Impatient for infrastructure? Four changes to improve UK project delivery

Impatient for infrastructure? Four changes to improve UK project deliveryMarch 12, 2026 | Article Emma Loxton Michael Birshan Tom Brinded Alexandra GillUK infrastructure projects have a history of delivering late and over budget. Here are four immediate changes for operators and policymakers to buck that trend, as investment and ambition escalate. A new generation of infrastructure is beginning in the United Kingdom. As investment increases, the country’s infrastructure leaders and stakeholders can consider four relatively simple changes that our experience suggests will lead to immediate improvements in delivery. In 2025, the UK government announced a ten-year strategic plan to invest at least £725 billion in public infrastructure and launched the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) with a mandate to improve project planning and delivery.1“Decade long Infrastructure Strategy to deliver stability, investment and national renewal,” UK Government, June 19, 2025. (The project pipeline was valued at £718 billion as of March 2026.2Infrastructure Pipeline, National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority, March 2026.) This mandate extends across public-sector capital investment and an updated approach to private capital partnering with the government to deliver infrastructure projects. Also in 2025, two major government reviews signalled greater infrastructure spending.

The Strategic Defence Review includes an increased commitment to defence spending, up to 2.5 percent of GDP by 2027, including “substantial” defence infrastructure upgrades.3The Strategic Defence Review 2025 - Making Britain Safer: secure at home, strong abroad, UK Ministry of Defence, July 8, 2025. The 2025 Spending Review includes about £57 billion in capital for the Department of Health and Social Care from 2026 to 2030.4“Autumn Budget 2025: what you need to know,” NHS Confederation, November 26, 2025; note that this includes capital for building and maintaining land, facilities, and equipment (for example, MRI or CT scanners). It also includes £40 billion to £50 billion for energy and net-zero infrastructure over the same period, with spending in 2030 in these two areas projected to be about 140 percent higher than it was in 2025.5Spending review 2025, Institute for Fiscal Studies, June 11, 2025. Meanwhile, collaboration between the public and private sectors continues at pace, with financing deals for UK infrastructure projects in 2025 hitting a record high.6Alexandra Heal, Gill Plimmer, and Ray Douglas, “UK infrastructure financing on track to reach record high,” Financial Times, September 8, 2025; Maisie Grice, “UK infrastructure funding set to break record highs,” City AM, September 8, 2025. The decision to enhance and expand UK infrastructure assets comes at a time when global infrastructure needs are growing and changing. In addition to traditional assets such as roads, power grids, and housing, modern infrastructure includes fibre-optic networks, data centres, electric-vehicle charging stations, and other assets required to support advanced technologies. McKinsey estimates that $106 trillion in investment will be needed globally through 2040 to meet this rising demand. One of the keys to fully realising the United Kingdom’s new infrastructure goals is to close the persistent gaps between ambition and delivery that have marked past projects. The challenges are well understood and extensively studied, including in reports by the National Audit Office7Lessons learned: Delivering value from government investment in major projects, National Audit Office, February 23, 2024. and the Infrastructure and Projects Authority.8Transforming Infrastructure Performance: Roadmap to 2030, UK Infrastructure and Projects Authority, September 13, 2021. Our analysis shows that failure to address this widely researched issue could lead to more than £250 billion in unrealised spending commitments over the next decade9Our analysis uses the planned infrastructure spending from the National Infrastructure and Construction Pipeline (NICP) publications between 2014 and 2024, and actual spending from the Office for National Statistics’ experimental infrastructure statistics, correcting all to 2024–25 prices.—investment that is designed to improve UK lives and livelihoods and enable long-term economic growth. While there is a wealth of areas where improvements can be made, and many have made suggestions,10Governance and decision‑making on mega‑projects, National Audit Office, March 14, 2025. our experience working on infrastructure delivery efforts across asset classes and geographies suggests four changes will make a difference immediately: addressing funding inconsistency and improving planning quality; establishing a culture of disciplined data usage; applying digital tools across the infrastructure life cycle; and reducing leadership churn across major public programmes. While these solutions are relatively simple, addressing them effectively will require discipline and determination among public and private organisations to transform their current practices and make the changes stick. A decade of underdelivered public infrastructure About the analysisThe £163 billion gap in infrastructure spending is derived by deducting actual spend from “net new” planned spend in each year, assuming that “missed” spend from a prior year comprises part of the “planned” spend in the following year. Our analysis uses planned infrastructure spending from the National Infrastructure and Construction Pipeline (NICP) publications from 2014 to 2024.1Policy papers and consultations, UK Infrastructure and Projects Authority, accessed February 2026. Actual spending is sourced from the Office for National Statistics’ experimental infrastructure statistics.2“Infrastructure statistics – experimental,” Office for National Statistics, July 8, 2025. For years in which no pipeline