The result is a great many salaried supervisors with very little to supervise.
Several sites in Moscow were furnished with no-slip carpeting, heated tents and supervisors with megaphones.
For the review to command credibility the ECB will complement the local supervisors with teams from other countries.
Supervisors with less time on the job, especially younger captains who came to the department better educated than their predecessors, are not necessarily less qualified, they said.
But while PhD candidates' work is regularly checked by supervisors, it is far less common, to have formal checks made on the supervisors, with students assessing their performance.
There is an excellent selection of blue-collar lunch-break items — goods once carried by 1950s building site supervisors with crew cuts and pocket protectors.
But Horton told the BBC that GTR was adamant it would be starting moves later this month to phase out conductors and bring in planned onboard supervisors, with drivers responsible for closing the doors.
In recent years, he said, Stratford schools have increased their security precautions, installing video cameras on school buses and equipping recess supervisors with two-way radios in case of trouble.
Instead of one supervisor in the precinct and two patrolling at any given time, the report recommends just two supervisors, with a third brought in only when circumstances warrant, saving an estimated $1.4 million a year.
His battles with progressive supervisors are a far cry from the days of Mr. Brown, whose control over the board was so complete that in a 1996 magazine profile he compared the supervisors with "mistresses you have to service".
The Sanitation Department, meanwhile, paid $3.7 million to outfit 48 trucks in Queens with customized location gear and 12 field supervisors with tablet computers to monitor them, using the city's $500 million secure wireless network.
