3.20 DVTA's Public Sector Comparator (PSC)10, completed before the contract was signed, indicated that the 18-minute PFI solution had a value-for-money benefit of some £5.6 million (16 percent), over the likely cost of DVTA providing the service from its own resources. Consultants engaged by DVTA in May 2004 to recalculate the PSC, in light of the longer test times, concluded that, even with a 27-minute test, the PFI solution continued to provide an adequate, albeit reduced, value-for-money margin of 11 per cent.
3.21 In addition to this finding, DVTA told us that the test times achieved with the MOT2 equipment have never exceeded those achieved with the older equipment by more than 30 seconds. It also told us that the project has delivered a number of significant benefits, including:
• replacement of the previous equipment, which was old and obsolete, increasingly unreliable and prone to high maintenance costs, with a more suitable alternative;
• the provision of integrated software, which has enabled vehicle testing to be performed to a more objective standard;
• the equipment procured allowed for the introduction of headlamp beam testing from March 2005, and the commencement of testing of smoke emissions and catalytic converters from March 2006 (see paragraph 2.24);
• removal of a considerable number of civil engineering health and safety risks, which were apparent in the old testing systems and facilities; and
• the risk of equipment breakdown costs has been transferred to the private sector contractor.
3.22 It is useful that DVTA re-calculated the cost of the MOT2 project, to verify the value for money of the PFI solution (see paragraph 3.20). However, we noted that:
• DVTA incurred substantial costs (including relevant internal administrative and consultancy costs) after contract signature, which the revised PSC did not include. In addition, the PSC only contained estimates of the likely additional manpower costs, and more accurate outturn figures are now available; and
• the re-calculation of the initial PSC was undertaken by the same consultancy firm that had acted as financial advisers for DVTA up to contract signature. DVTA told us that the staff involved in the re-calculation of the PSC had not been involved previously in the project.
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10. A Public Sector Comparator is a benchmark of the cost of providing the proposed service by a conventional procurement, from a public body's own resources, against which the cost of a PFI solution can be compared.