source: www.eurofighter.com
As projects go it is hard to dispute the failure of the Eurofighter/Typhoon project. The fixed costs of development were more than double initial estimates and the cost per aircraft was 75% higher than forecast. If a camel is a horse designed by committee, then the Typhoon is an aircraft designed by committee.
You can see below the framework under which Germany, Italy, Spain the UK design and build the aircraft, the key point is that ther is no single point of accountability. Decision making is supposed to take 40 days, in some cases it took 7 years. However, a similar issue with the high level decision making occurs with execution, a set of national contractors perform the work here and there is an emphasis on ‘fair’ distribution of work rather than ensuring efficiency and integration.
With this sort of lack of consensus and glacial decision making, it is perhaps unsurprising that the key factor in fixed cost increase has been the collaborative structure.
As with many advanced projects, delays should be expected given the inherent complexity in creating something that has not been created before, and the ending of the Cold War and fall of the Berlin Wall created legitimate reasons for the project’s scope to change.
However, the Typhoon project shows the coordination problems of having no single authority accountable for a project’s success.
