Key challenges facing UK infrastructure delivery
How can the UK build a more resilient infrastructure delivery system? Key lessons and priorities for long-term transformation.
Discussions about UK infrastructure delivery often focus on visible symptoms: cost overruns, delays, cancellations, public distrust, and the erosion of institutional credibility. Yet these symptoms are only the surface. To address persistent underperformance, it is essential to understand the deeper structural issues that shape delivery outcomes.
In my analysis, I use a three-layer framework to distinguish between symptoms, operational dysfunctions, and structural causes:
1. Visible symptoms
Recurring headlines about delays or spiralling costs reflect underlying weaknesses — but too often, responses focus on fixing the symptom, not the cause.
2. Operational dysfunctions
Persistent execution failures undermine the UK’s ability to deliver infrastructure efficiently or coherently. These dysfunctions include:
- Cost variability in major civil works
- Inadequate ground investigations
- Rigid application of national standards
- Lengthy and litigious planning processes
- Fragmented contracts and immature organisational structures
- Unaligned cost methodologies
- Disconnect between delivery and evolving programme resets
They also manifest in poorly sequenced contracts, fragile transitional governance, strained community relations, and administrative practices that erode legitimacy and public trust.
3. Deep structural causes
At the heart of these challenges lie deeper cultural, institutional, and political dynamics:
- Historically erratic and fragmented infrastructure investment
- Lack of sustained pipeline continuity
- Highly centralised governance vulnerable to politicisation and leadership churn
- Disconnect between infrastructure strategy and industrial policy
- Absence of a coherent multimodal vision or sustainable financing models
- Weak institutional memory and limited capacity for cumulative learning
Without tackling these structural conditions, operational reforms will remain fragile and piecemeal. Lasting improvement requires transforming the very system that delivers infrastructure — shifting from reactive project cycles to a stable, strategic, and learning-oriented delivery environment.
International lessons — What can the UK learn?
International experience offers valuable lessons for improving infrastructure delivery — many of which are already recognised in UK policy circles. However, knowing what works elsewhere is not the same as embedding these lessons in institutional practice.
In many cases, the UK has been slow to move from acknowledging good international practice to systematically adopting and sustaining it. Several examples stand out:
1. Political continuity enables long-term planning
Ireland and Norway have shown how consistent political commitment across electoral cycles underpins a stable delivery pipeline.
2. Integrated national strategies drive results
Spain’s AVE network and Germany’s rail electrification succeeded because individual projects were embedded within a coherent strategy — not treated as isolated initiatives.
3. Decisiveness after consultation
France balances early public consultation with clear post-consultation decisions (DUP), providing certainty for delivery — an approach still lacking in the UK.
4. Contractual discipline enables control
The Tours–Bordeaux high-speed rail project used a simplified delivery model with clear contractual discipline, avoiding scope creep.
5. Innovative public–private models foster trust
Wales’ Mutual Investment Model (MIM), inspired by Scottish practice, offers lessons for more collaborative and transparent public–private partnerships.
“Recognition alone is not enough — the UK must institutionalise these lessons into governance, financing, and delivery structures that can sustain them.”
UK internal best practices — What works?
Not all lessons need to come from abroad. The UK’s own experience offers examples of what works:
The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA)
An independent, empowered governance model — insulated from political interference — enabled ODA to deliver complex infrastructure on time and on budget.
Defence Nuclear Programme
Recent collaboration between IPA and the Ministry of Defence has strengthened governance, clarified roles, and improved delivery capability — through sustained leadership trust.
Lessons from Financial Services
Post-crisis governance reforms in the banking sector offer valuable parallels:
- Aligning delivery risk with strategy
- Clear escalation routes
- Digestible, actionable board oversight
- Institutionalising adaptive learning
The role of NISTA — Priorities for systemic change
The newly created National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) must do more than monitor delivery. To drive systemic change, its priorities should include:
- Stabilising the national pipeline
- Bridging the gap between strategy and delivery
- Coordinating across government
- Institutionalising cross-government learning
- Building the conditions for delivery resilience
Its ultimate impact will depend on whether it is empowered to shape the institutional environment that enables success — not just to observe project performance.
Public–Private collaboration — What needs to change
Progress in public–private collaboration will depend on improvements at both the operational and structural level:
Operational improvements:
- Reducing contractual fragmentation
- Ensuring design maturity before procurement
- Clarifying governance and accountability
- Building more integrated and collaborative procurement models
Structural shifts needed:
- A stable, long-term pipeline
- Cultural change to rebuild trust
- Stronger alignment between infrastructure and industrial strategy
Working with the Project Profession — Building capacity and capability
Government must treat delivery capability as a strategic asset — not an afterthought:
- Involve delivery professionals earlier
- Strengthen leadership continuity
- Embed delivery literacy at senior levels
- Build better pathways for delivery careers in the civil service
- Institutionalise learning and adaptive governance
Ultimately, delivery professionals must be recognised as strategic partners in shaping and delivering public value.
Final reflections — systemic priorities for long-term delivery improvement
Fixing delivery requires fixing the system that delivers it. Three systemic priorities are clear:
- Build systemic capability, not just delivery capacity
- Achieve end-to-end alignment — from political intent through to delivery
- Develop infrastructure as a coherent national system — supporting economic resilience, decarbonisation, and social equity
“Without such a shift, each new reform effort will risk starting from scratch — lacking institutional memory, strategic continuity, or cumulative learning.”
Looking ahead: the next 10-Year Infrastructure Strategy
With the next UK 10-Year Infrastructure Strategy now in development, I hope these priorities will help inform a more resilient and system-focused approach to national delivery. Building a delivery system that is resilient, adaptive, and capable of long-term transformation is not only possible — it is essential if the UK is to meet its ambitions in economic growth, sustainability, and public value.
Author’s note:
This post is based on insights from my independent submission to the APPG inquiry on Project Delivery. The views expressed are my own.