Nothing new in this HS2 process of securing Government support for a capital project, basically the early estimates are not in depth enough to reveal the true costs of the project and secondly there is an incentive to have a low cost project to promote and engender Government buy in and support. Once you have the financial support, then inevitably the costs rise in part due to scope creep and greater in depth understanding of the true cost....simple things like doubling (over the original estimate) the cleared area for the train to operate along has a massive impact and should have been recognised at the outset.
Seen it on a much lower scale in other government projects especially IT. You cant imagine the cost of re-platforming from ICL to IBM platforms the Government has been undertaking over the last 20 years or so, it staggers belief and still they build software for government applications in silo's so separate standalone systems and data bases for each Government department ie HMRC, NHS, DWP and so on and within departments so JSA, is separate to Pensions, each with their own database even though they will have common data eg name, address, DOB etc .. Each separate database has different validation criteria eg Pensions validates DOB and NI Number as that is a critical part of the payment criteria of pensions, JSA will also have a DOB but its not verified and could be different to the Pensions system record. Very few records are shared and common as different reliance is placed on the data according to the legislation framework. It has been improving with the introduction of what became to be known as ' pipe and triggers'...where data or an event was shared between silo's. That 's why in the past many government forms eg UB40 asked the claimant what other benefits they were receiving as the government department paying unemployment benefit did not always know. Universal Credit is now linking all benefit payments, but probably still doesn't talk to the HMRC personal records for that individual.
