From what is now known, the Air Warfare Destroyer project is almost certainly on its way to the infamous project of concern list.
'More than 2400 faults' in data on $8bn destroyers.
The he-said, she-said is on-going. When reading through all of this just remember that it was the responsibility of the Defence bureaucracy to properly evaluate the risk, do their homework and set it up for the Defence Minister to put pen to paper or reject it as unworkable.
3 comments:
I thought it was the job of DMO to "manage" these projects.
Surely with 7,500 employees and growing, and a budget of 1.2 billion for admin, this should be a simple task?
I am sure that te enquiries into Duntroon etc will fix this problem.
The Australian military once successfully managed their own hardware acquisitions and maintenance thereof. DMO was supposedly created for centralised project co-ordination purposes, but has since moved beyond that to involve in project partnerships/alliances and providing maintenance arrangements for the military.
DMO does not answer to the Minister for Defence but a separate ministry and consider the number of politicians who have had oversight of that agency over the past 5 or so years, spending taxpayer dollars without the slightest idea of what they were dealing with.
Majority of the 'projects of concern' were originated during the reign of the Howard government and it was they who decided the unaffordable compounding increases in defence expenditure out to 2030. Rudd said 'me too' to that unrealistic planning and compounded it further with his flawed DWP2009.
All that says the responsibility for capability gaps and the diminishing military capacity of the ADF rests squarely with the politicians of both major political parties. They fostered the ongoing multiple flawed project fiascos through allowing DMO to grow beyond its original purpose.
Out of interest, for a project to get onto the "projects of concern" list, it has to trigger at least one of four "gateways".
These are:
1. Cost. The overall project cost must have blown out by 20% beyond original budget.
2. Schedule. Project slippage must have blown out by over 20%.
3. Capability. The project must be likely to provide significantly inferior to that initially contracted for.
4. Contractor commitment. The selected contractor must have shown increasingly limited commitment to delivering the project.
In the case of the AWD, none of these triggers have yet been met. Even the 24 month blowout, reported by the Minister only represents a schedule slippage of roughly 9%. Cost, capability and contractor commitment haven't been effected at all with the current issue.
Post a Comment