■ Field Electrical Power Supplies project: When the generators were deployed in October 2003 the Department discovered that they were incompatible with certain vehicles. The vehicles, when pulling the generators, suffered manoeuvrability problems and could not safely turn corners. The Field Electrical Power Supplies Project Team had nevertheless accepted the generators as suitable for their needs following validation testing and user trials in 2002 and 2003. The Department decided to modify the generators and paid the subcontractor £7.3 million to extend the 'A' frame that attaches the generator to the vehicle. This contractual change was made without competition in order to get the generators operational within the required timeframe. The project team does not believe it maximised value for money from this change.
■ Further details of the issues and results of problems experienced by the case study projects arising from insufficient robust data are set out in Figure 11.
2.7 In some of our case studies, actual usage has turned out to be different from the Department's expectations when developing the project. Some of these problems arose because the Department's operational needs proved to be different than those initially anticipated in the specification.