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WSP major projects director and head of the consultancy’s Complex Advisory Projects Service Kerry Bangle has spoken to NCE following work she has done with the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (Nista) slashing the government’s Major Projects Portfolio (GMPP) from over 200 schemes to 81.

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

Last year’s assessment featured 213 projects, but this has now been cut by more than half as Nista has set three specific rules for projects to be included in the GMPP.

They are that the project must:

• Support a top government priority
• Have a whole life cost of more than £1bn
• Be a project that would benefit most from central support and scrutiny

The majority of major civils projects meet these requirements and remain within the GMPP since its shrinking. These include HS2 Phase 1, East West Rail, Sizewell C, Northern Powerhouse Rail, Lower Thames Crossing, Midlands Rail Hub and many more.

The streamlined GMPP is intended to allow Nista to “target expert advice and assurance where it adds most value, strengthening confidence in the delivery of benefits from government investments”.

While the GMPP now places a high bar for inclusion, Bangle said just because a project is not included, it doesn’t mean data and assurance are abandoned for it.

“It’s interesting because it focuses the government oversight where it really does matter but just because a project isn’t in the top 81, it doesn’t mean the data isn’t still being collected because the GMPP is a large collection of projects based on size and importance,” she said.

“If you just stopped looking at all the others, you’d lose the richness of the data that underpins all the others.”

These projects will now be passed down to their respective departments for oversight rather than with Nista.

“The projects that were taken out will still be there but the onus is on the department to deliver them and to have that accountability,” she said.

“All these big projects get multiple layers of assurance, there’ll be stuff within the department, there’ll be stuff by consultants like me, but there’ll be something by an independent body and then each layer gets assured.

“I think at some point, probably someone else is going to look at this and if the buck stops with that department and it’s not going elsewhere, does that then actually focus the mind a bit more strongly on the stuff that really matters?”

While not saying you can necessarily prove it, Bangle believes there’s an element of “over assurance” where major projects and all the departments that can become involved with them are concerned.

Even with the guidelines for what will allow a project to enter the GMPP becoming more stringent, the vision of whether a project is going to be “major” is being thought about entirely differently now.

She said: “Projects aren’t born major, they have to start somewhere. How do they arrive at being big?”

“My work with the Complex Projects Advisory service line is aimed at working really up front with clients to think they’ve got an idea or a problem or an outcome they’re trying to achieve, hopefully not an output that you want to build, because that’s the worst, for instance ‘I wanna build a tram’.

“No, you want to move people from A to B more quickly and then the solution might be a tram.”

This way of consulting considers how properly set-up projects are better able to withstand “inevitable complexities”, that arise later, Bangle said.

“When the inevitable criticism comes or the classic one at the moment is when political priorities change and we’ve sold all these products on sustainability grounds, maybe now we need to switch the narrative and think about saying to the clients, these are the risks that could happen.”

When these risks do arise, Bangle said it is down to the built environment sector to stand strong in its decisions.

“We’ve got to hold our nerve a bit better. Yes, infrastructure can be unpopular and expensive, you can’t get away from that and also you can’t commit halfway,” she said.

“If you’re going to build something, you’ve got to do it and you’ve got to be prepared to go the distance and you’ve got to be brave.

“I think there’s an element of being prepared to hold your nerve.”

The GMPP was formerly managed by the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA), which gave an annual assessment of the status of the projects. This was taken over by Nista when it was established last year and the IPA ceased to exist.

Alongside her day job, Bangle also works as one of Nista’s high risk projects reviewers, helping to put together analysis of the GMPP’s schemes to be given a deliverability rating in Nista’s Annual Reports.

A Red rating is defined as: “Successful delivery of the project appears to be unachievable. There are major issues with project definition, schedule, budget, quality and/or benefits delivery, which at this stage do not appear to be manageable or resolvable. The project may need re-scoping and/or its overall viability reassessed.”

An Amber rating “appears feasible”.

