One does wonder – when did the team responsible stop thinking that “MENSA” was a frightfully clever and amusing name for one of these nuclear infrastructure projects? As Marvin the Paranoid Android might have said: “The first £500M over budget was the worst, and the second £500M, that was the worst too…”
An unkind reader might think that the Mensa IQ criterion had been spread across the whole project team.
In another classic, building started early on an expensive facility – before the equipment to go inside it had been fully designed. To save time, of course. Unfortunately Moore’s Law does not apply to nuclear equipment and it turned out to be too big for its new home. (Spoiler alert) This meant that rather than saving time, there was a non-trivial delay.
As usual, a clear and well written report form the NAO. Unfortunately, much of the story sounds depressingly familiar, as do the key ingredients – requirements, commercial arrangements, oversight and all that. However it seems a bit unfair to criticise failure to learn from previous UK nuclear infrastructure programmes 30+ years earlier – corporate knowledge would surely have disappeared. But there is recognition of the skills/knowledge gap, and recruitment issues – hardly a new story.
Fortunately the NAO identify some signs of improvement, so perhaps there will be a happy ending after all. Not like Dr Strangelove.
