20. Improved knowledge of the system's assets is needed to help the parties better manage the risk of problems arising and bring greater cost certainty. Full asset knowledge will be developed as the Infracos do remedial work on various lines. Some of the long life assets, such as tunnel walls or embankments, are very difficult to get at and all of them will need maintenance and renewal at some stage. As their actual state is unknown it is difficult to quantify the cost of that work. For example, the sub-surface lines can be walked every night for inspection and analysis, but engineers will only know if the tracks are stable and safe once the lines are taken apart. There is an urgent need for a thorough asset register to indicate which assets ought to be repaired or replaced first. London Underground is pressing the Infracos to develop full asset registers as early as possible.
21. London Underground said it needs more transparent cost information from the Infracos, for example on the cost of major capital projects. It said that initial information to date from the Infracos was inconsistent and, in some cases, inadequate compared to the greater level of detail that was available during the bidding stages of the deals. For example, London Underground does not yet know the extent to which the Infracos are using their contingency allowances. These allowances were included in the bid prices to cover potential but unspecified risks. Rather than keeping these sums separate, as they were during bid evaluation, they have been aggregated into Infraco general budgets making it difficult to track the drawdown of such risk funds. Tube Lines has expressed willingness to provide the arbiter with a breakdown of how its general budgets are spent.24
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
24 Qq 36-44, 75-76, 108-116; Ev 28-30; C&G's Report (HC 644), Executive Summary, paras 11-12, para B3.1