I have a Cousin working at the HOOB as a design engineer. His view is that many of the problem are caused by starting working before having a good survey of the current state of the infrastructure. He finds he is still designing things that should have been settled before the work on the ground started as they go along.
The wrong sort of railway, maybe? It seems incredible that basic information about the railway was not available before work commenced, especially with the amount of work done trackside for signalling. I suppose detailed soil surveying etc isn't straightforward when there is a live railway running. Would setailed surveying have reduced the overall cost, though, or made electrification less likely? Could there have been a decision made quietly somewhere not to look too closely until work had got to the point of no return? Discuss.
I think his view was that if they had known the extent of the work that needed doing then the pre-start estimate would have been higher, but less than the bill will turn out to be.
the thing with construction projects IIUI is that it is
delays that come with a big price tag. You can end up paying to do a job but not completing it because the bank is unstable or the signalling cables are in the way. You then have to pay for a redesign and then you have to pay for the job a second time.
The impression I got was that the planning stage was rushed and incomplete.
I should add that my cousin is a civil rather than electrical engineer. It was info on things like the state of the embankments that they are sticking the masts in that he said was lacking. Part of that of course could simply be due to the age of the network and the dubious and unrecorded practices of the navies 175 years ago.
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