I am truly amazed at the national and corporate embarrassment that is Terminal 5 and further still to the reactions of those who were involved.
To me it doesn't matter whether the fault lies with BA, BAA, CAA, the builders/suppliers or the Government (or any other group with a vested interest). Each of these groups has a vested interest in ensuring that everything wend smoothly - so by my reckoning everyone all these groups should have been active in making sure that everything ran smoothly.
The fact that things have been messed up in such an enormous scale shows that each and everyone has taken their eye of the ball and failed to ensure that passengers using Terminal 5 are not affected.
Clearly planning, preparation, testing and controls have been more than lacking. In this day and age, of outsourcing multi-million/billion projects to the lowest bidder planning, preparation and testing need to to be spot on to ensure that the failure of the 1p widget (bought instead of the 2p widget) is caught early.
There is also the obsession of those leading huge projects to get them out on time - regardless of the fact that a) it isn't finished or b) it is finished but its a mess. Hitting the deadline is more important than making sure its done properly. Nothing is allowed to get in the way of hitting the deadline - even the risk of humiliation.
This project has been been planned for "20 years" allegedly - I for one would like to know how the word planning is defined by the people involved.
Basic things seem to have been omitted in a bid to save a couple of pennies here and there. Added to the above:
- why weren't staff called in the week before opening and run their paces to ensure that they were "familiar with the computers/systems/locations"?;
- why weren't extra BA/BAA staff in place in the run up to and on the first few days of operations?;
- why did everything have to be all go from day one? why could they not start with a small number of flights and slowly ramp up over time?
- now that things have clearly imploded quite spectacularly - why haven't the disaster recovery procedures swung into operation (flood the place with staff to get things moving, fall back to the "old way")? (or am I being a bit optimistic in thinking that they had actually thought and planned for these eventualities?).
Very little appears to be happening to help the average traveller - a delay of a few hours/days on a short term business trip, a weekend away or a holiday will completely wreck things. If you do get away not having your baggage will likely be the end of the trip.
The reactions of those in charge seems to be incredible - especially the lack of comment/action from the Government. Its all very well investigating and fining the companies involved after the event but what about those people who have had things completely wrecked in the here and now?
There seems to be no will to resolve this quickly. No one seems to care about the loss and suffering of travellers or the national humiliation and the damage that corporate UK will suffer (who will want to come and do business with/in a country that can't get people from A to B). People won't even want to use the airport for transit!!!!
I'm just glad that I'm not flying at the moment - and when I do I will do my utmost to avoid BA/BAA. My heart goes out to those stuck in this misery!
(And we're meant to be organising a major sporting event in a few years - more moving parts, more infrastructure being built, more people involved - I think I'll definitely plan to be out of the country when things hit fever pitch).
I'm going to have another rant later about getting things done in the UK and the infrastructure!!!!!!!
