Over 52,000 defects!

THE unwillingness of Canal & River Trust (CaRT) to maintain its waterways leads to accusations that it has adopted a policy of ‘fix on fail', writes Allan Richards.

However, there also seems to be a policy of ‘fail to fix' with over 52,000 defects recorded on CaRT's database but only 4,000 to 5,000 ‘high priority defects' targeted for rectification each year.

My attention has been drawn to the top towpath side paddle of Lock 3 on the Northern Stratford Canal. Local boaters say that this paddle failed over three years ago when British Waterways was responsible for the waterways. However, it seems that because the lock is still operational with a single top paddle, CaRT have not bothered to fix it.

Almost not bothered

Well almost not bothered! I am told that the Trust did have a bash at fixing it a year or two back but gave up. Now they just replace the black plastic that it is wrapped in when it gets tatty and replace the yellow ‘British Waterways Hazard' tape with nice new ‘British Waterways Hazard' tape.

Does anyone know of paddle gear that has been out of operation longer than this?

26 defects per mile

The figure of over 52,000 defects (believed to be growing) is taken from CaRT's Internal Audit Report 753—High Priority Risks (dated 18 October 2013) which states:

'There are currently 52,000 defect notifications recorded in SAP of which over 5,000 are high priority requiring work in 2013-14.'

With some 2,000 miles of waterway, that works out at 26 defects per mile. Perhaps its little wonder that the Lapworth paddle has remained unfixed!

High priority defects

In 2010, faced with a growing maintenance backlog, British Waterways introduced a system for categorising defects to ensure that the most important ones (i.e. the high priority defects that affect customer service or safety) are remedied each financial year based on risk.

The 2013 audit made recommendations regarding improvement of this ‘high priority' system.

However, a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) set before the audit was not met in 2013/14 with CaRT only managing to repair 4,252 defects, a shortfall of 713 against its target of 4,965. This means that CaRT only managed to fix 85.6% of its identified high priority defect programme in 2013/14.

2014/15

With the benefit of the audit, CaRT set a new KPI target of repairing 90% of its identified 2014/15 high priority defects. It also made its Waterways Regions publish sub-lists of their high priority defects and with quarterly progress towards clearing them.

The end result was not as expected! CaRT only managed to fix 81% of its identified programme.

That's well below both its target of 90% and the 2013/14 actual figure of 85.6%.

What went wrong?

Arising defects?

CaRT is remaining very quiet about this disastrous result but there may be two reasons.

Firstly, reorganisation during the year, with some regional staff now transferred to central teams might have played a part.

Secondly, there are ‘arising defects'—defects that happen during the financial year and become more important to fix (e.g. they prevent navigation) than the scheduled high priority defects. These compete for both resources and budget.

Perhaps its the ‘fix on fail' that gives rise to the ‘fail to fix'...