Everyone should be aware this is not the end of pfi ppp within the
london underground.

Powerlink and Connect both remain in place. No doubt someone will post
something to the opposite, but I am not aware of any serious rumours
about bringing those in house.

--
Nick

On May 8, 6:35*pm, D7666 wrote:
Everyone should be aware this is not the end of pfi ppp within the
london underground.

Powerlink and Connect both remain in place. No doubt someone will post
something to the opposite, but I am not aware of any serious rumours
about bringing those in house.

Also the Northern line rolling stock is provided by Alstom under a PFI
deal (a "whole life train service provision contract" or some such
similar thing).

The Northern line trains, Powerlink and Connect are all PFI contracts
- "PPP" solely refers to the infraco arrangements, UIVMM.

On May 8, 6:41*pm, Mizter T wrote:

The Northern line trains, Powerlink and Connect are all PFI contracts
- "PPP" solely refers to the infraco arrangements, UIVMM.

Indeed, but not everybody understands that.

--
Nick

On May 8, 6:31*pm, D7666 wrote:

On May 8, 1:31*pm, Mizter T wrote:

He quite reasonably asks where TfL will find the £310 million from to
buy Tube Lines, given that TfL said they were going to struggle
finding the £400 or so million for the Tube Lines funding gap (as
determined by the PPP arbiter).

Wouldn't be a massive surprise to hear that some of the Underground
network's upgrades will be put on ice, given the already stretched
state of TfL's finances - given the state of (central govt) public
finances (which TfL is heavily reliant on), things aren't about to get
any easier any time soon.

In round figures, as I understood things, when metronet went into TfL
there were direct savings of 0.5 million - 1.0 million depending who
you listed to just by eliminating the duplicated effort of 2 parties
checking each others contracts and works. Proportionately finding 310
million to take in tube lines seems about right. While the
circumstances are different - metronet was in admin and tube lines is
being brought in before (if) that happens, those costs were still
there, they were not a function of collapse but contracts admin on
both sides. At least thats how the gossip wet. The problem is one
never knows if what you get is rumour and speculation or is a leak by
someone who really doesknow the score.

OK, thanks for that. The PPP contracts sounds like they were truly
nightmarish in their complexity. What does interest me is to what
extent the PPP contractual arrangements remained in place, albeit
perhaps in a vestigial sense, w.r.t. the in-house (LU-owned) Metronet,
as I understand they did. Furthermore now that Tube Lines is coming in-
house too, I wonder how much of the old PPP arrangements will remain,
and to what extent it can be dismantled - bearing in mind the whole
setup was created by central govt, had a complex legal background (I
assume there must have been some sort of statutory basis to it all),
and had a regulator of sorts in the person of the PPP arbiter - my
guess is that TfL can't just unilaterally end it (and indeed there
might be a few elements of it that are actually beneficial, even if
it's all internal dealings now). Of course the expert on such matters
here rather has other things on his mind given the context of it all -
I imagine all on here who appreciate his many insightful contributions
will hope that things will work out for the best when the dust settles.

On May 8, 6:47*pm, D7666 wrote:

On May 8, 6:41*pm, Mizter T wrote:

The Northern line trains, Powerlink and Connect are all PFI contracts
- "PPP" solely refers to the infraco arrangements, UIVMM.

Indeed, but not everybody understands that.

Yes, fair point.

I think that politicos use have used the phrase "public private
partnership" in a wide variety of contexts, referring to all sorts of
things (e.g. hospitals), not least because it sounds warmer and rather
less harsh and thrustingly Thatcherite than "Private Finance
Initiative" does - however, UIVMM, in a strict sense (i.e. what was
actually written on the legal documents) PPP was only ever used in
relation to the LU infraco arrangements... or am I wrong?

On May 8, 6:54*pm, Mizter T wrote:

What does interest me is to what
extent the PPP contractual arrangements remained in place, albeit
perhaps in a vestigial sense, w.r.t. the in-house (LU-owned) Metronet,
as I understand they did.

ex metronet is now ''lu cmo'' (chief maintenance officer) : as far as
performance targets on items such as time to fix faults etc, the same
criteria remain in place but not even wooden dollars are transferred[*] now. The rumours all suggest the metrics were left in place for
cmo to compare with tube lines. How long things will last now is
anyones guess. Maintenance performance will still have to be measured
- it must be - and I for one do think a form of measurement needs to
remain - but how or even if they re-invent the wheel or continue with
the existing mechanism without money transfer I have no idea.

[*] this is an example of the duplicated people working on contracts -
someone from the infraco side has to do their calculation, someone
from the lu side. No need to do that now.

--
Nick

On May 8, 6:58*pm, Mizter T wrote:

actually written on the legal documents) PPP was only ever used in
relation to the LU infraco arrangements... or am I wrong?

Dunno.

I fall in the category of ''understanding the basic difference but not
the detail''.

--
Nick

On May 8, 7:08*pm, D7666 wrote:

On May 8, 6:58*pm, Mizter T wrote:

actually written on the legal documents) PPP was only ever used in
relation to the LU infraco arrangements... or am I wrong?

Dunno.

I fall in the category of ''understanding the basic difference but not
the detail''.

Sorry, that wasn't clear, I was kinda throwing that out to the wider
uk.r and utl readerships rather than grilling you on the minutiae!

On May 8, 7:06*pm, D7666 wrote:
On May 8, 6:54*pm, Mizter T wrote:

*What does interest me is to what
extent the PPP contractual arrangements remained in place, albeit
perhaps in a vestigial sense, w.r.t. the in-house (LU-owned) Metronet,
as I understand they did.

ex metronet is now ''lu cmo'' (chief maintenance officer) : *as far as
performance targets on items such as time to fix faults etc, the same
criteria remain in place but not even wooden dollars are transferred
[*] now. The rumours all suggest the metrics were left *in place for
cmo to compare with tube lines. How long things will last now is
anyones guess. Maintenance performance will still have to be measured
- it must be - and I for one do think a form of measurement needs to
remain - but how or even if they re-invent the wheel or continue with
the existing mechanism without money transfer I have no idea.

[*] this is an example of the duplicated people working on contracts -
someone from the infraco side has to do their calculation, someone
from the lu side. No need to do that now.

--
Nick

Indeed, from an OpsCo point of view, there is now more of an attutide
of - keep things running and more bending of the rules taking place
(sometimes shockingly). It's quite hard to adjust for a lot of people
in the Service Control area that I'm in as only half the people were
around pre PPP,

I did hear that the Power PFI nearly came to an end when they had to
replace some expensive kit in every substation! And quite how the
Connect PFI is still going baffles me too