Councils have pressure to reduce their budgets. The obvious answer (from the present government) is cutting paperwork and inefficiency. The difficulty is that when they cut (as they will), how do they tell the difference between a well constructed defence and what might be possible?
To illustrate this point I have a strong personal belief is that the Water companies in the UK invented bureaucracy.
3 years ago I needed to move a drain (it was a big one for the whole village). It was a very frustrating experience. Initially I asked a builder to arrange (I thought it was simple!) who took 6 months with a surveyor getting nowhere.
Actually they did get a response asking them to do a variety of different things. This difficulty was that they did not fully comply. As they did not, the application proceeded no further. Full engagement and help was not available until we had finished this bit.
It was eventually solved by camping on the doorstep of the water company and doing each part of their list in turn until there was a “tick”.
We had to then bridge the gap between the contractor and the water company. References, insurance, and qualifications counted for nothing. We needed to break the entire job and people down into a proper “project” and detail this for the water company. This included all the certificates and training details of all the people who would be on site.
In addition the site had to be inspected at various levels of completion.
Whilst on one hand this meant that the project was in a lot of detail. The company doing the work felt “invaded”, and that they added to their costs significantly in preparing for the installation. Yet they complete ground works on a regular basis – just not for the water board.
At the end of the job – which was quite straightforward – it was signed off. A year later it had to be inspected again to make sure it was still of good construction. Only then could I get my deposit back.
I recently sold the house (I have built another in the meantime). When selling I had to organise a search on the drainage. The paperwork had yet to be loaded – as up came an old diagram showing the location of the old sewer.
Why are water companies like this?
Partly because “they can”. On one hand they do have some high quality people who are very knowledgeable about water and drainage. On the other there are no alternatives. You cannot get permission to move a drain or sewer from anyone else.
The main motive is risk aversion. They do not want bad PR from a sewage drain leaking, complaints from residents, or bad jobs being completed from a professional perspective. Commercial awareness is less important in this situation.
People who are attracted to the planning and contracting team will be very knowledgeable about water. They do care about the environment or how they affect the environment. They will earn less money than commercial contractors and possibly principles are more important than income.
In councils you will also get very knowledgeable and caring people. Their principles may be more important to them than commercial awareness.
If you have a team like this they may not be the most efficient or most effective. They may well point to Oil disasters as a reason to support their paperwork and checking systems – which can seem to be quite powerful. Quite simply the team and teams like this are out of balance.
If organisations worked with their teams and made sure that there was an even mix of people (ie not just risk averse bureaucrats), then some teams may be more able to create solutions to improve efficiency.
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