was published (2019, 2020, 2022, and 2024), planned spending estimates were interpolated using the closest available pipeline data or left blank. It should be noted that each NICP represents a snapshot at the time of publication, with notable inconsistencies in publication cadence and classification of projects year to year—including the absence of a full pipeline in some years and the publication of a procurement-only pipeline in 2020–21. Future spend projections are derived from the July 2025 National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority pipeline.3Infrastructure Pipeline, National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority, October 22, 2025. The pipeline falls short of the £725 million ambition in the ten-year strategy announced in 2025; to extend the projection through 2030–34, a fifth of the £217 billion deficit (£43.4 billion) was distributed evenly across those years. All figures were adjusted to 2024–25 financial year prices using the CPI index (2015 = 100). For the United Kingdom to fulfil its ten-year infrastructure plan, the government and its delivery partners will need to reverse a decade of underdelivery. From 2015 to 2024, for example, only 59 percent of planned spending on UK infrastructure projects materialised (Exhibit 1). This is a shortfall of £163 billion, even when accounting for unspent allocations that were rolled over into future years’ plans (see sidebar “About the analysis”). To achieve the UK government’s investment target, the need to improve delivery is ever more acute. Spending would need to rise by 54 percent from its 2024 level of £47 billion to reach the £73 billion per year needed through 2034 to achieve the UK government’s target (Exhibit 2). Failure to increase spending risks leaving some £254 billion of infrastructure undelivered over the next decade. At the same time, continued productivity and workforce supply issues hinder the pace of delivery. Construction economic productivity grew by 0.4 percent annually from 2015 to 202411Labour productivity time series, Office for National Statistics, February 17, 2026.—mainly driven by increased labour productivity in building construction, as labour productivity in civil engineering (including roads, highways, railways, bridges, tunnels, utilities, and water projects) remained essentially flat. At the same time, the current UK construction workforce of 2.1 million is down 12 percent from its prepandemic level of 2.4 million in 2019, and has remained flat in recent years.12EMP13: Employment by industry, Office for National Statistics, August 12, 2025. If construction productivity growth remains static, the sector workforce would need to grow by more than one million people—or 40 percent—to meet the increased planned spending ambition. Although total vacancies in construction are in line with the UK average for vacancies,13VACS02: Vacancies by industry, Office for National Statistics, February 17, 2026. the sector has relatively more skills shortages and hard-to-fill vacancies than others.14Suban Abdulla, “Britain pledges 600 million pounds to tackle construction skills shortages,” Reuters, March 22, 2025. Increasing the workforce is likely to be challenging, making improved productivity essential. An unpredictable public infrastructure pipeline Over the past decade, the United Kingdom has averaged around 630 infrastructure projects per year in the National Infrastructure and Construction Pipeline (NICP). But the numbers have been volatile, ranging from 16 percent above the average in 2016 to 16 percent below in 2021.15Calculated using available years’ data from Policy Papers and Consultations database, UK Infrastructure and Projects Authority, accessed February 2026. Some level of volatility is to be expected due to external events such as the COVID-19 pandemic or geopolitical tensions, or due to uncertainty during the planning and design phases. Indeed, our analysis of the NICP pipeline from 2015 through 2023 shows 17 projects were in the “planning and consents” stage for three years or more, generating uncertainty about the timing of more than £8 billion of spend. This volatility, coupled with slow or stalled progress, destabilises delivery: The supply chain, workforce, contractors, and decision-making systems cannot predict or plan for the medium to long term, creating supply and demand imbalances. The range of project sizes in the pipeline—from police station refurbishments costing less than £10 million to megaprojects of close to £50 billion, such as the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant—also creates challenges in identifying and addressing priority projects and in managing the administrative requirements of many smaller projects. More than half of projects in the 2023 pipeline have a forecast spend of less than £100 million, up from 33 percent of projects in 2014.16National infrastructure and construction pipeline 2023, UK Infrastructure and Projects Authority and HM Treasury, February 2, 2024; National infrastructure pipeline December 2014, HM Treasury, December 2, 2014. Project delays and overspending Looking even more closely at the past ten years, the problem is not only that the United Kingdom has underdelivered on planned spending (Exhibit 3). Individual projects and programmes also tend to be delivered late and over budget. The ten biggest projects in the Government Major Project Portfolio (GMPP)17A major government project is any central government-funded project or programme that requires HM Treasury (HMT) approval during its life, as set out in Delegated Authority Letters, or is otherwise of special interest to the government. Analysis uses Government Major Project Portfolio (GMPP) data sets from 2013–25, using the top ten 2025 infrastructure projects by whole-life cost.

The New Hospitals Programme excluded as an outlier (estimated cost increased by 1,626 percent between 2024 and 2025, with end date delayed by 15 years over the same time period).

