCCs started to become more obviously apparent to the wider fire service from 2008 onwards. Command and control is what ensures the safety of firefighters and the public at incidents and goes well beyond basic incident monitoring and support.

 

19) It is central to fulfilling several statutory duties placed on fire authorities, including ensuring the health and safety of their firefighters. A proper command and control function was not included in the specifications for FireControl.

 

20) At a FireControl workshop at the BAPCO conference on 22 April 2009 concerns were openly acknowledged. A very senior advisor to EADS on FireControl faced a number of probing questions from FRS control officers who raised the issue of command and control at incidents.

 

21) EADS made clear the system being provided to RCCs was call-taking and mobilising, with some limited incident monitoring because those were the contract specifications. There is NO command and control function, "it is not part of the specifications".

 

22) The contract specifications, he said, meant that at incidents officers would have laptops or MDTs and apart from that they would be "on their own". The EADS advisor said it was only now that FRSs were starting to realise the lack of a command and control function in the contract specifications for the RCC technology and there needed to be "debate" about what happens.

 

23) Our clear understanding is that on this point the contractors delivered to the specifications demanded of them. This serious omission was made by those who set out the contract specifications.

 

24) The issue is not fully resolved and is of grave concern. At the very least, remedial work causing further delays and costs will have to be undertaken and a whole new area of "out of scope" work has been identified.

 

25) It has significant implications for the staffing model, the technology, cost and delays. In our view this played a very significant role in the further delays which have emerged and at least some of the additional costs which have arisen as a result.

 

26) The matter of how command and control is maintained in a practical sense with the breaking of the link between local FRSs and their local emergency controls is still not resolved. In answer to a Parliamentary Question from John McDonnell MP, about the transfer of operational command and control arrangements to regional controls the fire minister Shahid Malik replied: "The responsibility for operational command and control will remain, as is now, with local Fire and Rescue Services".

 

Unproven Technology, Under Development

 

27) Until recently the proposed mobilising system from Ericsson - CoordCom - had never been deployed in the UK fire service market. To state that it was proven off the shelf technology was misleading and inaccurate.

 

28) It is also worth noting that the FireControl Updates contain 2 items which are "to be costed by EADS" relating to mobilising officers and dynamic mobilising, both standard features in existing suppliers' systems. This again indicates that the original system specifications would be functionally less than the systems currently in use in some areas.

 

29) It has now publicly emerged that Ericsson is to be dropped altogether in favour of Intergraph I/CAD as a mobilising system. Intergraph I/CAD has been tried and tested and failed in the UK fire service.

 

30) In the proposed Cleveland tri-centre tests, Intergraph I/CAD failed. In any event, no system has been tried and tested in a national network of regional fire service controls, as none exists anywhere in the world.

 

31) We anticipate the FireControl specification may be more demanding than those specified a few years ago and we will need some convincing that a product - albeit an updated version - which failed a lesser test can now succeed in a more demanding one.

 

32) We anticipate knock on effects including potentially on DCMT1 and DCMT2 which we mention later in this submission. This may lead to further delays.

 

Resilience

 

33) Another major feature cited as essential was that of resilience. The choice of 9 different systems does not in itself guarantee resilience, neither does 46 systems. The system architecture chosen by CLG for 9 Systems is then compromised further by only having 3 Data Centres, all of which are housed within 3 of the existing controls.

 

 

34) Currently to render the FRS in England inoperable a considerable number of FRS's would have to fail or be taken out by terrorist attack (as well as their backup facilities). Under the new scheme taking out the 3 Data Centres will render the whole RCC infrastructure unusable.

35) Without the Data Centres then the Gazetteer options become unusable and dispatching impossible for such large areas. Current localised systems, even without Gazetteers, can mobilise with area knowledge to generate responses to an emergency situation.

 

36) The call-handling capacity is appallingly low because of very low staffing numbers. As a result individual RCCs will hit spate conditions much more quickly.

 

37) At times the national network will have very, very low numbers of staff on duty - less than 60. The entire national system could hit spate conditions when several RCCs hit spate conditions at the same time. This would happen during, for example, widespread weather events such as flooding or widespread snowfalls.

