There is a large project management team within BT running the rollout ... The project plan will be absolutely enormous - nearly 6000 exchanges and maybe 200000 cabinets ... The resources available - hardware and human all need to be considered and the moment we get a speed of really bad weather, rain, snow, wind &c then the installation resources will be diverted to restore normal telephony service. Ten making sure the other suppliers - who also have a large number of tasks on which the project relies, get their work scheduled correctly. Throw in Local Authorities and their objections, damage caused by careless contractors for other utilities blocking ducts ...

One small issue can affect a large number of tasks as it cascades through the project activities. Maybe BT should say - project completion on 31 Dec 20xx and leave it at that!

I would not relish running that project - I have directed major comms projects with up to 500 locations and £250m of capital expenditure and believe me, it really is a hair pulling job.

A complete nightmare making it all pull together and work as it should do, local engineers stated that Yarmouth and Lowestoft should go live at the same time and that is the end of June...

You may be able to answer do only a few of the cabinets go live at a time as they gradually roll it out from an exchange, or will all the cabs go live in one big hit?

It is always a few cabs at a time - at the very least so that OR dont have to installed all the FTTC connections in one go!

One person, working full time. could not only communicate every exchange update as its known.. but would also have time to blog and tweet updates.

its really not hard.

Usually they roll out the cabinets over quite a time once the exchange is ready. Many cabinets never get done at all, so even if your exchange is showing near, don't get too hopeful.

In reply to a post by Moradin:

One person, working full time. could not only communicate every exchange update as its known.. but would also have time to blog and tweet updates.

its really not hard.

How many people are needed to supply that one updater with the information, and where do they get their information from - including the sub-contractors doing some of the work?

Cearly l you have never managed major projects. Yes at a high level it looks very complex but as you drill down it becomes simpler and you can firm up the dates on individual exchanges and update the schedule in line with actual progress

In reply to a post by benbird7:

A complete nightmare making it all pull together and work as it should do, local engineers stated that Yarmouth and Lowestoft should go live at the same time and that is the end of June...

You may be able to answer do only a few of the cabinets go live at a time as they gradually roll it out from an exchange, or will all the cabs go live in one big hit?

If only I knew!

Some project management "guess work"

Upgrading an exchange and installing cabinets are probably two major task groups in the plan. I would guess that cabinet work and exchange work start at much the same time ... then once an exchange is fully tested those cabinets installed and ready will be activated - they certainly will not wait for all to be completed. It may be that they do a cabinet activation task once or twice a week but certainly they would not wait months.

And if an issue arises that delays completion of one cabinet, the team may skip the next one and move on to try and keep others on schedule and then return to the missed one in the slippage time included at the end of the phase.

BT do not make all these changes and delays just to annoy people - they really are the best guess at a specific point in time and it probably annoys the project management team just as much as they have to rework the plan, reassign resources &c &c &c.

Are you saying that BT are incapbler of managing a project and managing a project plan and schedule?

You are probably right though as their roll out seems to be a bit of a fiasco. Stick a pin in the calaender put a date down and push it out 3 months a week or so before the end of the previous quarter

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

Cearly l you have never managed major projects. Yes at a high level it looks very complex but as you drill down it becomes simpler and you can firm up the dates on individual exchanges and update the schedule in line with actual progress

Which is exactly what happens once you get within a few days of a cabinet going live. The BT Wholesale date jumps around madly.

Prior to that there is too much uncertainty to make it sensible to waste man-hours with irrelevant updates.