Department of Health: The Paddington Health Campus Scheme

appendix twoAppendix twoExternal reviews of the Campus schemeThe London Regional Office ofthe NHS highlighted a number ofconcerns in late 20001 The London Regional Office of the NHS formallyapproved the OBC in October 2000, subject to theoutcome of the public consultation on the future ofspecialist services in west London. The Regional Officehighlighted its concerns about the:nnnncompleteness of the strategy to operate clinicalservices while building new hospitals on the samesite (“decant strategy”);identification and responsibility for management ofproject risks;treatment of the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Motherbuilding; andaffordability of the scheme.2 The summary of other concerns included afurther 17 issues, such as the need to emphasise theproposed increase in nursing staff, and the need fora full risk assessment and a strategy for achievingplanning permission.3 There was no requirement from the Regional Officefor the above issues to be addressed in a reworked OBC.Rather, the Regional Office split the issues into twocategories: those which had to be addressed in the nearfuture prior to placing the OJEU advert for procurement(anticipated for Summer 2001) and those that would beresolved within the Full Business Case when that wasprepared. There is no record of any review by the RegionalOffice of how the Campus partners were addressing theissues when the OJEU tendering was delayed.The 2003 Gateway Report gave theCampus scheme a ‘Red’ rating4 The Campus scheme was the subject of anOffice of Government Commerce Gateway Review inNovember 2003. The purposes of the review were toconfirm the project’s readiness to move to procurement ona robust, affordable and achievable basis.5 The Gateway Review gave the Campus schemeproject a ‘Red’ rating, which is given to projects orprogrammes that should take remedial actionimmediately in order to achieve success. The Reviewmade 14 recommendations that needed to be addressedwithout delay and noted that the project was beingdriven towards failure by a combination of programmemanagement failures, inadequate resources and skills andthe absence of support from the Strategic Health Authority,Department and Treasury.6 The Independent Review Panel (2005) noted fromthe project’s own documentation, drawn up almost a yearafter the Gateway Review, that:nnn‘Five [of the Gateway Review] recommendationswere not addressed in a timely fashion (e.g. the newgovernance arrangements based around the ProjectExecutive Group and affordability of the scheme).Twelve recommendations did not achieve the rightoutcomes (e.g. those relating to Mission Criticalprogramme treatment, Programme Managementdisciplines, project team resourcing with right skillsand top-level Government support for realisingland requirements).Eleven recommendations were not completed(e.g. adding practical construction and PFI expertiseto the pool of Non-executive Director experience,Technical Director, Heavy-weight Project Manager,Change Control procedures, formal AssumptionsControl, Ground Surveys).’ 1212 Independent Review Panel Report (2005), paragraph 1.23.44the Paddington Health Campus scheme