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Jonny Mood on Value for Money

“It's fine when you're swinging big to have a few misses in a controlled environment” - 𝗝𝗼𝗻𝗻𝘆 𝗠𝗼𝗼𝗱, 𝗗𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗔𝘂𝗱𝗶𝘁 𝗢𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗲 making it very clear that it’s fine for public sector organisations to try things and fail.

In today’s episode, I talk to Jonny about what value for money really means, why BCR is often misused and how the NAO supports innovation in the public sector.

The conversation about BCRs is also fascinating: highlighting that value-for-money rules don’t require complex decisions to be boiled down to a single number.

Do take a listen to this one!

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Shin-pei Tsay on Making Change Happen

Shin-pei Tsay has had what you would call a varied career in transport. She's worked in advocacy organisations, as an exec in Uber and now leads innovation in the City of Boston.

She joins me on the podcast to talk about how to make change happen.

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Pete Dyson on Transport for Humans

Pete Dyson is the author of Transport for Humans. In this episode, he explains why our focus on rigid metrics risks distracting us from the things that users most care about, and how groupthink threatens the quality of our decision-making

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Colin Knight on Reinventing the Tram

This week I’m joined by a council officer. But no ordinary council officer. Colin Knight is doing something extraordinary: working with scientists and automotive engineers to develop an entirely new form of transport.

When challenged by his political masters to reduce the costs of a new tram network for Coventry, Colin realised that the only way to achieve a step-change was to reinvent trams from the ground up. Literally. He has formed a team that has reinvented the both tracks and vehicles.

He joins me on The Freewheeling Podcast to tell me what they’ve done, why they’ve done it and what will happen next with the monumentally ambitious project known as Very Light Rail.

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