WI the British were the worlds best project managers?

As the title says. Would we have the TSR2, CVA 01, hundeds of Concordes, Advanced Passenger Train, Nimrod AEW3 and others that I don't know about if British project managers were the best in the world. All of these projects were cutting edge and difficult but all got close to fruition and were held back by abysmal project management after the expenditure of huge resources. Are technology issues inherently solve-able in an environment were management is excellent?

Concorde flew, its performance as intended, but nobody wanted to buy it.

CVA01 and TSR2 failed because of lack of money to complete the project, not technical issues. (Of course the TSR2 progressed further than than the CVA01 did).

Nimrod AEW did, as I understand it (I could be wrong), have major technical problems.

So it would be wrong to attribute a single cause to each of these projects, let alone a single cause found in the British national psyche.

British Leyland make some decent cars?

Advanced Passenger Train

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Its not so much getting it to work, which it in fact did. It was trying to run and manage an entire network with fundamental problems, political interference, micro and macro economic structure problems.

It did however pave the way for inter-city to led the way into the future.

The British govt canned the TSR2 to buy the F111K and AFVGA, so money wasn't the issue. Good project management would have minimised the cost increases and when increases did occur minimised the political damage and ensured that the govt didn't can the project and spend the same money elsewhere. The same goes for CVA 01, the political problems should have been well managed and the continuing rationale and utility of CVA 01 should have been clear when the govt changed. The Concorde took forever to get into production, if it had been in production in 1971 dozens would ahve been built before the fuel crisis. The Nimrod AEW3 also had technical difficulties when were compounded by mismanagment.

Politicians love successful programmes, can you imagine the political milage a PM would get from being associated with the success of a major project. Look at Nixon and the moon landings.

Lord Brisvegas, Britain didn't have much choice other than go for a super train because super infrastructure wasn't politically viable in Britain the way it was in France or Japan.

Riain said:

Lord Brisvegas, Britain didn't have much choice other than go for a super train because super infrastructure wasn't politically viable in Britain the way it was in France or Japan.

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Wasn't the problem with APT that the designers engineered out the feeling of the tilt; so that while you could see the train tilting, this could not be felt. Apparently, this led to the brain becoming confused, and caused nausea, thus contributing to a string of unfavourable press comments upon APT, stunting the project from that day forward.

Instead, BR continued working upon the 1975 Mark 3 carriage, which may be one of the finest passenger designs ever introduced, and remains in very active service throughout Britain and Ireland.

Having spent many years working in the UK aerospace industry, the problem was never the techniacl project management.

It was always the government, who could never make their minds up what they wanted, continually delayed for all sorts of reasons, tried to make projects international (which actually cost MORE, not less..the savings weer always exceeded by the extar costs), or deciding after they had something their requirements had changed and that wasnt what they had wanted....

As an example. When the Falklands war was on, we tossed all the costing stuff in the bin for the duration. We worked overtime as needed, bought what we needed in, not worrying about its cost, and worked directly with the forces for what they needed, not worrying about any cost analysis. Costs went DOWN!

Its the dead hand of the government that is the problem, not the project manager. Extrapolating, I'd say it was the same in the rest of industry, although sometimes the government is replaced by other high-level idiots in a company.

Ah! A fantasy thread. I recall the brightest acceptable minds in Britain meeting on the Brabazon Commission to determine post-war aviation's direction. The Bristol Brabazon and the Saro Princess. At a time when nobody could find food, they invented expensive luxury air travel. Meanwhile, the little Miles M.52, about to break the sound barrier, was cancelled because Sir (later) Frank Whittle went to the wrong school. The Fairey Delta 2 verified Mach 2 performance and was banned from flight in Britain. They had to fly in Norway and over the Dassault factory. On a personal note, I owned a Triumph Spitfire. I know what happened to Britain's auto industry.

Yes this is a fantasy thread, I'd imagine that part of worlds best project management would be government attitude, and the ability of the top people to handle the government, media and international competitors.

Baliseus, apparently the BR execs and Government pressured the techos for results with the APT so it did some publicity runs in 1981 which backfired. The tilt worked too well and caused some balance problems for the press who got on the turps at the event, and broke down on the way back. So the press had a field day. The answer was to reduce the tilt so you could feel 10-20% of the G forces of the turn and your brain believed what was happening. But the damage was done. Good project management would have had the train closer to finished by 1981 or delayed this run for another year or whatever until more bugs were ironed out, and have been ready for the negative press comment.

Of course it also didn't help that he pressmen on the first run of the APT allegedly had a liquid lunch before hand. Many fans of the train claim that the tilt problems were exaggerated by the media.
Interestingly the Mark IV coaches currently hauled by the Class 91 electric high speed loco were designed to be fitted with a tilt pack, and Virgin Train's Pendolino uses a lot of the technology pioneered on APT-E and APT-P.

Yes, what the drunken eye saw the drunken body didn't feel so the drunken brain got confused and drunken journos got nauseous. Then on the way back a carriage or two got stuck on tilt so the drunken journos had a field day and the British public were denied a national asset as a result.