 

Database Generation

 

38) The current proposal is utilising the NLPG dataset. This is meant to be another benefit of the proposed RCCS.

 

39) This is utilised by many organisations and is a substantial database for mobilising. However it is somewhat different to the databases that FRS currently use. Many FRS have started to switch their existing systems to use the NLPG database and are finding out at first hand the problems it poses.

 

40) To give some examples:Business Parks that are currently built generally identify the different premises as Unit 1, Unit 2 etc. This is how these buildings appear in the NLPG Database. Once let the Building now has a name and may change hands several times even 1 year. These names do not appear on the NLPG database for some considerable time - if ever - and the company name provided will result in no match against the gazetteer when searched by the operator at the RCC. Invariably the Unit number will not be given or known and does not form part of the new address. To overcome this each FRS will have to generate an "extra" database containing this information, maintained by them, a not inconsiderable task.

 

41) Another example is that many towns and cities have areas within them, these areas form part of the address to the local inhabitant. In one FRS there are that 9 areas in one town which do not exist in the NLPG database, as such every property in those areas will have to become part of a local database for that FRS to allow matching against the supplied address. The only alternatives are to get the NLPG database amended (only allowed through Local Government request and a lengthy procedure) or to get the residents to change the way they report addresses. It is our belief that it is almost certainly impossible to do either within the timescales involved.

 

42) There will be many similar examples that will come to light as the Database generation continues and practical use of NLPG emerges, these items should have been known and dealt with at the outset.

 

43) The transfer of information is time consuming and cumbersome. It also has to be provided by FRSs and is out of scope work.

 

DCMT1 AND DCMT2

 

44) These are the toolkits for converting and transferring the FRS's existing data into a format that EADS can use to link the FRS related data to the NLPG database and also to generate the "extra" databases that contain the entries that do not exist in the NLPG database.

 

45) Problems with the DCMT1 toolkit became apparent to fire and rescue services in the summer of 2008 and has played a major role in the delays. We understand these problems only became apparent after CLG, as the Project Managers, had signed off the toolkits as meeting the contract specifications and it was then rolled out FRSs.

 

46) Up to that point CLG at imposed itself as the go-between linking EADS to the FRS. We understand it made a point of ensuring there was little or no direct contact between the contractors and other stakeholders meaning the problems only became apparent after the toolkits had been cleared for release to FRSs.

 

47) This issue of direct collaboration was addressed - belatedly - in the summer of 2009 with the creation of Solution Establishment Workshops, the first attempt at genuinely collaborative working. But what it highlights is that this was not happening before and only started when the Project ran into serious trouble with delays mounting.

 

48) The DCMT1 toolkit may now be substantially complete, albeit nearly 2 years late. Some of the issues have been inexcusable. But in the absence of close contact between EADS and the FRSs - a decision taken by CLG as Project Managers - it was perhaps inevitable.

 

49) Project Managers should have known that the larger authorities would have enormous data sets and for the initial releases to appear to have problems handling large data sets is ridiculous. The other reported issues shows the poor quality systems at Departmental Project Management level that allowed these to get to the end user.

 

50) Again the Project Management systems and methodology (Prince 2) should have picked these items up and managed them rather than supplying poor quality tools - albeit to specifications agreed and signed off by CLG - within the project life cycle.

 

51) Switching the mobilising system from Ericcson to Intergraph/ICAD may produce further problems with the DCMT1 toolkit. That remains to be seen.

 

52) CLG has consistently under-estimated the amount of work needed to be completed by FRSs to identify, cleanse and capture the data even with the toolkit working perfectly. This is at least 3 to 5 years of work.

 

53) There is limited and reducing capacity within the fire service to deliver this quickly - the ability is there, simply not the number of control personnel needed to carry out the task in addition to their existing workloads.

 

54) Whilst DCMT1 is used to identify what FRS address data is contained within NLPG, and what is not, it is the more complicated DCMT2 that "binds" this information together. Only time will tell whether similar issues will emerge with DCMT2 as did with DCMT1. It is imperative that mobilising arrangements for a life-saving emergency service such as that for the fire and rescue service aren't changed without being fully validated and tested beforehand. Testing "in the field" is not a professional option to adopt.

