2.10 Metronet made cooperative working difficult by failing to provide London Underground with good quality performance and cost information in the way envisaged under the contract. London Underground responded by taking a number of steps to improve cooperative working:
■ in 2004, it held meetings with Metronet to improve procedures for agreeing the scope of station work;
■ in 2006, it requested that PricewaterhouseCoopers undertake a forensic audit of Metronet to obtain better quality information; and
■ in 2007, its staff co-located with Metronet's project teams for the stations programme and the Victoria Line upgrade.
2.11 Parts of London Underground could have, however, cooperated more fully with Metronet. While London Underground has emphasised that the Chief Programmes Officer generally operated as the single point of contact, on occasions London Underground performed like a collection of autonomously operated businesses, with inconsistent approaches. To get agreement on the scope of stations work, Metronet and Tube Lines needed approval from a number of different directorates within London Underground (Figure 7).
2.12 London Underground focused on holding Metronet to account for delivery. The actions of some of its staff, however, led to additional costs in some areas, particularly the stations programme. London Underground's requests for changes during the design and, less frequently, the construction phase of the work sometimes required arrangements over station access plans, suppliers, materials and design to be changed, contributing to delays and additional costs. An example of this type of problem is Tube Lines' construction work on Northfields station (Appendix 5).