Blog

Speaking at a Treasury committee meeting, senior officials at Nista contended that earlier intervention on major projects from government could prevent costly delays and misguided upfront spending. The body believes this will give the industry more confidence in leveraging and funding investment.

Engaging with projects through “earlier upstream intervention, but also the strategic role that we can play and we should play in the centre of government to influence, links back to planning reforms,” Nista chief executive Becky Wood said.

“It’s about making sure we’ve got that robust data and evidence about the strategic case to avoid arguably inappropriate upfront spend in some instances.

“Naturally, I think there’s also a lot to the way we’re working with planning reforms to drive change.”

Earlier this year, Nista was queried by the sector after it slashed the Government Major Projects Portfolio (GMPP) from over 200 schemes to 81 to streamline its focus.

The GMPP covers projects across the public sector including education, science, transport, environment, defence and justice.

It was formerly managed by the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA), which would give an annual assessment of the status of the projects. This was taken over by Nista at the time of its establishment last year through the merging of the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) and the IPA.

Successive UK governments have set ambitious targets for housing, transport and energy but delivery has often been wrought with challenges, widely regarded as exacerbated by short-term political decision-making.

Wood framed potential solutions as a challenging but achievable task. She has called for earlier strategic analysis of major projects and assurance central government champions Nista’s oversight to make sure projects are given the greenlight with appropriate evidence and planning.

A big part of Nista’s work has involved creating the 10-year Infrastructure Pipeline. In March, the Government published an expanded version of the UK’s 10‑year Infrastructure Pipeline.

The Pipeline, which is also managed by Nista, now lists around £718bn of projects and programmes due to take place over the next decade. That figure represents a notable increase from the dataset published at the Pipeline’s launch last July and reflects new and updated contributions from a wider range of providers, including several Mayoral Combined Authorities.

The £718bn figure covers both private and public funding, but only includes funds for more advanced projects for which data is available. The Government still intends to invest £725bn of public funds over the course of its 10-Year Infrastructure Strategy, but many of the plans are not yet mature enough to have their financial expectations included in the Pipeline. For example, the £45bn Northern Powerhouse Rail plan is not yet included, as the details are not concrete.

“Our dynamic infrastructure pipeline is intended to give infrastructure colleagues across the supply chain better information as to where we’re investing and where we need capacity and skills,” Wood said in the Treasury meeting,

“A big piece of the feedback I get from that particular sector is that they need that granularity and they need that commitment.”

She further described the pipeline as a tool designed to give industry forward visibility so firms can plan decisions around a guaranteed stream of future work.

“Without the supply chain having that confidence and seeing the commitment from us, we feel that that isn’t possible,” Wood said.

“Nista’s role there is much more about supply chain and industry intervention.”

As much as that assurance is vital, Wood couldn’t help but describe the potential impact of political tensions.

This was in response to Treasury queries that Nista must answer to the current government regardless, with one quipping, “In the end, you ultimately have to answer to your political masters and mistresses, don’t you?”

“Absolutely, and we do serve the government today,” Wood replied.

“I think there’s absolutely something in there from that perspective of grounding this in evidence and data, which I don’t mean to sound boring about that, but it’s so incredibly important that we can evidence the rationale and we can evidence the importance of what we’re doing.”

With this being the case, Wood called for Nista to have a stronger voice in major infrastructure and project development to provide “stability” between governments.

“Nista should have a strong voice in that conversation,” Wood said.

“We are quite purposefully structured to have a market-facing and an industry-facing role.

“We reach into the supply chain regularly, we engage quite actively and I have a very useful licence to do so.

“I think that’s incredibly important in terms of our role in advocating for the fact that that stability needs to take place.”

Wood put forward her argument for stronger central governance against a backdrop of well-reported project failures and wasted public expenditure.

“Ten years ago, we had the prime minister and deputy prime minister come down in 2014 and say we’re going to build a tunnel at Stonehenge,” one treasury official said.

“Ten years later, we’d spent £200M and nothing had happened.”

Responding to this, Wood said: “A lot of the reason that I mentioned the pipeline is because I think it’s incredibly important that we’ve published a 10‑year infrastructure strategy because of course that will span the life of parliament and go beyond it.

“I think there’s also something around the fact that we’re iterating regularly and publishing our dynamic infrastructure pipeline.

“It’s incredibly important to me that the advice I’m giving is true to the spirit of the lessons we’ve learned, which is the fact that this has to be a long-term intervention and we have to demonstrate that commitment.”

Like what you’ve read? To receive New Civil Engineer’s daily and weekly newsletters click here.