 

55) It would be surprising, given the complexity of the technical challenges, if they did not. There may also be issues relating to the switch to Intergraph I/CAD as the mobilising system.

 

56) We are aware, given the delay to the roll out of the DCMT1 toolkit, that many FRS's have not completed the work and some are only at the early stages of starting the work relating to the use of DCMT1. Without this data it is difficult to conceive how any meaningful testing of the system can take place.

 

57) Performance of this system will depend on the volume of data searched and a system that works with a small data set may not even work, or work as well, with a large data set if the hardware is not specified correctly.

 

Current System Capabilities in Business Case inaccurate

58) One of the main reasons cited by numerous Ministers for the Project was that the current systems did not support the latest technology. There were 9 Technology items cited in each Regions Business case Part 1, being:

 

MDT's / VMDS

Information Available to Fireground

AVLS

Status Updates

Dynamic Mobilising

EISEC

GIS (Ctrl Only)

GIS (Integrated into Service)

Full Premise based Gazetteer

 

59) This information is inaccurate, misleading and has never been corrected.. Some items are incorrect and others are inaccurate in that the facilities were available but the FRS chose not to purchase them eg Dynamic mobilising, EISEC and Premise based gazetteer.

 

60) Ministers then used this data to cite one of the reasons for the justification for the project was ensuring all fire controls had the most up to date functions. Had the correct information been established from knowledgeable sources then this justification would have been non-existent.

 

61) Since the project award all the items listed above are available on all the existing suppliers systems, most as standard items if local fire and rescue services judge them to be important enough to purchase them.

 

62) The Department could have amended GD92 which sets out requirements for control systems to ensure all systems could have been gradually upgraded in the normal way to meet these requirements. They have not done so, they still could.

 

HOW DID WE GET TO WHERE WE ARE NOW?

 

63) The approach and Project management were flawed from the outset. The entire Project was bundled into a single contract with a Prime Contractor leading a Consortium. Such was the scale of the Project, there were probably no more than a handful of companies worldwide which could have bid for a project of this size with a realistic chance of success.

 

64) This approach effectively meant that every existing experienced supplier of control systems to the UK fire service market eg Fortek or Remsdaq, would be excluded. They were.

 

65) It also meant there was a very high likelihood that the Prime Contractor chosen would have no experience in delivering a control system to a fire service in the UK or, possibly, anywhere in the world. This is what transpired.

 

66) Project Management was supplied by a series of Departments with little historical knowledge of the fire service, informed - if that is not putting it too strongly - by transient civil servants and consultants with no experience of delivering any fire service control system of any size, anywhere. It was overseen by a series of transient ministers.

 

67) There were some FRS secondees in various numbers at various stages. Of the 60 people assigned to the Project in the first few years, only 12 were from a fire service background. What weight was attached to their work, opinion or views is not known.

 

68) Once the decision had been taken to 'bundle' the contract in such a way - with the inherent flaws we have outlined - the use of a Consortium or Prime Contractor to facilitate such a large and ambitious project is entirely in order.

 

69) However, the project differed from the fire service norm at that time in that the Prime Contractor (EADS) appears to have largely a supply/ install contract only. Central Project Management was and is being carried out by CLG using their own staff along with some seconded FRS staff and consultants.

 

70) There were clearly major issues with the technical specifications the contractors were asked to deliver too. The Project scope has been changed before, after and since the IT contract was signed. There also appeared to be no 'real world' assessment of the true complexity of the project nor of realistic timescales to deliver what was being demanded

 

71) The results are clear for everyone to see: no clear and consistent understanding of how emergency fire controls work, lack of leadership, controls, objectives and relevant technical expertise. Even with such a flawed process, a single 'Turnkey' contract could have removed some of the issues and led to a clear target to be achieved or penalties to be levied.

 

72) Instead, CLG FireControl Project managers were a barrier between the contractors EADS tasked with delivering the technology and the end users -fire and rescue services. Direct collaborative working between EADS and the FRS was blocked by CLG until the creation of Solution Establishment Workshops (SEWs) in the summer of 2009.

 

73) The central point of the creation of the SEWs is not that the process started, but that it took until the Project was on its knees before CLG allowed this method of direct collaborative working to be put in place.

