24. Our 2013 report on the Thameslink programme found that the Department's plans for the franchise to operate the new service was not joined up with plans for infrastructure work and new trains and we recommended that the Department should focus on integrated planning and aligning decision-making across the different elements of complex programmes from the start.50 Similarly, our 2017 report on the Great Western modernisation programme found that the Department failed to integrate all the elements needed to deliver benefits for passengers successfully at the planning stage, and did not manage the programme in a joined-up way. We recommended that the Department ensure that it plans major developments to rail services in a way that brings together the trains, infrastructure work and the operation of services.51
25. The former Chief Executive told us that Crossrail Ltd, and its suppliers, had significantly underestimated the complexity and volume of work needed for the computerised system that will be used to operate the railway and stations. He stated that there were elements coming together in the stations that have never been done before, driven by the aim to deliver a digital railway that could be controlled from the stations and remotely.52 The previous Chair told us that he was in no doubt that Crossrail Ltd had underestimated the challenge of system integration.53 He added that he thought delays to the trains being ready for testing was one of the things that prevented Crossrail Ltd having an in-depth understanding of system integration.54 Despite the complexity of the programme, the NAO found that the company did not have a fully integrated plan to complete the programme and did not have the skills it needed to understand all the risk and challenge of integrating all the complex elements of the programme. From 2015 onwards, Crossrail Ltd produced a series of plans known as the Master Operational Handover Schedule.55 This Handover Schedule was presented to the Department as the fully integrated plan that would take the programme from the civil engineering phase to completion of the programme and operation of the railway. Both the Department and the current Chief Executive of Crossrail Ltd accepted that this plan was not sufficient to enable all the activities required to be fully integrated.56
26. The lack of a detailed plan to complete the programme, and the lack of understanding about the volume of work remaining also meant that the more than £2 billion of additional cost of the programme remained hidden until very late in the day. The current Chief Executive told us that these costs were always present in the programme but recognised that the system of monitoring that was in place in Crossrail Ltd did not provide the information that the executive needed to understand the true cost of the programme.57 Crossrail Ltd told us that further work was required at the Canary Wharf station. The station was built by the Canary Wharf Group on a design-build contract. The Canary Wharf Group informed us in a letter received after our evidence session that it completed the station according to the standards and specifications agreed with Crossrail Ltd in September 2015.58 The former Chief Executive of Crossrail Ltd told us that when the station was handed over to Crossrail Ltd in 2017, further work would be needed for the station to meet the specifications required of an operational railway. Crossrail Ltd told us that it had spent around £80 million changing the equipment in the station to enable make it equivalent to the standards required for a London underground station.59 In our evidence session in March 2019, the former Chief Executive told us that Crossrail Ltd had spent a lot of time working on a logical sequence for the remaining work.60 Crossrail Ltd asserted that it now had a plan that sequences activities that enables the railway to open with all the stations, excluding Bond Street, and was now in a position to be able to set out exactly what is left to do at every station.61
__________________________________________________
50 Committee of Public Accounts, Progress in delivering the Thameslink programme, Twenty-sixth report of Session 2013-14, HC 296, 29 October 2013
51 Committee of Public Accounts, Modernising the Great Western Railway, Forty-fourth report of Session 2016-17, HC 776, 3 March 2017
52 Qq 77, 94-96
53 Q 55
54 Qq 98-99
55 Qq 100-109, C&AG's report, paras 12, 2.24-2.27
56 Qq 10 5 -10 8, 111
57 Qq 10 9 -111
58 Letter from Canary Wharf Group to PAC Chair, dated 17 May 2019
59 Qq 131-142
60 Committee of Public Accounts, Oral evidence - Crossrail: progress review, HC 925, 6 March 2019, Qq 46, 97
61 Qq 113 -11 4