11. A key factor in the management of the funding competition was the appointment of experienced advisers by the Treasury and Exchequer Partnership.7 As the cost of professional advice had amounted to about £2.6 million, we asked if it was necessary to rely so heavily on advisers. The Treasury said that as it was a complicated process they had equipped themselves with a good advisory team. However, the existence at that time of the Treasury Taskforce meant that the Treasury had not been over-dependent on external advisers. Asked whether there was a case for other departments to build up more internal expertise, thereby reducing the reliance on costly external advisers, the Treasury said that this was the reason for the formation of Partnerships UK. As a repository of PFI expertise available for use throughout the public sector, the existence of such a central body would avoid the risk of the public sector re-inventing the wheel every time a PFI project was undertaken.8
12. We asked the Treasury if such a large investment in professional advice would have been made if the project had been a conventional, public sector procurement. They thought that too little would probably have been spent on advice if the project had been procured conventionally, although they did not have a specific figure in mind. Work by the Office of Government Commerce had demonstrated that many public sector projects tended to go wrong from an early stage. The message to departments was that they should invest in getting projects right from the start, whether they were procured conventionally or through the PFI.9
13. Poor public sector project delivery may suggest that project management skills have in the past been undervalued within Whitehall, so we asked whether a successful project manager had ever become a permanent secretary. We were told that permanent secretaries needed particular skills that reflected their heavy involvement in policy advice, working very closely with Ministers. The emphasis in the past had been on the policy aspects of the job rather than delivery, and project management skills may not have been as highly rated as other skills. However, there was now a shift in emphasis to successful delivery, which would give project management skills much greater significance and importance in the future.10
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
7 C&AG's Report, paras 1.12-1.14