Network Rail adds to army of advisers

Days after it emerged that Railtrack spent a staggering £225m last year employing hundreds of consultants, the company's new owner has come up with a plan to deal with the problem: hire 30 more.

Network Rail, which will take full control of Railtrack later this year, has quietly issued an invitation for consultants to tender for a huge IT project.

It is understood that 250 people already work on Railtrack's IT systems, with around 150 of these employed on a contract basis.

Network Rail's chairman, Ian McAllister, wants to hire a crack team of consultants to manage this army of com- puter experts and sort out the network's decrepit information systems. The tender document says the appointment "is a matter of urgency" because "Railtrack has a range of disparate systems, many old, but many new. These need rationalisation, modernisation and standardisation."

Network Rail also wants one employee of the winning company to be seconded on to its senior management team as a director.

Insiders said that the contract will run for an initial 18- month period and, depending on the consultants' performance, could be extended for another five years.

Network Rail refused to put a value on the contract, but industry sources said that it could be worth more than £10m.

Companies expected to bid for the contract include Logica, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, IBM and EDS.

The news comes after Railtrack was lambasted for spending 10 per cent of its annual budget on consultants and temporary staff.

Government sources reacted by saying that Railtrack had been living on "Planet Profligacy", and the Conservatives called for a "far lower use of consultants".

But Railtrack said that over the last two years the number of staff had risen by 2,000 to 13,000 while the proportion of contracted workers fell.