What is the best way to end decades of floundering, delay and indecision in the planning of the UK’s infrastructure? Few would probably say let’s create a quango to tackle the problem, but that is what has emerged as the main recommendation of the review of UK infrastructure planning by Sir John Armitt.
Blog and Comment
End feast and famine first
Construction in 2025 will certainly be a hugely different industry from the one it is now if even a fraction of the ambition revealed in the government’s new report Construction 2025 is realised. Construction costs to be down by 33 per cent, projects to be completed in half the time that they are now, planning reformed, late delivery and cost overruns a thing of the past, no more accidents … the list goes on (see news).
Big projects mean big disputes
While the UK government dithers and delays over the precise shape and size of its infrastructure plans – we must take it on trust that it will eventually come up with some appropriate to a modern industrialised economy – the rest of the world’s major economies are getting on with developing their own.
Bleak future for PF2
News that some schools were at last being released by the Education Funding Agency has come as welcome relief to work starved contractors, but as many questions have been raised as answered about the future procurement methodology for all public sector infrastructure.
Blacklisters face backlash
We have reported relatively little about the blacklisting scandal that was uncovered following a raid by the Information Commissioner’s Office on an organisation that few had previously heard of and is now defunct called the Consulting Organisation, in 2009.
Construction can’t wait
We report briefly in News on the capability review set up by Commercial Secretary to the Treasury Lord Deighton to assess whether the public sector procurement staff involved with infrastructure have the right commercial and project management skills in place. To equally briefly sum up what his review must conclude – no, they don’t.
Routemap to good memories?
A draft best practice guide to delivery of large scale infrastructure projects has been published as part of the government’s Cost Review programme that confirms Private Finance Initiative replacement PF2 as its preferred private financing approach, and supports the use of the NEC standard form contract on public sector projects.
PFI focus on risk
The construction sector still languishes in the depths of recession, but a need for as much as £400,000 million of new infrastructure projects to get started by 2020 suggests that this situation shouldn’t last too much longer.
Comment: Procurement off the rails
A full report of an independent inquiry into the InterCity West Coast (ICWC) franchise fiasco was to be published shortly after we went to press, but even a cursory read of the interim report from the inquiry led by Centrica chief executive Sam Laidlaw reveals that the scale of the public sector’s procurement problems is vast.
The draft Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Bill 2012
In September 2012 the government published the Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Bill 2012.