A Green rating means “successful delivery of the project on time, on budget and quality appears highly likely”.

While the way the projects are being rated has changed over the past few years, Bangle believes the public narrative hasn’t.

“Crossrail is a great example where the range of opening dates originally was 2018 to 2022, it was given as a range,” she said.

“But what did everyone do? They went, oh, it’ll be open in 2018, of course.

“Actually, when did it end up opening? More like 2022.”

Bangle believes the tendency is to be over-optimistic, which can cause challenges down the road.

“When we’ve got ranges with costs and timelines, we need to be careful that we don’t just then automatically pick the lower one, that sounds more palatable. Or the one that brings the political accolade,” she continued.

“While ranges are good, we still need to have the discipline.”

While the deliverability rating provides insight into the state of major projects in the UK, Bangle believes it doesn’t go far enough to address some of the challenges we currently face.

“I think the part that’s missing is arguably the consideration of carbon because at the moment, the rhetoric is obviously economic growth but are we cognisant of the carbon and the climate adaptation implications of all of this,” she said.

“If we did everything on the pipeline, what is the carbon implication of it all, and is that sustainable, where are we setting our ambition and it wouldn’t be easy analysis, but you could look at those projects in the pipeline and quite quickly get a view of how far we need to go.”

She added: “I know there is some degree of thinking about sustainability where the reviewing is concerned but it doesn’t necessarily seem that it is embedded within the deliverability ratings so whether or not there should be more explicit consideration of sustainability or the impact of the project on that, I think yes.”

Delivery models are also being tested with the government aiming for fast-tracked planning approval for many of the new projects to enter the GMPP, an example Bangle gave (although not a public scheme) was the proposed Universal Studios development.

Handled through a special development order, planning consent that would normally take more than five years was granted in roughly two.

“Government are really turning the dial up and saying we’ve got to act and we might need to be prepared to change the model,” she said.

“I think with Universal, they’ve proven that they can do that and they want it built in the early 2030s. Flagship projects like that give real momentum, impetus and hope.

“I challenge people who say we can’t deliver big projects in this country. I think that’s not true.”

Regardless, challenges remain where the wider picture of major project delivery is concerned. One issues is how to coordinate overlapping major projects in the same area.

Multiple Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs) can often be developed in the same region where decisions about sequencing and who pays for local enabling works become sensitive.

An example of this is in Suffolk where residents and MPs have complained their lives are being seriously impacted by the lack of coordination between Sizewell C and the LionLink and Sea Link interconnectors, all of which sit within a 16km radius of each other. Sizewell C is a new nuclear power station with a 362ha onshore site. The Sea Link interconnector will have a converter station at Friston and the Lion Link interconnector will have a converter station at Saxmundham, with both having multiple kilometres of works between the landfall site and these locations.

Additionally, Scottish Power Renewables is developing two offshore wind farms making landfall on the Suffolk coast that require new infrastructure. Meanwhile, inland, Essex & Suffolk Water is planning a series of major new infrastructure interventions that includes a pipeline that is critical to Sizewell C.

Bangle acts as project director for the work WSP is doing to upgrade the local road system for Sizewell C. At the start of the month, two major roundabouts on the A12 opened as part of this, offering improved access to the nuclear power station’s construction site.

She said: “There’s a complex project advisory piece in here which is when you’ve got multiple layered NSIPs how do you manage those interfaces in the most efficient way?”

“With the interconnector links coming in, there are three NSIPs all in a similar area.

“We’re thinking about if Sizewell C comes first, it’s not right that they should fix all the infrastructure in the area.”

The need for major projects to think about these things boils down to a lack of local authority funding and investment into the infrastructure that would be able to support the scale of the schemes.

“These big projects are fixing systemic issues in areas or where they haven’t had the funding to sort them out,” Bangle said.

“There’s a complex picture there on how you get all of these promoters in the room with the local authority so you can get the best outcome for the taxpayer.”

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