 

74) Poor CLG Project Management was compounded by what should have been the close relationship between the FireControl and Firelink projects. Delays to the FireLink Project have had a knock-on effect on FireControl and vice-versa.

 

75) It is clear from our discussion with a number of those involved in both projects that there was a lack of transparency, openness and communication between the two projects for prolonged and critical periods. The responsibility for that lies heavily at Departmental and ultimately ministerial level.

 

Firelink/FireControl

 

76) The original timetable to complete FireControl by December 2007 was tied to the completion of FireLink, the new digital radio system, which had a delayed completion date of December 2007. FireLink is providing the vast majority of the benefits claimed for RCCs and is very technically challenging in its own right.

 

77) While we know FireLink radio technology can work for brigade level controls there has to be a question mark over its capacity to work across several fire services region-wide. There are already genuine question marks about the capacity of Airwave, which is now a private monopoly supplier to the emergency services, given the increasing burdens being placed on it.

 

78) Delays to FireLink do have a knock-on effect on FireControl. Some of these were set out in a National Project Manager's Update, FireLink Strategic Snapshot- December 2007. This acknowledged that a number of fire services did not update their existing controls - known as legacy systems - because the new RCCs were meant to be in place by the end of 2007.

 

79) Delays to both the FireLink and FireControl Projects meant "interim solutions" had to be put in place to cope with the late-running of both Projects. Additional work had to be carried out with for what was described as the "longer extended interim solution".

 

80) Problems identified in the FireLink Phase A operational Rollout included: Fit out of 8 'pilot vehicles in each FRS: "temporarily stalled in the early regions due to delays by Airwave in providing test scripts." Issues with training "eg lack of training equipment."

 

81) Problems were identified in the Phase B launch date (the fit out of the main vehicle fleets). This was "progressively delayed as a result of....over ambitious forecasting and inadequate groundwork by Airwave....delays in submission of test scripts for Phase A acceptance work....knock-on effects of the (preceding) Police resilience programme."

 

82) These issues meant "Airwave roll out forecasts have been drifting increasingly out of synchronisation with events on the ground since the late summer". The result was a "realism adjustment" - a euphemism for a further delay. FireLink Project managers reported they had been able "to persuade Airwave fully to reflect the reality of where we are and their track record to date by adding a significant amount of contingency to their forecasting."

 

83) This strategic snapshot is also revealing in a number of other points. Concerns about the fitting of aerials to officers cars threw up other concerns about "the evolving FireControl Concept of Operations appears now to be shifting beyond the current FireLink scope of supply based on a wider interpretation of the term 'resilience'. Separate work is therefore now in hand...to clarify the FireControl Concept of Operations..."

 

84) The Concept of Operations would play a major role in setting out the technical specifications for the contract agree with EADS. That it was still evolving at this stage - there was still no fixed Concept of Operations - would make it much more difficult to establish the technical solution.

 

85) The same report includes part of a letter from Richard How, the senior civil servant heading up the FireControl Project on a day to day basis. This letter, to the FireLink team, reveals there were already concerns about delays for FireControl arising a matter of months after EADS secured the contract.

 

86) It revealed that Mr How had written to the FireLink team at the end of August 2007 about "concerns that the release dates for a number of products - in particular Convergence and Data Schema - from EADS were later than planned." Mr How told the FireLink team, operating from within the same Department and upon which FireControl depended, that EADS provided some information but that it would "be counter-productive" to share that with them at that time.

 

87) By November Mr How could still not share the information. He could say that "Since then we have been working closely with EADS to develop a comprehensive set of robust plans in which we all have confidence....However, EADS is not as far advanced as they and we hoped they would be....this lack of information is preventing the FRS from developing their detailed activity and resources plans....the failure to deliver to date is inevitably creating concerns about the capability to deliver as they have contracted.....the delay in providing information is compressing the time available that that (sic) the FRSs have to complete their activities...."

 

88) It would be unfair to Airwave and EADS not to point out that these documents only set out the views of CLG Project Managers. These comments may be unfair to one or both contractors, may not fully set out the full picture or be self-serving in other ways

 

89) What is clear is the Department was not ensuring the proper flow of full information between the key personnel and the key contractors working on two closely related Projects. If anything, the Department was a barrier to the flow of critical information between and within both Projects.

