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Carrier Vessel for the Future (CVF) Queen Elizabeth Class Part 5
The "Smart" Procurement Process The MOD's
The Smart Procurement philosophy states that:
T This has six phases: concept; assessment; demonstration; manufacture; in-service, and disposal – all of different lengths, of course, with a two-stage approach to the formal approvals at the initial and remaining dates. CVF is currently (early 2007) in the third phase of the CADMID cycle, the demonstration phase, intended to ensure the design, build maturity, strategy, industrial capacity, costs and, importantly, the risks, are fully understood and accepted before the substantive manufacture and therefore costs are incurred. In practice, in relation to the CVF Project the concepts of Smart Procurement have some times been badly over shadowed by politics, and practicalities such as cost constraints. For example in the Concept Phase and early stages of the Assessment Phase the design was driven by the users Statement of Need and documented key requirements – with the suppliers being given considerable flexibility in deciding how these were to be best met. It was only in mid-2003 - just a few months away from the then scheduled Main Gate review - that it became clear that the increasingly refined cost estimates being generated by the suppliers bore no relation to the available budget, and the subsequent painful retrenchment has had a major impact on the procurement process and schedule since then.
Actual procurement approach
Project Planning The MOD and the Integrated Project Team IPT have made strenuous efforts to manage the CVF Project - which is part of the bigger Carrier Strike Programme - in accordance with modern best practice. The difficulties in managing such a large programme with so many stakeholders and interdependencies cannot be underestimated - and that's before vested interests, politics and budget constraints come in to plays. The following diagram is unfortunately hard to read here as a graphic, but does help to show the complexity event at the highest level:
Programme Plan for Carrier Strike (c.2016)
The almost top row (with the brown fill) shows JCA Programme and Equipment, assuming orders approved in early 2008 and delivery's starting from 2011/12. The row below shows a CVF milestone in late 2006 (missed) and the CVF's under construction (black bars) from mid-2008, with deliveries in mid-2012 and early 2015. MASC is the next row down, with entry in to service in 2016 an initial operational capability in 2018 The key on the right first lists 14 organisations involved (CVF Integrated Project Team at the top, DOC at the bottom) and then 12 stakeholders (Senior Responsible Officer at the top, Assistant Chief of the Defence Staff (Policy) at the bottom) A major problem for the CVF project is that it was originally intended to be synchronised with associated projects such as JCA, MASC and MARS. Unfortunately the linkages soon broke down (usually due to funding problems) and in fact each of these programmes is now at a different stage of the procurement cycle, which has apparently added enormously to the complexity of designing and building CVF.
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© 2004-8 Richard Beedall unless otherwise indicated. |
