3 Use of Advisers
12. The Agency should have done more to limit the
amount spent on advisers who will have benefited from the drawn
out procurement. It relied heavily on advisers throughout the
project, spending £80 million between April 2004 and March
2010.[19] The Agency
told us that the monthly invoices from consultants had been checked
against the relevant framework agreements, which had been negotiated
in a competitive environment. But the Agency was not able to say
to what extent the bills submitted by consultants had been challenged
in this process.[20]
13. The National Audit Office noted in its report
that the Agency's reliance on advisers had built up over time
and in part reflected insufficient commercial and technical skills
within the Agency. It therefore risked advisers controlling projects
and having little incentive to transfer knowledge back to the
Agency.[21] The Agency
told us that each of the streams of work on the project had been
led by its staff, thereby avoiding the issue of consultants managing
consultants. The Agency could not tell us what proportion of its
staff budget had been spent on consultants. However, it subsequently
supplied data which showed that the estimated annual cost of consultants
advising the Agency had fallen from £30 million a year to
£12 million a year during 2010 and that the Agency's own
staff costs were some £140 million a year.[22]
14. We were unable to take evidence from the Agency's
Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) for the project from 2005 to June
2009 as he had left the Agency to work for Parsons Brinckerhoff,
a company that was then employed as an adviser on the project.
This company's contract was terminated, to avoid potential conflicts
of interest, in October 2009, when it was taken over by Balfour
Beatty, one of the contractors to the project. The Agency told
us that as a senior civil servant the SRO had been through the
Cabinet Office clearance process prior to leaving, and that one
of the resulting conditions of his departure was that he would
work on rail projects. The Agency told us that the former SRO
was working exclusively on rail projects, but it was not clear
what arrangements were in place to ensure that that was the case.[23]
19 C&AG's Report, para 2.23 Back
20
Qq192-198 Back
21
C&AG's Report, para 20 Back
22
Ev 22 Back
23
Qq24, 25, 40-44 Back
|
