Tell you what without 'bean counters', a lot of companies would go bust very quickly.
Indeed, I've seen this myself in my job where we have some great people with great ideas but they don't have any sense of the numbers or cost or what needs to be taken into account. This is also quite common on Dragons Den. I've always believed you need a good blend if you are to achieve highly.
@Firstgreateastern in my experience, the training counts for little in industry (including mine back in day), it's the experience that is near everything. I wouldn't employ a freshly qualified accountant without solid experience to back it up, unless it was for a junior role. Probably the opposite occurs in practice which I avoided like the plague!
Oh of course experience is vital in any position, my point was that 'bean counters' is quite demeaning for professional people who have studied hard and worked hard to get where they are. Some people often treat so called 'bean counters' as if they are poorly educated or stupid, which couldn't be further from the truth.
But to be fair to them, at the time they ordered, surely they could have assumed that the Aventra would be proven in regular service with TFL/Crossrail/etc. by now? And Stadler have enough of a record with other units (the UK ones aren't really that different, given that they've made one-off adjustments for other countries in the past)?
Looks like a combination of bad luck with a bit too much optimism on the side if you ask me.
But any adequate major project plan shouldn't and doesn't make assumptions and hope that they go right or else just put it down to bad luck or something that is not their fault. Part of planning a project like this is identifying risk factors and the effect that they may have on the business and putting in plans of what you will do should that situation occur.
Making assumptions that because other people have ordered something it must be okay is a sheep mentality thing to do and saying that someone does something somewhere else, on another gauge, with different kind of tracks and different rules and regulations so it will be alright is an amateur mistake because things are nowhere near as straightforward in practice as Greater Anglia have found out with some of the issues being very much UK specific.
The lack of timely delivery of rolling stock of unproven fleets was identified as an issue by people in the industry and people on the forums from day one. Perhaps if the Greater Anglia bid team had spoke to their operations team more rather than ploughing their own furrow and putting their fingers in their ears they might have realised this, since well connected people on this forum, such as HLE have stated that these people knew there were problems coming down the track.
Assumptions are very dangerous things in the world of project planning, especially when they are later excused by excuses such as bad luck. If you are assuming something, then you shouldn't be relying on it as being a certainty and should have a plan of what happens if your assumption is wrong.