 

OVERVIEW - GETTING IT WRONG FROM THE START

 

90) The project is defined to operate under the Prince 2 project management process. Like all Project management processes these define tasks, timelines, costs, checkpoints/gateways, actions, personnel, risks and should include for contingencies. The documented hierarchy published in the Business cases (Part 1 and Part 2) provides for the accountability.

 

91) The published delays do not account for the difference in time from the original proposal and the current end date. There must therefore have been significant delays during 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 prior to the first re-alignment date. It would not be unreasonable for the Select Committee to request sight of the original Gantt chart (project plan) and the current one.

 

92) This should show (under Prince 2 guidelines) all of the slippages and the reasons and what corrective action, if any, was taken. All plans should be reviewed at least monthly if not more frequently and reports produced to show progress/issues/corrective action/costs to date. There are timelines in the Business case documents but these contain insufficient detail and were only produced in 2008/2009.

 

93) The FireControl Project was based on a 2003 report from Mott MacDonald, updating an earlier report. It purported to set out how a much better and more resilient system could be completed within 4 years, would pay for itself and save money.It was clearly flawed.

 

94) A key part of selling the original decision to proceed with the project was undoubtedly based on the financial information produced in the 2003 Mott McDonald which indicated there would be significant savings (£20 Million year on year) to be made on a Project costing £100 million. This produced the claim by then Minister Nick Raynsford that the project would pay for itself within five years.

 

95) There would be on-going savings, it was asserted, and these would be ploughed back into the fire service. On paper, it was a formidable case - a much better system, delivered in a few years, making massive savings using tried and tested technology.

 

96) As the Fire Brigades Union repeatedly pointed out, this was obvious nonsense to those with hands on experience of managing significant change in a control room environment. Even a brief consideration of numerous Public Accounts Committee and Select Committee reports would show national Government's inability to deliver projects that worked, on time and to budget.

 

97) It is belatedly accepted by Government that no national network of regional fire controls exists anywhere in the world. The technology has never been tried and tested on this scale, if at all, in a fire service environment. The technology is in development during the course of the Project and remains so.

98) The 2003 Mott MacDonald report also aligned FireControl with the Labour Government's Regional Government Programme. It is only in the context of a regional fire service that a regional control centre could make any sense at all, although there would still be issues of resilience and operational practicality.

 

99) The original initial capital one off costs, based over 10 years, were estimated as £100 million (Mott McDonald Full Report 2003 page 143) which included new buildings (£25.2 million), systems (£36 million), project management (£12.2 million) and redundancy costs (£27.1 million) with ongoing savings on costs of maintenance (£28.1 million) and ongoing staff savings (£143.3 million).

 

100) Completion was estimated to be 4 years after commitment, namely 2007. There is a major error in the Mott McDonald report that calculates the savings to be £70.8 million over 10 years. But they mistakenly had ongoing costs of maintenance as a saving rather than a cost. Taking this into account, the actual estimated savings should have been stated as £14.7 million, not £70.8 million.

 

101) Although the Government has reconfigured its arguments to be based on assertions - although not evidence - of better resilience, alleged cost savings have always been central to the Business Case for FireControl. This is cynical. Other options were and are being rejected on the basis they could show no savings.

 

102) The original cost estimates bear no relation to the actuality which has unfolded. While we have some sympathy to claims that further estimates are over different timescales to different specifications, it remains that the Project was originally pitched and sold on the basis of a very flawed report.

 

103) In our view it is not a reasonable excuse that specifications and scope changed and a project was adapted or added to. It is a consistent criticism of how things start to go wrong in major IT projects.

 

104) Some of the details of the promises on cost savings are set out in the FBU response to Business Case, April 2009 at p11. That document also sets out in some detail our major concerns about the Project which we will not repeat in this submission but attach as requested.

 

105) We also attach numerous independent reports commissioned from the Institute of public Finance which detail the progression of the Business Case. These are also attached and we will not re-visit all the detail within those reports.

 

WHAT THE GOVERNMENT CLAIMS THE PROJECT COSTS

 

106) The Government often uses figures which are different to or selectively chosen from those used in their Business Cases. These also need to be addressed.

