Who has not watched the very public fiasco that has been the Terminal 5 story since Thursday and has not felt sorry for the members of the travelling public who have suffered? I am not a frequent flier and so can afford to feel smug. I do not intend to pass through Terminal 5 any day soon.
What has struck me about what I have heard or read about this story is how it illustrates very well a thesis of mine which I have been working up for a few years. I have a very strong belief that Great Britain Plc is actually under the governance of the mediocre. Once upon a time we were told that the country was governed, managed and taught by a meritocracy. This was back in the days when we were governed by a man who smoked a pipe and spent his family holidays in the Scilly Isles. I actually think that Harold Wilson was right. It was the time when a bright boy or girl could go to the local Grammar school and then get a government grant to go on to University. It was indeed the time of the meritocracy and these Grammar school types entered into Academia, the civil service, the city and business. The country did all right by them on the whole.
Now I detect a change and not for the better. I am not sure that the change took place solely under the governance of New Labour. I think this tendency towards mediocrity began before 1997 and indeed, was probably detectable by those who had eyes before the end of the 1980's.
When I look about me at our public services and our financial institutions what I see at the highest levels of those institutions and organisations is mediocre, even very poor management and leadership (actually, in most situations leadership just isn't there).
I have listened to Willy Walsh chair of BA on several occasions now. He neither inspires nor impresses. Indeed, he seems to be one of those creatures on whom I ponder and think: how did you get your job? He is the Chair of BA and yet he barely acknowledges his own failure to lead this project (Terminal 5) to a successful conclusion, nor does he seem willing to admit that, yes, just perhaps the project management of this huge and important project was not what it should have been.
The failures are many and great. This is probably not even the place to unpack the issue and I am not privy to the whole story. I rely on the media but I have no doubt that some of the insiders would tell you things that would make your hair curl. But lets look at what is now in the public domain. As I understand it BA was handed Terminal 5 nearly six months ago. Yet, if the media is correct, there have been no major test's of the facilities, rehearsals of the tasks nor the recruitment of the necessary numbers of staff to cover the jobs to be done. It appears that Willie Walsh was going to take Terminal 5 into full operation with (pretty much) the same staffing levels in the organisation as he had before Terminal 5 became operational. What was the project management team thinking? Anyone with commonsense will know that Computer dependent projects will have faults and errors. That is usually why you build into the project some 'proving' and 'refining' time. And, and here is a simple thing - the Architect might think it is very cool to minimise on signage but, on Thursday it led to complete confusion and panic when staff brought in from the other terminals couldn't find their way to the posts where they were meant to be. Oh, and no one had sat down to work out how many cars and vehicles could pass through the car park entrance in a given period. There was much confusion, congestion and frustration caused because staff couldn't get into the car park quick enough, and the lack of signage confused the work force.
I say that this is a pretty mediocre show by British Airways and as well as making BA a laughing stock, it also makes GB Plc a laughing stock. It is inevitable that we should now have opinion formers and newspaper editorials looking worryingly across to the eastern part of London and worrying about whether we actually will be able to deliver on the Olympics.