RICS calls for independent body to collate costs of major rail projects

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 “avoid projects like the West Coast Main Line” whose cost rose from £2bn in mid-1990s to an expected £7.6bn.

Byng said such projects had undermined the government’s 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: “The method of funding railways has a changed a great deal, so we need this in order for people to fund things properly.”

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: “We hope to put plans into action in 12–18 months.” 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 £6bn to just over £4bn.