 

107) Given the detailed information they must hold, there is little consistency in the Government claims of what the Project will cost. Figures are quoted over different time scales - some to 2012, others to 2020.

 

108) The fact that some of the leases, signed in 2007 onwards are over 20 years and some over 25 years extend beyond both dates. There appears to be no co-terminosity in the lease termination dates which are likely to close out between 2027 and 2032.

 

109) When it suits, and to 'prove' alleged savings, staffing costs of running the RCCs are included. At other times they are not.

 

110) It is an oft quoted comment from Government that critics of the project are not comparing like with like, or using different timescales. The Government appear to do this themselves, making it very difficult to tie down what the full costs are or even details how the costings have changed in the various Business Cases.

 

111) Differing language is used by Government to describe various costs as "basic initial costs", or "set up" costs to "estimated full cost of implementing FireControl". The Business Cases quote a figure of around £1.4 billion, although that does include on-going staffing costs through the life of the Project.

 

112) These are included by Government - it is their Business Case - because alleged savings were always based on cutting the numbers of emergency fire control staff. We will return to that issue later.

On 22 October 2009 the following question was asked and answered:

Mrs. Spelman: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what recent estimate he has made of the total cost of delivery of the FiReControl project; and what estimates were made in (a) 2004, (b) 2005, (c) 2006, (d) 2007 and (e) 2008. [293319]

Mr. Malik: The current estimated overall cost of delivery of the FiReControl Project for (a) 2004 was £120 million; (b) 2005-£160 million; (c) 2006-£190 million; (d) 2007-£360 million; and (e) 2008-£380 million.

 

On 2 November 2009 [source] Mr Malik answered in another question: The basic initial costs and timescales of implementing the FiReControl project, as originally estimated in 2004, were £120 million. Following more detailed work, project costs were updated to include funding to fire and rescue authorities for local and regional implementation activity, the costs of the regional control centre building leases and the costs of equipment to be installed in every fire station in England to support improved mobilisation.

The expenditure to date on the project is approximately £190 million. The estimated full cost of implementing FiReControl is £420 million.

 

113) Even on these figures the cost of the Project has more than tripled.

 

WHY HAVE COST INCREASED?

 

114) The reasons given in Mr Malik's reply for some of the increased costs show how ill-thought the original estimates were. Mott MacDonald's building costs estimates were £25.2 million and even over a ten year period (as opposed to the longer leases) are well short of the reality of the leasehold and other costs relating to the buildings.

 

115) The fact that Station End Equipment - the 'cost of equipment to be installed in every fire station' - were left out of the calculations - beggars belief. It meant the Project was moving along on the basis they had worked out the cost of the equipment needed to send a message, but not the fact there would need to be equipment to receive the message and it would have to be paid for.

 

116) In a letter dated 13 November in response to concerns raised by a constituent of Rob Marris MP Mr Malik goes further in explaining the cost and time overruns: "the FireControl technical solution has proved to be more complex than originally anticipated, and the development stages have taken much longer than expected." He asserted that the contract with EADS was signed with them having a full "understanding of the technical solution required....[nor having full] information about the amount of work that would need to be carried out by the individual 46 Fire and Rescue Authorities."

 

117) Only once the contract had been signed - which was in 2007 - he asserted, did "it become apparent that the Project scope needed to be broadened." No details of the broadening of the scope are given.

 

118) The Outline Business Case (OBC) November 2004 sets out in some detail (at Appendix C) why the costings in original Mott MacDonald report were wrong. The OBC identified some key areas of risks the Project would face including that there was a very high risk of total project failure.

 

119) The OBC uses a Private Developer Scheme (PDS) as its recommended method of supplying new Regional Control Centre buildings. It is an expensive option and the OBC underlines the catastrophic impact on any estimated savings of the buildings being completed more than six months before they are meant to become operational.

 

120) The OBC heavily flagged up, as a significant risk, the financial impact of the buildings being completed more than six months before they were to start becoming operational. It also pointed out the importance of there being a degree of co-terminosity for leases for the new RCC buildings which would become the national network of regional control centres. That is they would all expire and have to be renewed at approximately the same time or within a reasonable period of each other.

