Got to thinking about this .Currently working in a care home .Over the last month decorators have been in refreshing the place .This week the electricians have been in rewiring the whole place !Consequence plaster being chased out for new sockets etc result the decorating has been a waste of time .Used to find similar ass about face things in Royal Mail and the times you see roads dug up multiple times by various utilities .Isn't there ever any common sense or communication or is it just a case of not our money so hey ho ?
If we did that at home our budget would be out the window .We are having a new boiler shortly replacing the back boiler .Applying the same principles we would get a new gas fire fitted then 2 weeks later taken out to remove the back boiler .

I think sometimes there is too much by the book thinking, if you follow the chain you would probably find that each request was made to different departments and each department has its own rules and policies. At no point would any of these departments have talked to anyone, not treading on toes etc.

Then when each department assigns a date it makes perfect sense to them. I guess you could think of it like building a house, so on day one the plaster board arrives, then the bricks a few days later, then the plumbers turn up. about two weeks in the concrete for the foundations is delivered.

No sense to anyone accept a few managers.

What pisses me off is that if a local authority gets it wrong they'll put your tax up next year to cover the ineptitude of those making decisions. I know those at lower level don't earn a vast amount, & for the most part they do work bloody hard; but how can they justify £100k salaries for the swathes of Heads of this & that bullshit dept. Thats the total council tax from 80-90 average properties just to pay for one post.
Birmingham Council were in the press last month. An electrician earned £130k pa. I mean FFS, he claimed £90k in overtime. Would it not be better to employ another electrician ???

Sack the **** lot of them & put the WHOLE local authority out to tender.

Local authorities are often, anecdotally and from experience, wasteful of cash and not very effective. Staff work short hours, are sent on many ridiculous training courses and appear to send larger than required contingents to attend meetings.

There are, of course, good examples and I know of very effective managers who have turned around their departments.

Public sector work used to be poorly-paid, but the relative lack of market forces (and strong unions) has resulted in very nice conditions for middle-ranking staff in comparison with similar private sector workers.

This is not exclusive to local authorities or big companies. It's usually down to poor communication, no planning and incompetent people with big egos.

And to think there are 100's if not 1000's of unemployed project managers.

Considering the stupidity of the people who run these concerns, I am not surprized. They cannot admit they are useless and there is nobody to pull them up. Meanwhile a pile of great talent, time and money goes to waste.

Unbelievable really!

I used to work for a local authority and most of the management were a bunch of crooks. Lots of mysterious contracts dished out to friends for say 10 men on a five day week where in reality two blokes turned up for a day or two tops every few weeks.