Highways and Infrastructure

Infrastructure can take many forms – it can be defined in physical, green and community terms and is essential to support objectives of increased housing provision, economic growth and mitigating climate change, and of creating thriving and sustainable communities.

In addition to housing and job opportunities, supporting infrastructure including green energy, utility services, transport, schools, open space, community, health and leisure services, are all needed.

At the strategic level :

• Lack of clarity and consistency of national objectives and standards
• Mixed access to designations
• Complex and inflexible approval processes
• Need for robust and integrated decision-making
• Efficiency and adequacy of the land acquisition process.

At the operational level :

• Poor supply chain capacity and management (materials and labour)
• Brexit and political uncertainty affecting regulatory environment
• Government funding challenges due to wider fiscal pressures and market volatility
• Increased focus and scrutiny on opportunities and savings realisation
• Infrastructure schemes from program planning to implementation
• Scope creep/design development
• Reputational risks associated with benefits demonstration to stakeholders.

There are some key elements to apply to the approach:

• First, establish social and economic priorities. Only then consider what projects are best suited to deliver them
• Ensure that any process for selecting projects needs to be fact based and transparent to ensure accountability
• Put in adequate controls; specifically, have robust risk-analysis and risk-management protocols and provide timely reporting on progress relative to budgets and timelines
• Complete the early stage engineering and risk analysis as a separate due diligence exercise before starting construction (it’s cheap insurance at 3%-5% of the capital cost)
• Streamline permitting and land acquisition
• Design the project to reduce time-consuming land battles
• Build an Intelligent Client Function project team with the right mix of abilities.