 

121) The OBC identified that from the signing of the PDS contracts to building completion would take around 18 months. Building in a six month rent-free period from practical completion to becoming operational would deal with the issue of rents being paid for empty buildings and is a sensible recommendation.

 

122) Having identified these two key traps to be avoided - and the mitigating steps needed to be taken to avoid them - the CLG Project Managers then walked into both traps. On 10 August 2005, without any further Business Case of any kind, CLG announced it was proceeding with the PDS scheme, sites had been identified and the contracts signed with the developers for between 20 years and 25 years and which come to an end between 2027 and 2033.

 

123) The minister, asked on 16 December in a Parliamentary Question by David Drew to make a statement as to how a national network was to be kept in place after the ending of the first set of leases in 2027 and the ending of the final leases in 2034, simply referred to the Landlord and Tenant Act..

 

124) The signing of the PDS contracts at such an early stage has been catastrophic. No update of the Outline Business Case was produced before the decision and no more detailed work had been done on costings, timescales or the prospects for the technology.

 

125) A draft Full Business Case was produced in 2006 and another update in 2007. Another was promised throughout 2008 and eventually appeared. The IPF reports on all of these are attached.

 

126) The Institute of Public Finance, in an independent report for the FBU, said in its assessment of the Private Developer Scheme PDS scheme - the biggest price 'ticket' for the whole project - did not demonstrate value for money. The IPF also identified a £200 million increase in the total project costs in the FireControl Business Case. The overall Project costs did not rise above the £1.4 billion identified in the previous 2007 Draft Business Case because an assumption was made which cut back on staffing costs by a further £200.

 

127) Having hastily signed the property contracts, the IT contracts then waited for more than 18 months to be signed. There was therefore no chance of the RCC buildings being operational six months after practical completion and rents becoming payable.

 

128) The IT contract was signed in March 2007 after much delay. As we pointed out earlier, by August 2007 CLG were already complaining about delays to DCMT1 and Convergence work. Why CLG expected such complex work to be completed within a few months has never been explained, but it was from the summer of 2007 that concerns about delays started to emerge.

 

129) Our own response to the Full National Business Case is also attached. We will not go through that in detail but attach it as requested. It does raise significant questions about resilience, call handling capacity and call filtering by BT and Cable and Wireless Operators.

 

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE - basic principles

 

130) First, a profound reality check is needed. There is little confidence left within the fire service that this Project is going anywhere good and it's not going anywhere soon.

That is an opportunity to re-think what basic principles should underpin what happens next.

 

1. There are political limits to how far local democratically controlled fire services are prepared to go towards regionalisation;

2. There are technical limits to what can be achieved at a regional level within a reasonable timescale and budget;

3. You should only be prepared to take great risks and go to great expense if there is evidence - not assertion or mere conviction - that the rewards are so great as to justify the level of risk being taken;

4. There must be clear link between the key strategic priorities of local fire services and any future Project configuration, including agreed measures of success.

5. There must be clear ownership and leadership driven by the needs of local fire services and not by the needs of central Government;

6. There must be an effective engagement with all key stakeholders and a re-building of confidence and co-operation;

7. End-users need to buy in to any future project and not have it used as an opportunity to drive down their working conditions or working environment;

8. Project managers must continue to demonstrate skills and a proven approach to project management and risk management.

9. There must be an agreed and realistic timetable, greater co-operation with all stakeholders including contractors with the aim of achieving a proper collaborative environment and not a return to a blame culture and key players being kept apart;

10. Adequate provision of resources and skills to deliver what is required.

The ten key principles we set out above should apply to any future configuration of how the benefits required from future systems are delivered. The key is delivering what local fire and rescues say they need going forward, utilising at least some of the work, and possibly some of the RCC buildings if appropriate.

 

131) Alternatives to FireControl are already being explored with or without the knowledge or co-operation of CLG. Our preferred option, on the basis of speed, cost and confidence in it as a solution is to utilise upgraded existing controls.

 

132) This not a 'do-nothing' option. The union is also prepared to consider any Business Case presented which considers other options. We would urge that under any other options, including RCCs if Government does press ahead.

 

133) A decision to press ahead regardless does not make success a certainty. The technology may never be made to work in the way required of it.

 

January 2010