(~7 minutes to read)

Ante-prologue

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-35743727
An eighty-space rooftop car park in Farnborough, England has remained empty since 2010 because the access ramps, which were designed to be part of a second building, have yet to be built.

The following piece, including the prologue, is a work of fiction that was inspired by the above real-life story. The characters are fictional; the two primary locations are fictional; the proposed motorway is fictional; the development corporation is fictional; pickled doughnuts are almost fictional; the runcible spoon industry is fictional. The M13, if it had been built, or if it is ever built, would run east-west near the north side of the River Thames. (I used to live closer to the A13 than Billy Bragg did when he was younger, but that’s another story.)

Other than the fact that Stalham, Ely and Biggleswade all exist, it’s all bloody fictional—okay!?

Prologue

In an effort to reduce the cost to taxpayers of maintaining the country’s inventory of highways and parking facilities, the UK government has outsourced all design, development and maintenance efforts.

The rationale behind the decision is that if a corporation knows it’s on the hook for maintaining what it has built, it will ensure that the construction phase delivers the highest-possible quality infrastructure.

Unfortunately, the Government has also outsourced its contract writing and legal oversight to service providers in Bangkok. This has led to some interesting opportunities that wily British lawyers are keen to explore.

M13—Motorway to Spoonville

The conference room was filled to capacity with the corporation’s senior management. Each of them was eager to be part of the discussion about the company’s successful bid to construct an eight-lane motorway between Slurry on the Mere on Norfolk’s coast and Upper Mashing in Hertfordshire.

The motorway was needed because Upper Mashing had become the centre of the UK’s burgeoning runcible spoon manufacturing industry and Slurry on the Mere was the logical place to land the foreign metals required to make the spoons and ship the finished product to the lucrative North American and Chinese markets. The ninety-seven-mile motorway would also serve to connect Stalham, Ely and Biggleswade, all of which are growing exponentially on the crest of the pickled doughnut popularity wave.

The chairman brought the meeting to order. “Thank you for your punctuality—we’ll begin. As you know, Codstail Limited has won the contract to build the M13 from Slurry to Mashing. I’ll be honest; it was only because our bid was the lowest that the DfT awarded the contract to us. We now have to come up with a strategy that will ensure completion on time, on spec and below budget.
Bridget’s been doing some work on this, and doubtless her presentation will inspire some creative designing.

Bridget stood and fiddled with her laptop for a few seconds. Her Powerpoint presentation appeared on the projector screen. All eyes turned to read.

“I’ll keep this brief,” she said, and paused to let the sighs of relief subside.

“Our total contract costs are made up of three major components; construction, maintenance, and administration. Let’s say right of the bat that administration costs cannot be trimmed—this would adversely affect the overall income of each and every one of us here today, and let’s face it, some of us are barely managing to pay enough staff to maintain our second homes. While it’s true we could cut administration costs by outsourcing the grunt work to Bangalore, the savings wouldn’t be significant.

“That leaves construction and maintenance. As you know, the Government has mandated that infrastructure maintenance must be paid for by the builders of that infrastructure for the first twenty years. I have estimated that in that time, traffic volumes in the UK will quadruple, and the new M13 will suffer an incredible amount of wear and tear as a result. We must bear that in mind when determining the build quality and the likely mean time between resurfacings.

“I’ve been working with our legal department and Tarquin’s people (everybody turned to look at Tarquin) have discovered what he thinks is a loophole that we can exploit without any fear of incrimination, retribution, or reprisals… Oh dear, I’ve spent too long working with legal—I’m now using trios of near-synonyms. Perhaps you can explain, Tarquin.”

“To be sure I could,” Tarquin O’Grady replied in his broad Belfast accent. “It’s quoit simple reallay. The Government overlooked the need for connectors between the M13 and the existing road network, and Oi didn’t want te spoil the fon by mentioning it, so I didn’t.

“Any road (his mother was from Manchester, and he thought the colloquialism amusing given that they were talking about road construction), if we were to exploit this omission, we would save money on construction, so we would, and best of all, with no connectors, there’d be no vicular (he always struggled with the word “vehicular”) access, so there would be no wear and tear on the road, other than the weather.

“So there wouldn’t.”

The room was quiet for an uncomfortably long time while the assemblage absorbed and assessed Tarquin’s suggestion.

As soon as the uncomfortably long quiet time expired, it was as if someone had fired a starter’s pistol. Everyone seemed to ask questions and make suggestions at the same time. How confident was the Legal Department with its opinion? How big were the likely savings that such a strategy would deliver? What was the likely size of the managers’ completion bonuses if they pulled it off? And there was much backslapping, handshaking, high-fiving and contemplation about third homes in the Bahamas for all.

Rachel from Construction Planning felt it was time to offer a modification to the proposal.

“If there’s not going to be traffic using the road, then why don’t we just flatten the fields and paint two black strips on the ground instead of making all that mess and wasting all that money on foundations and asphalt? We could put some lampposts and variable speed limit gantries up to make the thing look authentic; we could even paint all the white lines where they should be so Google’s satellite image of the M13 looks right. But foundations and asphalt—that’s unnecessary expense for a road that no one will use.”

Barbara from marketing waited for the cacophony of reciprocal congratulation to abate somewhat and then indicated that she would like to address the room.

“Much as I hate to burst your bubbles, and I do sincerely hate to do so, I have to confess to some nervousness when I think about how we might explain why we built a motorway that nobody can get to.”

Bridget was ready for this one. “Easy—we explain that we’d scheduled the connecters to be the last phase of the project, but because of the recession, that phase had to be put on hold.”

“But what if there isn’t a recession when we’re nearing completion?” asked Barbara, her voice several octaves higher than normal, indicating that ‘nervousness’ had been an understatement.

Arthur, the Chief Financial Officer, chimed in. “Oh there will be; trust me on that. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has clearly stated that the economy is stagnating and that the only thing that can save it in the medium term is the burgeoning runcible spoon industry. And the runcible spoon industry can only do so much burgeoning without the M13 being available.”

“So what do you plan to do—dupe the Government into awarding us another contract to build the connectors?” squeaked Barbara.

Bridget fielded that semi-rhetorical question. “Eventually, Barbara, yes. In the interim, we can have Tarquin’s legal people initiate a drawn-out legal process to give us sufficient time for Arthur’s people to come up with plausible accounts showing how we had to eat into our profit margin to complete on time, on budget and within scope.”

“You’re suggesting that the company runs two sets of books?” asked Barbara, the disbelief in her voice reaching new heights.

“I wouldn’t put it quite as coarsely as that, but I can see that some people might suspect that.

The discussion continued for two hours, with Barbara the lone dissenter in the roomful of agreeable people—an oasis of morality in a desert of deception and entitlement. Finally, the Chairman brought the meeting to order.

“I don’t think we need to vote on our plans—it’s clear that a large majority of us are in favour of a proposal to follow the Government’s contract to the letter and don’t volunteer to build the connector roads.”

“It’s clear that a large majority of you are stark raving mad!” shouted Barbara. “You know what? I resign! Effective immediately.”

“I’ll have your termination paperwork in your mailbox by lunchtime,” offered Daniel, head of Human Resources.

“Then it’s settled,” said the Chairman. “We will paint the carriageways, including all lane makings, on the cleared ground, install speed cameras every half-mile, erect lampposts where we suspect intersections will eventually be provided, and install and activate variable speed limit gantries.

“Any other comments on the M13 project? No? Good. Let’s move on to a brainstorming session for how we can win the bid to build Terminal Seven at Heathrow without the need for all those annoying baggage handling facilities.