The management of the North West Cambridge development has been strongly criticised by academics and past and present members of the university’s Board of Scrutiny in a meeting at the Senate House on Tuesday.

The meeting, chaired by Pro-Vice Chancellor Graham Virgo and attended by the Registry, Senior and Deputy Proctors and members of staff from the Board of Scrutiny, and associated Syndicates and Departments, saw university members attacking the management of the £1 billion North West Cambridge Development.

Last month, Varsity reported that the project had been criticised in an audit ordered by the university’s Finance Committee.

The audit slammed “systematic failures” in the development.

Heated exchanges at the meeting included questions of responsibility, the prospect of spiralling costs and similarities with previous project failures.

Among these were repeated references to the £9.19m CAPSA project from 2001, which saw the university attempt to establish an online accounting system. Managerial difficulties during the CAPSA project saw tensions between management and departments rise and costs to spiral to almost double the budget.

It was felt that the lessons from CAPSA, described in the 2001 Finkelstein Report as “simple” and “well within the capacity of the university to learn and act on”, had been neither acted upon nor taken on board.

One Girton district and parish councillor claimed that “[the university] have learned little about project management from that debacle.”

Summarising the problems outlined in the original report, Senior Proctor David Goode said that the problems were “[the] symptoms, not the disease”.

“It looks as though the North West Cambridge project was not planned and set up properly, led by an executive that was not full-time and was without sufficient accountability, which did not manage risks properly, and whose reporting was so poor as to misinform a syndicate which was itself unsure about its role and a majority of which had no experience whatsoever of large building projects,” he said.

“The project is bold and innovative”

Reacting to the criticism, a university spokesman said: “As with many projects of this size and complexity, there have been a number of difficulties and challenges. These have included the timely installation of site-wide infrastructure, inflation in construction costs, and certain aspects of the project’s financial risk reporting.

“As soon as the full extent of these difficulties came to light, the University commissioned a review into why they occurred and what lessons could be learned for the future.

“The University will use the findings to improve certain aspects of the governance and management of the project, and ensure that further investment is made in key personnel and expertise.

“The North West Cambridge Development is the most ambitious capital project undertaken in the University’s 800-year history. It will create 1,500 homes for University and College staff, 1,500 private houses for sale and 100,000 square meters of academic and R&D space.

“The project is bold, innovate and not free from risk. It is also an essential part of the University’s strategy to remain a world-leading place of learning and research, creating a new, vibrant and environmentally advanced community that will also bring civic benefits to the local community.”

During the meeting, multiple speakers returned to the themes of the potential for further cost increases and the project’s poor management.

Professor Ross Anderson, who was a member of the university’s governing body, the University Council, from 2003 to 2010, was highly critical of the project’s management, warning that “while senior officers dodge and weave, we are haemorrhaging millions of pounds a month”.

“Unless we can get this project under control, the costs could double... In that case, the rental income from the new flats won’t even cover the bond interests, and our successors in the middle of this century will have to find over half a billion pounds to refinance it.

“There’s always someone else who must be consulted, another committee whose opinion must be sought. We still don’t have anyone in charge,” he said.

Professor Anderson also claimed that a member of the West and North West Cambridge Estates Syndicate, the body that scrutinised the project, had told him: “It’s just a total mess; I’m surprised [the university] didn’t sack us months ago.”

David Goode, a Senior Proctor on the Board of Scrutiny, read testimony from Dr Stephen Cowley, Chair of the Faculty of Mathematics from 2011-2014 and a member of the University Council from 2006-2014, who claimed that the true overruns were closer to £86.6 million, well over the Audit Committee’s earlier reported top projection of £76 million.

He claimed that various levels of governance, including the Syndicate, were not kept properly informed. “If [this was] not deliberate,” he said, then it was “grossly incompetent”.

The Syndicate were described as not being blameless, as “often nothing is minuted in sufficient detail”.

Further condemnation of the project’s oversight and structure came from the Chair of the Board of Scrutiny and University Information Services, Matthew Vernon, who said that “It is clear that the [Syndicate] has seriously failed the university [...] It has acted, however unintentionally, as another filter that has stopped bad news reaching the people it should have.”

