This morning the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) published its report into Network Rail’s engineering overruns at Rugby.

Perfect timing, since last night I gave a talk to the bristol Branch of the British Computer Society (“Effective Risk Management in the Real World”), in which I said the recent troubles at Network Rail were a perfect example of how not to communicate risks to stakeholders. 

My argument wasn’t that the overrun couldn’t be avoided, but that the failure to communicate the risk of an overrun meant that the train operators could not put contingency plans into effect in time.

The report makes interesting reading.  The ORR found that Network Rail’s project management processes were generally very good.  However the further on you read the worse the news gets.

Here’s just a few extracts.  They make disturbing reading:

• It seemed clear at least two months before the proposed start of the work that there would be a significant risk that the engineering work would overrun
• Until 21:00 hrs on 30 December Network Rail was still telling Virgin Trains that the track would be handed back on time.  It was not until 14:00 hrs on 31 December that Network Rail declared an overrun
• On 31 December Network Rail concluded that an overrun would happen.  However the full extent of the remaining work was not properly understood.  Only when a detailed check was carried out was the shortfall in the work discovered.  In formation to train operators was updated on the morning of 1 January 2008 and at 14:00 hrs the overrun was turned into an operational incident.