Britain’s engineering reputation goes down the tube

ARCHITECTS JOKE about three certainties in life: death, taxes and big building projects coming in late and over budget. It should not be surprising that both are true of Crossrail, a railway across London that was once expected to open on December 9th, and HS2, a new high-speed line between the capital and the north of England. On December 5th Sir Terry Morgan, chairman of both Crossrail and HS2, resigned. Meanwhile worries about the soaring cost of HS2 have been growing ever since the National Audit Office (NAO) revealed in September that the cost of buying land for the project has tripled over the past six years.

Cost overruns on megaprojects are common around the world. McKinsey, a consultancy, has estimated that more than 98% of construction projects worth over $1bn are late or over budget. The average delay is nearly two years. The average cost overrun is fully 80%. Britain used to furnish many such examples. London’s Jubilee Line extension, which was finished in 1999, exceeded its budget by 63% and opened nearly two years late. But over the past decade a run of British projects have come in on time and to budget, including Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5 and the London Olympics in 2012. Crossrail once looked set to join that esteemable club. Now that it is not, the worry is that Britain is returning to bad old habits.