{"id":3643,"date":"2012-10-05T12:18:06","date_gmt":"2012-10-05T16:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/?p=3643"},"modified":"2026-04-24T09:24:02","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T16:24:02","slug":"west-coast-railway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/?p=3643","title":{"rendered":"Department of Transport – West Coast Railway Franchise"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following entry is a record in the “Catalogue of Catastrophe<\/a>\u201d –\u00a0a list of failed and troubled projects from around the world.<\/p>\n

\n

Department of Transport\u00a0<\/strong>– UK
\nProject name :<\/strong>\u00a0West Coast Rail Franchise Competition
\nProject type : <\/strong>Tendering process for operations of passenger rail system
\nDate :<\/strong>\u00a0Sep 2012
\nCost :<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a340 to \u00a3100 Million estimated<\/p>\n

Synopsis :
\n<\/strong>Operated by private companies, the British rail system is divided into a number of distinct regions. \u00a0The contract for the West Coast line linking London, Birmingham, Manchester and Scotland had been successfully operated by partnership lead by Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group since 1997. \u00a0Based on a 15 year franchise the contract was due for renewal in Dec 2012. \u00a0The British Department of Transport announced in Sep 2012 that bidding processes for the next 15 year contract had been won by rival First Group.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
West Coast express – Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic – Source: S Wilding<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Following an appeal by Virgin, the government was forced to admit that the tendering process was flawed. The contract award was cancelled and the government forced to repay the bid costs for the 4 companies that had participated in the process. \u00a0Following the cancellation\u00a0\u00a3225M was wiped off the market value of First Group.<\/p>\n

Analysis of the rival bids showed that\u00a0errors had been made on anticipated “passenger numbers, inflation and growth forecasts.” \u00a0In addition different bids handled risk costs (required bond type costs) in different ways resulting in apples-to-oranges bids that allowed the tendering process to be won by First Group unfairly. \u00a0The process as further called into question after it emerged that a report on bidding flaws in the competition had been published prior to the announcement of First Group’s win, however that report had been ignored.<\/p>\n

Contributing factors as reported in the press:
\n<\/strong>Inappropriate management of communications during bidder process. Failure to ensure all bidders were given equal access to information during the bid process. Lack of quality control measures to ensure fairness.<\/p>\n

Reference links :<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. West Coast Main Line: Minister ‘not aware’ of rail flaw<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Cabinet Ministers Under Pressure Over Costly West Coast Mistake<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. West Coast Mainline<\/a> – Wikipedia<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The following entry is a record in the “Catalogue of Catastrophe\u201d –\u00a0a list of failed and troubled projects from around the world. Department of Transport\u00a0– UK Project name :\u00a0West Coast Rail Franchise Competition Project type : Tendering process for operations of passenger rail system Date :\u00a0Sep 2012 Cost :\u00a0\u00a340 to \u00a3100 Million estimated Synopsis : […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[116,4,3],"tags":[117,100,130,129,93,147],"class_list":["post-3643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contract-management","category-government","category-failed-project","tag-example-failed-contract-management","tag-examples-of-failed-projects","tag-government","tag-failed-project","tag-why-do-projects-fail","tag-why-projects-fail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3643"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10147,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3643\/revisions\/10147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}