The project team had to address a number of changes which delayed tendering

3.2  There were a number of policy, operational and other changes during the procurement of the NRTS contract that led to delays:

a  In July 2000, the Department for Transport published "Transport 2010: The 10 Year Plan". The published plan meant that the procurement team had to take account of plans for roadside communications at a time when the Agency had no firm strategies in place to meet its new objectives.

b  The decision in March 2001 to expand the scope of the project to include: upgrading the telecommunications technology from analogue to digital systems; and maintenance of telecommunication links between the trunk cable network and 14,000 roadside devices.

c  Between 2001 and 2004, the procurement team had to respond to challenges from within the Agency about the suitability of the proposed PPP for the NRTS.

d  Changes to the telecommunications systems to accommodate a Ministerial decision to bring forward the replacement of 32 police control offices with seven regional control centres and the introduction of the Traffic Officer service.

e  Changes to the proposed specification and other documents to reflect the results of the 2003-2004 affordability review.

f  In spring 2005, a two-month long intervention in the negotiations by GeneSYS's debt providers.

3.3  We tried to locate papers that explained and quantified the amount of delay and disruption caused by the above events, but found little that sufficiently linked causes and effects. Although the Agency kept detailed records of the hours worked by each member of KHHD's team, the activity descriptions, with few exceptions, were not sufficiently detailed to disaggregate the extra work needed to respond to the above events. We, therefore, cannot judge whether the costs involved were minimised.