Crossrail has blamed software bugs for a potential two-year delay in its mission to zip commuters across London. Chief Executive, Mark Wild, claimed due to the complex work of “knitting together” systems, engineers “don’t know what software bugs” they’ll find. Which delays the entire decade-long project, led by Bombardier and Siemens, even further.

According to CAST, an MRI scanner for code, Crossrail need to use Software Intelligence to easily find bugs and errors in real-time. Lev Lesokhin, SVP of Strategy and Analytics at CAST, comments:

“When a company CEO claims software bugs are delaying a £18 billion project by more than two years, it highlights the impact and crucial part software quality plays in modern urban development. For projects of this nature CEOs need to accurate and in-depth details about the software needed, including early warning on potential coding errors and bugs which can bring progress to a crashing halt. The hard truth is many don’t know enough about the software, some, although not Crossrail in this instance, don’t even ask to find out more.

CEOs need to deploy Software Intelligence consistently throughout a project of this scale. By having more insight they can avoid delays, and reduce technical debt. Crossrail has already exceeded the £15.4 billion budget originally agreed in 2009, the software quality issues it is experience is likely to push that number, totally unnecessarily, even higher. Stakeholders need to learn lessons on Software Intelligence to avoid even more project delays.”