16 Jun Another IT Failure RTE Dublin – Not Suprising in the Project World
Bent Flyvbjerg knows a thing or two about project inefficiency. As an Oxford University professor and economic geographer, Flyvbjerg studies the role that big projects play in shaping and changing cities — and why so many of those projects run over budget, over time, or simply fail.
Flyvbjerg’s consulted on more than 100 megaprojects (extremely large-scale, complex operations) each costing at least $1 billion. He’s also collected data on more than 16,000 projects across the globe, ranging from a multi-school development in Nepal to The Guggenheim Bilbao Museum. All together, his research paints a bleak picture. Less than 50 percent of megaprojects come in on budget. Only 9 percent come in on budget and on time. And less than 1 percent come in on budget, on time and deliver expected benefits.
In other words: 99.5 percent of big projects fail in one way or another.
An in-depth review into the circumstances which led to RTÉ’s write-down of €3.6m for a partly-failed IT system, found the broadcaster had “limited experience” of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation of the scale and complexity of the project.
The review by business consulting firm EY and commissioned by RTÉ found the broadcaster also adopted a “big bang approach” to the project.
The IT project set out to replace and integrate a number of outdated finance and HR systems and it was funded from the proceeds of a land sale in 2017.
The EY review from 22 March 2023, which was released in response to a Freedom of Information request from RTÉ’s This Week programme, relates to the write-down as revealed by The Currency at the end of April.
The broadcaster said that details of impairments related to the project were included in RTÉ’s annual accounts 2020 and 2021 and “were €1,869,750 and €1,188,534 respectively”.
The ERP ultimately delivered an upgrade to the finance system but failed to deliver on the HR overhaul plan.
The EY report is called a “lessons learnt review” and details a wide range of issues with the ERP across ten principal categories, called “lessons identified”.
It includes recommendations in response to each category.
The review was ultimately presented to the RTÉ Board’s Audit and Risk Committee on 20 April 2023 and minutes from the meeting reference EY noting that there was “a theme of overpromising and under delivering” with the project.
Some of the issues examined in the review relate to the original business case, asking if it was “grounded in reality and tightly managed”.
In the review, EY found that the original business case document “did not provide the rationale” for a strong preference for an integrated solution to combine HR and finance systems as opposed to standalone solutions.
Questions raised in relation to management of projects – EY
Other questions raised were in relation to the management of the projects, including questions such as was there “sufficient project governance in place” and querying “effective management” of all the contractors involved.
The review questioned a number of aspects of the project management, stating that there were three project sponsors identified, but no single primary owner and that the project’s steering committee “did not appear to consistently exercise its authority” over initiation and design decisions when delays were being reported.
RTÉ’s adoption of a “big bang” approach for both HR and Finance systems roll out led to a recommendation that “greater consideration” should have been given to the complexity and risk profile of this programme, and more in-depth discussions should have been had with the steering committee before a final decision was made.
Key roles with the “appropriate skills and capacity” were not made available in sufficient numbers, it also said.
Pre-agreed milestones were continuously missed by the vendors “without recovery or repercussions” during the design phase.
There were also questions raised over the diligence during the vendor selection process, as it appears to have been “inadequate” as subsequent investigations by RTÉ indicated that vendors “had limited experience in HR systems”.
It also stated that there was “no evidence provided” to suggest that a performance management framework was in place.
In terms of budget management, the review found that the steering committee made little reference to budgetary matters and that a “decision log does not appear to have been created”, so there was no clear record provided of decisions made along the way.
EY also found issues with the business requirements capability for the HR system in particular, as “complex requirements such as headcount reporting” were flagged by HR as “critical” but the vendor continued to postpone delivery of this, and testing went ahead in spite of this non-delivery.
The FOI details submitted by This Week also sought minutes from the meeting when the final EY review was presented to the RTÉ Board’s Audit and Risk Committee (ARC) on 20 April 2023 and minutes from the subsequent RTÉ Board at its meeting on 27 April 2023.
At the ARC meeting, EY noted that this was “a complex project”, with a “complicated project management team”.
EY told ARC that “quality was not managed carefully nor reported correctly” and that the “reporting of difficulties to the Steering group was ‘substandard’”.
The minutes from the RTÉ Board on 27 April 2023 include a reference to RTÉ’s former chief financial officer Richard Collins and updating the committee on the “implementation and transition” of the finance system to the new ERP system.
The ARC asked that lessons from the project be discussed at the executive board.
In a response to the FOI, RTÉ told Thishttps://www.rte.ie/news/2025/0615/1518506-rte-it-system/ Week, that the corporate governance reforms introduced over the past 18 months are “designed to mitigate against” the risk of the recurrence of a range of issues relating to the ERP project.
The broadcaster also said that the review “does not analyse the financial details” of the project but, rather, “the reasons for the delay and non-delivery of parts of it” and that it was primarily a report “to help RTÉ learn from the project management”.
RTÉ also stated that the recommendations in the EY report “have been adopted in RTÉ’s approach to the management of significant capital projects”.
Bent Flyvbjerg’s research on 5,392 IT projects shows that 66% of IT projects exceed their original budgets 3-4 times. This means that if a project was originally estimated at CZK 1 million, it often ends up at CZK 3-4 million and takes 5-10 times longer than expected.
Error rates are growing exponentially – large IT projects (enterprise software, government systems, etc.) tend to have even higher failure rates and budget multiples.
PM360 Consulting reserach shows that the failure rate of large projects with budgets exceeding US$1 million was found to be almost 50% higher than for projects with budgets below $350,000. The most frequently mentioned causes of project failure are – Unclear objectives,lack of executive sponsor,lack of leadership and accountability, scope creep,poor planning,unrealistic expectations, limited resources, insufficent communications, lack of transperancy, lack of risk management, continuing to pursure bad ideas and not paying close attention to project early warning signs.
Article written by EY Review Report 2025 “https://www.rte.ie/news/2025/0615/1518506-rte-it-system/”
Article written by Bent Flyberg 2023 “https://www.quickbase.com/blog/why-big-projects-fail”
Article written by Bent Flyberg 21 March 2025 https://www.revolt.bi/en/2-out-of-3-it-projects-fail-success-is-an-anomaly-not-the-standard/”
Article written by Padraig Friel PM360 Consulting 2022 “https://pm360consulting.ie/pm-workshop/”