Once they have fibre to one cabinet in an area it becomes relative quick and easy todothe rest. THe constant report claims of BT taking several months to install one cabinet makes no sense nor do the claims that the power companies are at fault. In 99% of cases supplying power to a cabinet is a piece of cake. It is bread and butter stuff for them. THe delays are almost certainly down to BT. THey will have plugged BT's requirements into their planning system but as we know BT change the plan constantly and the power compnies will struugle to cope with a plan that changes by the day, THey cannot schedule resources on that basis. If BT sorted themselves out the rollout would be quicker, more efficient and cheaper.

Well I know that carillon connected the mains supplies at the same time as the cabs were bolted down, apart from a handful of them, they left the hole in footway until they returned and connected it,(2weeks later) all the work carried out by carillion was carried out largely according to plan, i even saw them finishing a cab install after 6pm one night,

Edited by tommy45 (Sat 29-Sep-12 23:44:31)

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

I have Project managed projects of over £500K

Really?

Judging by the level of understanding you've demonstrated in this thread (and others) I wouldn't employ you to manage the installation of a whelk stall on Southend beach.

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

I have Project managed projects of over £500K and with far greater complexity than the realativly simple task of installing an FTTC cabinet

This was the interactive tutorial for which PM software?

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

I have Project managed projects of over £500K and with far greater complexity than the realativly simple task of installing an FTTC cabinet where some people think getting a power connection to it is a major undertaking. Let me assure you it is not.

LOL.

No-one has suggested that installing a single FTTC cabinet is a complex task. On the whole it is pretty easy. Getting power to a single cabinet is easy too. Dealing with one, or two, or five or ten problems with that one cabinet - easy too.

The complexity comes when you have 50,000 to do. And 2,000 exchanges to support them. The complexity comes not in the sheer numbers, but in the parallelism. The complexity comes in the scheduling. The complexity comes in the necessary adaptability needed to cope with problems (and consequent delays), and the re-scheduling to keep everything ticking over without wasting money.

Your project budget sounds impressive, but in reality it would be enough to do just 10 cabinets.

As I've said before... Some people just don't comprehend the sheer scale involved.

You've likened it to getting a plumber to fix your central heating. Unfortunately, you need to be thinking bigger. You need the plumbers to fix central heating in every house in a city the size of Reading, or a county the size of Herefordshire.

But even that is too easy - because everything is so close together - and fixing central heating is a little easy. Perhaps you need to organise the full first-fit and second-fit, all the trades, of a city the size of Reading. That's still not enough - so how about adding the fact the house needs building first. 50,000 houses - all in parallel - with everyone demanding that *their* house is done first.

Or perhaps someone told you to build Milton Keynes, in 5 years. Concrete cows optional.

If BT are saying power is a major problem than the problem is with BT not the utility companies.. Perhaps if they told the utility companies in advance when and where they want the power they would not have a problem. BT';s constant slippage of the schedule must be causing the power companies major problems.,

3 sentences, and 3 guesses.

THey will have the program plugged into there planning system but as BT's schedule appears to be not worth the paper its is wriiten on it how do they expect the utility companies to be able to respond to a schedule which is like quicksand.

Another guess.

Your, and our, experience is of the end result only - a cabinet getting delayed. You have NO idea of what is going on within BT's internal schedule, and therefore can make no conclusion about whether it is causing any problem for utility companies to respond to.

It is just as possible that the delays are perfectly well managed, and that the internal schedule gets requests through to the utility companies in perfect time. The delays could come before this (so the request to the utility is also delayed) or after this (so no impact), or in parallel with this (such as with fibre ducts blocking). Or, of course, the delays can be caused by making .

The system probably isn't perfect - but that's a guess too. At least I know when I'm making them.

BT seems to have a random planning and project management system.

Again, you're seeing the end result, and guessing as to what the cause is along the way. More than that, you are guessing that there is even a problem.

