The RICS is lobbying the government to shake up the way rail projects are run.

The institution submitted a paper to the Department for Transport at the beginning of this month, calling for an independent body to collate the costs of rail projects.

Michael Byng, head of the RICS rail group and leader of the initiative, said the idea was to 鈥渁void projects like the West Coast Main Line鈥� whose cost rose from 拢2bn in mid-1990s to an expected 拢7.6bn.

Byng said such projects had undermined the government鈥檚 confidence in the ability to predict and control rail costs.

The proposed body would tackle this problem by developing a standard method of measuring railway engineering costs and producing a database of project costs, which would be published by the RICS. Byng said: 鈥淭he method of funding railways has a changed a great deal, so we need this in order for people to fund things properly.鈥�

The RICS is working with Network Rail and after a series of meetings over the next two months, will again report to government. Byng said: 鈥淲e hope to put plans into action in 12鈥�18 months.鈥� The move would create more cost certainty for schemes such as the East London Tube extension and Crossrail.

Network Rail has said it plans to cut 20% of spending on QSs and project managers under a plan to reduce annual spend from 拢6bn to just over 拢4bn.

Source

QS News