Thursday 18 December 2008

tie, huh, what is it good for?

Transport Initiatives Edinburgh (tie) is the body supposedly managing the Edinburgh Tram project.

Being an inquisitive type chappie, I submitted a Freedom of Information request to this shiny body back in November, asking for:
the latest overall cost projections for tramline 1a and tramline 1b. I
would like one global figure for each line and the date on which the projection
was made.

A simple request you might think. Apparently not, the deadline has come and gone without reply.

If you're managing a major project you have (or should have) a constantly updated headline figure with all of its babies, a constantly updated risk register, and a constantly updated timeline (past and future). In other words, it should have been the work of a few seconds to look up the two amounts and the date they were last updated and fire the information back to the fine chap who asked for it.

There's more than one possible explanation:
tie is old school and doesn't think the information should be released, or
tie doesn't have the figures because they haven't kept up to date, or
tie doesn't want to let the figures out because they look bad, or
tie is hoping that people will go away and stop bothering it, or
tie is just realising what a mess this all is and is sobbing gently under the desk, or
tie just doesn't like me and it's me that should be sobbing gently under the desk, or
tie forgot about me, it never calls, it never writes ...

Personally, I think it's because the cost is now approaching £800 million for line 1a and 1b wasn't a guaranteed cost at all. The only promise made so far, of course, is that it won't come in at ten times the budget. Less than £5 billion then - oh, goody.

Mind how you go.

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