Buran
Keldysh bomber
N-1
Mig-105
Tupolev Tu-125
Sukhoi T-60S
Tupolev Tu-2000
Varyag (uncompleted aircraft carrier)

--- what if the Soviets were better project better project managers?


B-70
Lockheed L-2000
Boeing 2707
XF-108 Rapier
Rockwell XFV-12
Dynosaur
Saturn-Shuttle
Space Station Freedom
Sea Control Ship
MBT-70

--- what if the Americans were better project managers?



I could go on, perhaps with more nations or more porojects, but hopefully you get my points:

1. Uncompleted technology projects are not uncommon

2. Uncompleted technology fail or are uncompleted for various different reasons (there is no single reason)

3. Uncompleted technology projects are not uniquely British (there is no single reason assignable to a single nation's particular national psyche)

Both the USSR and USA had plenty of successful projects to cover the loss of the failures, Britain usually had nothing. What's more many of the projects you mention weren't badly managed they were cancelled for tactical reasons, the Mach 3 warplanes could be shot down by SAMs within a year or two of the introduction.

I like the idea, however these could have not been delivered with more effective 'project' management. They were all research and development initiatives, and as such were charting uncharted territory. The problem with these initiatives were that the scope was too ambitions and Britain did not have a blank checkbook for all the R&D required.

All these initiatives were eventually delivered when the technology had matured and reduced in costs. Given all are multinational products, it seems that these initiatives were possibly never affordable for any single nation other than the USA??

- TSR2 > Panavia Tornado IDS (UK/GER/IT)
- CVA 01 > HMS Queen Elizabeth/Prince of Wales (UK/FR)
- Concorde > No one else has been able to produce yet!! (UK/FR) ..oops TU-144!
- Advanced Passenger Train > Fiat acquired the APT patents in 1982 to built the ETR 450 predecessor of the Pendelino (UK/FR/IT)
- Nimrod AEW3 mmm..bought E-3s and then the MR4A is 6 years behind schedule and 30% over budget...

You could add Blue Streak to the list, but this is one actually worked!! It formed the first stage of Europa, the predecessor of Ariane 1. The French second stage and German third stage didn't work, so Britain gave up whereas the other guys persevered and created Ariane!!!

Actually, the United Kingdom is known and respected worldwide for it's excellent project management standards and British Project managers are sought globally, especially in the govt., finance and petro-chemical sectors.

The BSI (British Standards Institute) was the world's first standards institute and it also designated, defined and implemented the first Project Management Standards BS6079.

The PM standards that were developed by the BSI in conjunction with commercial business and government agencies have been used globally to support internationally recommended ISO standards.

One of the reasons (one of many) that the UK has been able to 'punch above it's weight' has been it's excellent project management approaches.

Also comparing military projects sponsored by the UK to those sponsored by the USA and USSR is ridiculous. The military budgets and governmental support of the two individually massively dwarf those of the UK.

Lastly, one of things that made the UK's financial sector so strong in the 80s, 90s and early 00s was controlled growth by it's risk and project managers. The reason it all came tumbling down is because the British Bank execs stopped listening to these peoples advice.

No one needs "great" project managers, just make them the world's greatest buyers instead.

You can only buy things that somebody else has already made and are for sale!

A good example of this however was the British development of the hydrogen bomb. The single reason behind the weapon's development was to demonstrate to the USA that we possessed the scientific capability so we could then buy the finished article off the USA. A clever approach to splitting the R&D and the weapon project delivery.

Daniel, while getting back into the nuclear bed with the US was the result of the Brit nuke programme I've never got the vibe that it was the aim from the start. Once the Brits learned that they were out in the nuke cold they went to build their own bomb, their designs took into account the scarcity of fissile material the British had throughout the entire time and their production refelcted this.

As for the others I'd contend that they were techically achieveable at the time (except maybe the Nimrod, but the electronics from that could have gone into other airframes) if at a higher than expected cost. If technical issues aren't the primary problem then the problem is with the project managers and their relationship with the customers and financial backers, which needs to be managed as carefully as hydrokinetic brakes or olympus engines.

The TSR2 was a great achievement, but the requirement was not possible with the technology available at the time. Flying supersonically and at low level, the plane could only just get to the Russian border, never mind be able to bomb targets. The Nav/Attack computer was revolutionary, but the system as run in the lab needed 3 of the systems that were to be carried in the plane!!

Could these technical obstacles have been overcome, yes with developments in modern materials (more efficient engine, lighter plane, better range) and computer memory. However, I think the crux of it is should an aircraft project bear the cost of pioneering technologies such as computer memory? And this probably depends upon how much the customer (government) wants the product and how much they are willing to pay!!

The F111 did exactly the same thing, entered service in the late 60s, and the last ones will retire from active service in 2010. In the decades of service avionics were updated and new, advanced weapons added. The TSR2 could expect exactly the same treatment, computer power was moving ahead at the time and many of TSR2 avionics entered service shortly after on other platforms. IIRC the Jaguar GR1 was the recipient of much TSR2 components which is why the RAF planes were better than the French.