John Linton
.....but I don't seem to be being considered to head up Krudd's NBN2 company....so I guess I'll just have to find something else to do with my time.
However there were a surprising number of 'missed call' messages when I looked yesterday evening (11 in total - there is seldom any for a week)) and they all seemed to be from people wanting to 'explore the possibilities' I raised in yesterday's musing. I thought this was surprising for at least two reasons. Firstly that so many people whose names I don't recognise have my personal mobile number and secondly I was, yet again, impressed with the power of an unadvertised/promoted 'blog' to be read by so many people who then act on what is written on occasions. When I started this process almost two years ago I never would have expected such a result but have been amazed at how accurate the predictions made in the two articles that were the origin of the 600,000+ words I have written since late July 2007.
Back to appointing the head on NBN2 inc......I have read with some degree of interest the various media speculation about the likely appointees to chair and direct this possible monstrosity and remain amused at the lack of abilities that seem to be attached to the various names that have been mentioned. Now, I would be the first to admit that I know sfa about running a company that will employ an alleged 40,000 people at its highest point and will have a 'construction' budget of $A5 - 6 billion a year but I would have thought that the person to head a company that for some 5 - 8 years will be involved in digging trenches (hopefully not stringing wire) and building secure concrete structures would come from, errrrr, the construction industry? I would have also have thought that the people to manage this project would have a hugely successful track record in 'green fields' company development from zip to mega in very short time frames? But, assuming the media speculation is correct this is not the case at all......the people being considered are big city lunching fat cats whose only claim to experience is that they once got their snout in the trough of some monopoly or other.
Now, given that the media guessing at the possible 'leaders' of this mythological adventure are almost always well off the mark in terms of any prognostications they make on any subject they report on, their current speculation is meaningless and almost certainly completely wrong....but then who in Australia is qualified to manage a quasi-commercial entity that needs to build an Australia wide infrastructure? No-one with any sort of track record springs to mind and that is including reading the various rationales in the various media. Leightons is a great target as a contractor (and presumably there are others) but anyone who has any knowledge of major contract negotiations on major building projects (of which NBN2 is the grand daddy of them all in Australian terms) would know that you would need a whole lot of detailed construction knowledge to deal with ANY company on a project as complex as seems to be suggested - you certainly don't need a person who has warmed board seats in monopolies or the monopoly wannabes.
I don't seem to see too much talk about appointing someone similar in experience and success as William Hudson who was chosen by another Labor Prime Minister (but one of infinitely more practical common sense and self knowledge than Krudd) to create the Snowy Scheme from ground zero (he was the only employee at the time of his appointment). Why not? Why isn't an experienced construction engineer (even if we have to hire a Kiwi again) being sought for the overall management of a construction job in the field he is experienced in? Why is all this media speculation about telco board room drones whose lily white hands have never handled a theodolite let alone a pick? Because it's the ultimate 'jobs for the boys' lurk? Probably that's much too cynical but you have to wonder at the names currently being tossed around as being capable of actually making any sort of contribution let alone defining and managing the project. Not one of them has ever created a major (or any?) corporation and not one of them has even tangential experience of managing a massive construction project. Maybe I'll be shocked and not see a succession of Labor hacks given all the board positions and key executive positions over the coming weeks....I'm not holding my breath though.
I have never been involved in anything other than very small businesses since I left corporate employment shortly before the Vandals sacked Rome (or was that the Visigoths?)...in any case a very long time ago. Since that time I have only been, like most other people, a mildly bewildered peripheral observer at the demise of Ansett, the tottering on the brink of Westpac and the near collapse of AMP all long before the recent commercial self destructions of the 'GFC'. This means I have zero knowledge and absolutely zero experience on how huge businesses (such as the vaunted NBN2 Inc) can be brought in to existence and then actually deliver something as undocumented as a national optical fibre network with hand off abilities to multiple other networks as well as linking directly to 10,000,000 residences and commercial buildings.
I have some realistic experience of trying to use (as a wholesale customer) far smaller networks from companies such as Telstra, Optus, AAPT, UEComm, Pipe, Nextgen etc and have some realistic ideas about the shortcomings of such networks and the difficulties of interfacing to them over the past 15 years. My experience of those infinitely smaller networks has been that they are very difficult to build and even more difficult to manage over time even though they were built and managed by companies that (with the exception of Pipe) had long experience and a lot of internal engineering competence in doing just that. What chance does a non-existent company get to do something infinitely larger with an infinitely higher degree of difficulty in a much shorter time frame and then deliver it at a realistic cost in competition with other established (albeit smaller) networks?
Buckley's?