GLA admits metronet are a bit rubbish

Progress in the last (I presume they mean the most recent - or do they ) year includes screwing up the District for weeks due to not de-stressing the track........ SO that's an improvement to boast about then......

I do wish these companies (and Metronet is far from being the only one) would not try to put spin on every report. I actually feel quite sorry for the guys at the railhead doing the work. They may well be doing better behind the scenes at the moment but why don't the bosses leave it till there's something to show, then do a huge release and boast properly. This way they just sound like politicians and nobody will believe them when they do have something really positive to say.

Actually, the PPP business model was originally based on the idea that improvements would increase travel (by 40% IIRC) and this would pay for the investment by the Treasury. Where they were going to put the extra 40% of punters baffles me.

Reading the Arbiter's report is instructive. Metronet gets paid a monthly fee. This (for the most part) keeps coming in like a standing order. Since its shareholders are doing all the work, Metronet is effectively just distributing the money amongst its owners as it arrives. This means there is no incentive for work to be done. In fact, it's almost an incentive not to. Any mechanism introduced to speed up work will be shouted down by the shareholders who have already had enough money to cover their initial investment in setting up the company.

There is also evidence from the report that they reverted to the age old contractor's method of doing as little as possible except for building a big claims list and occupying LU's time arguing over it.

Now they've been rumbled, they realise that they might actually lose the job, or at least run into trouble because they will lose out at the 7.5 year review. Now they will have to go to competitive bidding for all their civil engineering work - and about time too.

Interesting though, that rolling stock work has been listed as better than the rest. The 92TS failure rate has improved by 300% since Metronet took over. Only the 72TS rate remains constant.

Finally, it is noted that LU doesn't come out smelling of roses either. They spent too much time making decisions about station upgrade requirements.

The PPP contract pays Metronet and Tubelines in two ways: day to day service delivery i.e. maintenance and the other is upgrade work (with of course all the checks and balances from LU and HMRI to ensure safety). Like in any other large engineering contract the monthly payment is to keep the contractor's cash flow going in order to pay for the labour, equipment and materials required for the next lot of work to be done. The payments are meant to pay for operating costs and finance all the required upgrade work locked into the PPP. When the first 7.5 years are up LU will check all the upgrade targets are met and will recover costs for work not done.

Where Metronet and Tubelines diverge are their procurement strategies. Metronet use what they call "supply chains" basically all its needs are provided internally by its shareholder companies - a bit like keeping it in the family where cash is passed from one pocket to the other.

Like LU and the infracos pre-PPP, Metronet are still responsible for planning, managing and designing but when engaging a contractor to do the physical work shareholder subsiduary companies are automatically awarded the work without competitive tender. The justification was to avoid the cost of tendering and to have a contractor already mobilised, familiar with working on LU, to get work up and running as quick as possible. What happens in practice I won't be publishing on a public forum.

To some degree this wouldn't have happened without LU's agreement in accepting Metronet's Safety Case.