2 We undertook an issue analysis examining:
■ Whether the rationale for the College reflected the Department's overall strategy for the promotion of jointery in its operations;
■ Whether the College was delivering the required training outcomes cost-effectively; and
■ Whether the PFI had enabled the cost-effective delivery of new facilities.
3 In reviewing the procurement of the PFI deal, we followed the standard methodology described in our report Examining the Value for Money of deals under the Private Finance Initiative (HC 739, 1998-99). We augmented this with an examination of the PFI contract's performance after its signature to reflect the fact that the new facilities were occupied in August 2000. We collected the evidence in support of our findings under each of these issues from the information contained in the Department's records and from discussions with the Department. We also discussed the PFI deal with the private sector contractor, Defence Management.
4 As regards the training provided by the College we compared the methods used by the College to evaluate this training with those used by overseas staff colleges, civilian providers of management training, and private sector customers of such courses. We also ran a focus group of graduates of the Advanced course.