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There are still concerns over whether the MoD's Equipment Plan is affordable. The Ministry underspent by a huge £1.2 billion on the Equipment Plan in 2012-13. Yet it has no idea whether this is because of genuine savings or whether costs are simply being stored up for later years because of delays on projects. This underspending makes it tempting for the Treasury to take them as savings at the expense of the defence equipment capabilities our armed services need. The MoD also does not properly understand the costs of maintenance and technical support, despite the fact that such support costs, £87 billion over ten years, and accounts for over half of the spend on the Equipment Plan budget. It also does not know whether its contingency of £4.7 billion is a sufficient buffer against risks to the Plan. The affordability of the Equipment Plan is heavily reliant on achieving significant savings in some of its major programmes. For example, the MoD has assumed savings of over £2 billion in two large programmes, the Complex Weapons and Submarine Enterprise Performance Programmes, but achieving these will be a challenge. Any changes to these two programmes could jeopardise the expected savings and so put affordability at risk. Project teams do not yet have enough staff with the right skills to employ proper cost and risk management techniques. Treasury and Cabinet Office should look across Government at skills shortages and go for solutions that do not require bureaucratic reorganisations to recruit skilled people at market rates.
The work of the Major Projects Authority is supported but without stronger powers it is unlikely to achieve its aim of a systemic improvement in project delivery across government. The projects in the MPA's portfolio represent a huge and rising cost to the taxpayer. The MPA, however, only has informal influence over departments. It has no powers if a department decides to proceed with a project against MPA advice. It needs to have stronger, more formal mechanisms for driving change, and there should be transparency where ministers or officials have rejected its recommendations. The MPA also needs to focus its efforts more on the early stages of a project, working with departments to ensure that they have devoted sufficient attention to the concept, design and business case for projects before seeking approval. It could also improve its impact by prioritising its work more effectively. The creation of the Major Projects Leadership Academy is welcomed, but the MPA needs to target top decision-makers as well as managers. Nobody in central government is responsible for overseeing projects at a strategic whole-of-government level. The Treasury should take ownership and responsibility for overseeing the government portfolio. The MPA should also publish more information on each project, including the amount spent to date, even if this means reviewing the Government's transparency policy. There is also particular concern that the decision to award a 'reset' rating to the Universal Credit project may have been an attempt to keep information secret and prevent scrutiny
The Department's work to address the affordability gap around the equipment budget and costs appears to have had a positive effect. However, there remain risks to affordability, most significantly around the half of the budget relating to equipment support costs which were not subjected these to the same level of detailed scrutiny as the procurement costs. The Department also does not understand the implications of its £1.2 billion underspend on the Equipment Plan in 2012-13. With the exception of the Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers, there have been no significant cost increases and only minimal in-year delays. In the last year, there was a net increase in costs of £708 million in respect of the 11 projects in the review. The main contribution to this was a £754 million increase in the cost of carriers. Three of the projects the report examined experienced delays during the year, together amounting to 17 months. A third of projects this year reported delays compared to over half of the projects in last year's report. However, the NAO is unable to report on timings for two of the 11 projects - Lightning II and Specialist Vehicles -because the Department has not yet given final approval. This report also includes an examination of the MOD's Complex Weapons Programme, which aims to achieve net financial benefits of £1.2 billion over ten years. Noting that these benefits have already been 'banked', if there are delays or cancellations some of these benefits may be lost
This is a companion volume to the main report (HC 1520-I, ISBN 9780102976786)
This is a companion volume to the main report (HC 489-I, ISBN 9780102965506)
Who decides how to use the UK military budget and how can we be sure that the UK’s armed forces can meet the threats of tomorrow? This book provides the answers to these questions. Concentrating on decisions taken below the political level, it uncovers the factors that underpin the translation of strategic direction into military capability.
Projects are ubiquitous to modern society, yet, concerns around successful delivery, value realisation, resilience and making change stick force a significant re-evaluation of the scope and extent of the ‘normal’ project discourse. The common thread for all of this is around capabilities, skills, attitudes, values and perspectives that are needed for successful delivery and the sustained realisation of interest, relationships, benefit, value and impact. The chapters collated in this volume bring together leading authorities on topics that are relevant to the management, leadership, governance and delivery of projects. Topics include people, communication, ethics, change management, value realisation, benefits, complexity, decision-making, project assurance, communication, knowledge management, big data, project requirements, business architecture, stakeholder engagement, strategy, users, systems thinking and resilience. The main aims of the collection are to reflect on the state of practice within the discipline; to propose new extensions and additions to good practice; to offer new insights and perspectives; to distil new knowledge; and to provide a way of sampling a range of the most promising ideas, perspectives and styles of writing from some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the discipline.
It is commonplace for today’s transnational enterprises to undertake political risk analysis when choosing foreign markets and creating entry strategies. Despite this, non-market elements of corporate strategy are less well researched than the traditional market-based perspectives. Providing comprehensive and leading edge overviews of current scholarship, this Companion surveys the current state of the field and provides a basis for improving our understanding of the non-market environment, encouraging new insights to improve strategies for enhancing a firm’s performance and legitimacy. With a foreword by David Baron, the international team of contributors includes Jean-Philippe Bonardi, Bennet Zelner, and Jonathan Doh, who combine to create a book that is essential reading for students and researchers in business, management, and politics, including those interested in business regulation, environmental policy, political risk and corporate social responsibility.
This book analyzes the development and evolution of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a multinational aircraft endeavor involving the U.S. and many of its allies. The author provides a historical overview of jet fighter aircraft, discussing the different generations of these planes and their technical characteristics, as well as an outline of emerging international geopolitical and security trends the F-35 may see combat in. By examining the role of defense industries, domestic politics, and governmental oversight of the Joint Strike Fighter in various countries, the author concludes that this aircraft will be deployed in most of these countries to replace their aging jet fighter fleets and combat potential military aggression from China, Russia, and other revisionist international powers.
Defence inflation is a recurring factor in determining defence spending. It is widely reported in official government publications and in the trade press, but remains relatively neglected by defence and peace economists. In this book, international contributors from Finland, Norway, Sweden, the UK and the USA distinguish between defence inflation and cost escalation, and identify the causes of both. They use specific case studies to address a wide variety of theoretical and empirical issues and key questions, including the following: Does defence inflation affect all countries? What are its effects? Why does it occur? How (if at all) can defence inflation be controlled? While most industry and trade press devote considerable ink and space to the discussion of defence inflation, cost escalation, and their consequential impact on the purchasing dollars of the armed forces, economists have been relatively silent. This book aims to rectify this oversight through a multinational survey and analysis of the topic, while also identifying the opportunities for further theoretical and empirical research in the field. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Defence and Peace Economics.