485
Office expenses & home charges are impossible to estimate at the beginning of a work.
Local office expenses depend on the number of returns it is necessary to make, etc., which cannot be foreseen except on a system which has been running for a long time, as is the case on Indian Railways.
Home charges I cannot possibly foresee as I only get debits from the Crown Agents for this. I can only average out by the monthly debits sent me through the Treasury.
In conclusion, I would state that I consider it beyond the power of any Engineer to estimate in detail accurately for a Railway such as this is in a new country. Even in India, where Railways have been constructed for a very long time, the first estimate is almost invariably under the final one. No Railway Contractor could possibly hope to make a uniform profit on every item of his tender; he must always count on losing on certain items and making up the losses on others.
It is just the same on departmental work estimating, except that in the latter, such a high percentage is not put on to cover contingencies. For similar reasons, I cannot give the exact causes of small excesses and savings when dealing with such large figures.
The original estimate of June 1907 was the only one in which I had time to go into any detail; the estimates in my reports for 1907 and 1908 were only in round figures, and as I stated before, without a very large accurate figure and trained accounts staff, it would be impossible to give accurate figures in detail.
Some...