The 10 Year Infrastructure Strategy
We welcome the political commitment in today’s 10 Year Infrastructure Strategy to recognise and prioritise infrastructure as the foundation of the nation’s economy.
The decision to invest £725bn has been a long time coming after decades of lost investment and in the context of a rapidly growing maintenance backlog in the public sector estate and a clear need to rebuild Britain.
The commitment to publish a pipeline will also be welcomed by industry and will mean the UK follows in the successful footsteps of Australia and New Zealand. This is the government saying what it is going to do and maximising the likelihood that it will do what it says it will. It will be of critical significance to the construction industry which, for the purpose of building social infrastructure, will need to be reawakened and supported. Iterative development of a pipeline that’s recognised by industry as being clear and valuable will be essential to joint industry and Government success.
We also welcome the lifting of the moratorium on PPPs as a mechanism for getting social infrastructure built. Without it little to nothing has happened in England since 2018.
In our Curshaw, view whatever is used as a commercial base for different asset types, dialogue is needed on the things new models must address to ensure that the lessons learned from UK PPP, including those identified by White/Fraiser, which came after the Mutual Investment Model in Wales, are truly addressed.
Reintroducing sophisticated models runs the risk of a repeat of some of the operational challenges that have arisen on traditional PFI projects. Complex models impose a colossal management burden on contracting authorities and Project Companies alike and will need to be supported by a commensurate investment in contract management capacity and capability and Project Co management. Highly functioning interfaces between the private and public sector will be essential and will require a step change in the adoption of systems technology, data culture and Project reporting and administration particularly with conflation of the concepts of self monitoring and self reporting of performance. Technology must displace inefficient and outdated ways of working, formally documented business processes have to be in place and followed and both must be the glue between the necessarily suitably large and skilled teams of people on either side of Project Agreements.
What certainly remains in question is how many spades will be in the ground before the next election on asset types (social and economic) that voters interact with and whether the political payoff will come after the next election. Either way, and irrespective of the political beneficiaries, today’s announcements should help to address the Infrastructure deficit.