The fact is that we see delays for individual cabinets & exchanges. But we do NOT know whether that means the overall project is delayed, and we do not know if the delays are caused by bad planning.

It could be that the amount of delays (to individual parts) are fully expected within the (operational) plans, and that there is sufficient capacity to deal with the delays in the bigger picture.

It could be that the biggest cause (to our angst) is merely in the marketing information being handed out to the public. That marketing people are being too keen to label an exchange as due on X, without taking the same care that the technical people are to build in spare capacity. Or perhaps they think that, with their "exchanges may be delayed" get-out clause will actually be understood & believed.

For every delayed cabinet, you want to blame an out-of-control planning department.

I, on the other hand, think it is more appropriate to blame an overly-optimistic marketing department, who build people's expectations up too much.

I understand why the marketers WANT to build expectations up - but I think there are better ways to do it, and that they need to let people down more gently when something goes wrong.

Unfortunately, marketers trade best on people's emotions. All the information we are working from are messages from BT's marketers - and are designed to target emotions. And the rants, and illogical rages against the planners - all stem from these emotions.

I think people need to step back, stop raging against the technical people who deal with facts & problems on a day-in, day-out basis, and start raging against the marketers.

BT need to stop the endless excuses and get their project management sorted out

What excuses? I don't think I've seen BT moan. I think I've only seen them parade the adaptations they've made to improve the process. Things like the "super spade", the "conductive cement" or the "plastic base".

Try delivering major communication sytemss to a war zone. You have to get things right..

In some senses, it's a little easier. For instance, there's the whole logistics of the armed forces available to you if you encounter a problem. and there's a large focus on getting it done.

I disagree that it is always about getting it *right* - and more about getting it *done*. And then fixed later, if need be.

Need an extra container with a mobile cell transceiver? Just throw it in that C5, we'll have it there tomorrow.

In fact it is strange - because I normally see a great sense of pragmatism from any dealing with the armed forces - and you just don't see to show any of that. I would have thought you'd be rather better at understanding that problems happen, and you just deal with them as & when they come up.

Oh, and there's another thing about war zones. They just chomp through budgets while no-one is looking. The whole "just do that now, we'll sort it out later" attitude seems to apply to budget as well as operational matters - and that, of course, manages to grease things along a little faster. Perhaps that shouldn't be carried over into a domestic setting.

But again, those are my impressions & guesses, and I'm sure I'm wrong there in some ways. I will readily admit there are greater experts in those fields, and leave it to them. I *won't* assume, with zero facts, that they're all cack-handed at their job.

[Hmmm. Interestingly, I read that Camp Bastion is the same size as Reading. Perhaps we need you get you to build that...]

I understand that there are now just under 31,000 active cabs providing service

So you have never had any involvement with FTTC cab installations.

How then, can you make comparisons with something you patently have no experience or knowledge of? How do you know your little project was more or less complex than something you know nothing about?

An example is the SLA's provided by the power companies that you continually spout.
Do you know how this actually works in real life? Have you actually dealt with arranging a new LV connection to an unserved street location?

There may be an SLA to acknowledge the order, or even to carry out planning task - but the delivery date itself is always 'Subject to Survey'.
So if the planner says it won't be delivered for 6 months, then the SLA doesn't start for 6 months.
There are also several caveats that allow the date to be extended without penalty.

SLA's are also meaningless unless supported by a SLG.
Different power companies may have different offerings, but the typical SLG payment is around £25 per day for late delivery.

Provided BT give themthe appropriate notice power is normaly instaled to meet the plan. Clearly in a very tiny number of cases unfoseen problems can occur but we are talking about very rare events probablu 0.01% of cabinett installations.

Most of the problem with power is down to BT constanty tearing up the schedule

A conditional; a "normally"; a guess; a guess; a guess; and a baseless statement.

A good post .

£0.5m versus £2500m is a big jump in terms of project management