2.2 From 1993, the Home Office supported the project by making available technical expertise from its Radio Frequency and Communications Planning Unit (see Figure 6 overleaf). In addition, PITO employed radio communications experts seconded from police forces, who not only had experience of police radio systems, but also possessed knowledge of the costs of building and operating these systems. While the in-house members of the team were well qualified to support the project, there were insufficient resources to process administrative work properly during the procurement.
2.3 The project was managed using a methodology known as PRINCE (PRojects IN a Controlled Environment). This was used successfully in establishing user groups and other means to communicate widely with police forces and potential sharers. The procurement progressed through a series of phases, which were reviewed and cleared in accordance with PRINCE guidance.
2.4 However, early documentation and record keeping was sparse. Progress reports were slow to cover all areas, while monitoring of procurement costs was incomplete. For instance, as late as July 1996, there was no mechanism in place to compare expenditure on advisers with forecasts. Without such mechanisms, PITO could not assess the performance of its advisers in terms of delivering procurement products within allocated budgets and so there was an increased risk that procurement costs could escalate unchecked. Despite our efforts to obtain early financial information, none was uncovered during the course of our work. As a result, we have not obtained comprehensive figures for the cost of procuring Airwave. Figure 7 shows the advisers' costs we were able to obtain.
2.5 Later in the procurement, a lack of adequate resources also contributed to decisions not to take work forward that would have benefited the procurement process. For instance, although PITO prepared the ground for a robust fallback to Airwave, this work was not carried through. Also, PITO delayed quantification of future benefits until after contract signature.