Rachael Padman, a fellow at Newnham and a member of the University Council, claimed that “there are real problems with the overly complex management structure established by the [University] Council” and that “a structure intended to produce direct accountability in fact had the primary effect of increasing risk”.

However, she also added that “North West Cambridge was and remains a once-in-a-generation opportunity” and that “this is not a cost blow-out, as some have represented.

“It is clear that with some relatively small changes to the project it will still be possible to reach essentially the same financial targets agreed in July 2014. [...] The headline sums have not been wasted, spent or even committed – they are simply a potential liability if we don’t take appropriate action,” she continued.

The lack of accurate minutes worried some as to the viability of other university projects.

Bob Dowell, a member of the University Council for eight years, and who approved the initial bond for the project, said that “over-rosy miscommunication is happening across the board, and not just in North West Cambridge.

“How many [other projects] also have similar problems with communication, with unwelcome news being carefully spun? How much confidence can Council have in the other projects from the same people who so badly misreported the North West Cambridge project?”

“Lives are at risk”

Although not part of the original audit, concerns regarding the safety of the children attending the primary school on the development site were also raised.

Regius Professor of Engineering, David McKay, warned that the poor design and management could put parents and children of the new primary school in the area at risk. A new rat run on Huntington Road has blocked off the route to cyclists.

“I have the gravest concern about the possibility of a tragic accident. Numerous near-misses have already occurred,” he said.

Fixing the problem would require more money, he continued, but “lives are at risk”.

“Accident statistics already show a cluster on Huntington Road, and three university members have been killed on Huntington Road in the last 20 years. The defective designs that are now being built, combined with the new demand for crossing Huntington Road, will surely lead to more injuries and deaths,” he warned.

The issue does not just concern the university, as the County Council is responsible for highways. In response to questions about the safety of children, a university spokesman said that a full reply would be released in the coming days.

Responding to the criticism of the overall project, Professor Jeremy Sanders, Deputy Chair of the West and North West Estates Syndicate and Pro-Vice Chancellor for Institutional Affairs until September 2015, emphasised that while two-thirds of contracts are operating as planned and the school on the site is “hugely popular”, risks are “inevitable”.

“Within a couple of years phase one will be complete, and the remaining phases will be developed and for a hundred years and more, North West Cambridge will be providing secure, steady, long-term income to the University, decades after any loans have been paid off, as well as providing an outstanding place for thousands to live and work.

“The benefits to the University, particularly in terms of its balance sheet, will significantly outweigh the costs.”

He also added: “It is innovative, and, yes, it is risky, but if Cambridge cannot innovate and is not willing to take risks, how can we be world-leading?”

Senior Pro-Vice Chancellor Professor Duncan Maskell said: “The development remains broadly on track financially and in terms of delivering the strategic aims of the university.”

“The overall long-run financial return on this investment will be attractive, while the social return and benefit to our employees, and to the competitive health of the university, will be immense.”

The project had come under close scrutiny after projected costs for Phase One of the project were reported to have escalated by up to £76.2 million according to the Audit Committee.

In the report, a string of failures were identified in the project’s management, including “project setup and planning”, “project leadership”, “risk management” and “cost reporting”.

The lack of a defined objective or contingency arrangements meant that 85 per cent of the contingency fund had been depleted by the time the risks began materialising. An absence of full time Executive staff, with the Project Director working “approximately one day per week” due to wider responsibilities within the university, and the Finance Director retaining previous responsibilities and thus “effectively performing two roles”, meant that the project came under added strain.

The West and North West Cambridge Estates Syndicate was criticised for having an “apparent lack of clarity within the membership of the Syndicate as to its responsibilities” and was spending so much time on “minor project decisions” that it limited “its ability to provide objective challenge to, and scrutiny over, the Executive”.

Both risk management and cost reporting were also subject to heavy criticism. The framework in place lead to a lack of “consistent and rigorous assessment of risk”, while cost reporting was criticised for a “lack of consistency and comparability in budget estimates and cost forecasts”.

The print version of this article incorrectly attributed the comments of Senior Proctor David Goode to Pro-Vice Chancellor Professor Duncan Maskell.

An earlier version of this article also incorrectly attributed the comments of Dr Stephen Cowley to Dr Susan Oosthuizen.

We apologise to Professor Maskell and to Dr Oosthuizen and are happy to set the record straight.