The High Speed 2 railway project is also not shown because the current forecast of whole-life spend is not provided in the GMPP data. Whole-life cost includes capital, operating, and decommissioning costs as per Cabinet Office guidance. are forecasting, on average, 161 percent higher whole-life costs than the original baseline and a delivery date 57 months after the initial estimate.18Major-projects-data, National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority, Cabinet Office, and HM Treasury, August 11, 2025. This appears to be true across sectors, with housing, transport, communications, and energy projects all showing cost overruns. Reasons cited include changing priorities under new governments, which create uncertainty and delay decision-making, short-term budgetary pressures, scope changes, and unforeseen complexity in implementation. For example, a delay in agreeing to changes in scope for the Transpennine Route Upgrade led to about £190 million being spent on work that was not ultimately used.19The Transpennine Route Upgrade Programme, National Audit Office, July 20, 2022. Typically, UK projects are spending more time and capital in the planning phase than they previously have,20“Factsheet: Critical infrastructure reforms,” UK Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, September 19, 2025. with multiple regulatory approval processes for any asset and multiple stakeholder groups to bring on board. Nevertheless, execution often commences with an incomplete perspective on what is being built, leading to late, costly changes. There is also the question of incentives: whilst delivering below cost is a positive outcome, at a government department level, it may not be well incentivised because unspent budgeted funds are forfeited. The short-term funding cycle (five years for road and rail) can also lead to suboptimal allocations and scope decisions. Closing the gap between ambition and delivery Many people and organisations have roles to play to close the gap between current delivery and collective ambition in UK infrastructure. Two groups that can have outsize roles are UK public delivery engines (including NISTA, individual government departments and delivery bodies, local authorities, and regulators) and those delivering the projects, including engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contractors and other partners. Collectively, some challenging questions need to be asked up front, such as: Is there clarity about why this infrastructure is needed? How can better asset life cycle management help shift part of the portfolio from build to better ways of maintaining critical assets to extend their lifespan and retain their full capacity? How will the benefits that it will deliver be measured? What is a reasonable timeframe for completion, and what headwinds might the project encounter? What permissions, licenses, and assessments are required? What are the real trade-offs? The range of proposed and possible solutions to these questions is almost endless. Below, we describe four immediate changes that, our experience suggests, are relatively simple to make and have immediate and lasting impact (Exhibit 4). Stabilise the portfolio through better planning and budgeting The published pipeline for UK infrastructure projects is subject to volatility and a potentially lengthy planning process. Those responsible for project delivery can better insulate their projects from that and increase chances of success by developing—and sticking to—a more robust, long-term approach to planning and budgeting. Such planning would give those responsible for project delivery a longer-term horizon for making supply chain and workforce decisions. It would also help limit unnecessary trade-offs driven by delivery shortfalls and unspent budgets, protecting work that relies on credible funding and delivery forecasts. Norway’s State Project Model offers an example of how to take a structured approach to assessing public infrastructure projects and stabilise the portfolio. Under Norway’s model, all projects above one billion Norwegian kroner require two independent quality-assurance reviews21“Norway – State project model and quality assurance scheme,” OECD, accessed February 2026. by accredited external advisers.22“A description of the quality assurance scheme – QA1 and QA2,” Norwegian University of Science and Technology, accessed February 2026. The first review is conducted before the government approves detailed project planning, and the second is conducted before Parliament releases funding. This approach is designed to reduce the risk of needing to revise the project scope at a later stage and to prevent costs from escalating. This process is not foolproof but has yielded tangible results: while global infrastructure projects typically report average cost overruns of about 30 percent, evaluations of Norwegian projects reveal overruns of just 2 to 6 percent.23Morten Welde et al., Estimating costs in large government investment projects. How good are the estimates and uncertainty analyses in the QA2-reports?, Concept Research Programme, December 2019. This kind of gated process ensures that projects that make it into the overall portfolio are more stable and more likely to stick to initial funding estimates and delivery plans. This can make the whole system more stable and improve longer-term capacity and workforce planning. Those responsible for delivering infrastructure can also apply principles for managing uncertainty to both the portfolio and individual projects. This could include a requirement to undertake scenario planning for larger projects or to deploy “challenge teams” to pressure test a project business case and mitigate biases within a project team. The UK government is taking steps to stabilise infrastructure planning by exerting greater control over the quality of projects entering the pipeline. If the NISTA and GMPP multiyear project pipelines become more stable, that will likely lead to more realistic project plans, cost discipline, supply chain confidence, and more long-term private investment. This, together with the government systemically employing lessons learnt from others on major projects, can help close the gap between ambition and delivery. Build a disciplined, data-driven culture for greater insights Despite greater access to data and information, decision-makers in infrastructure programmes are often “flying blind” as they seek to turn reporting into actionable, practical insights that can improve performance. At almost any point in a project’s maturity, leaders can make changes to improve their culture related to data and, ultimately, their decision-making and performance. Our analysis across many capital projects shows that projects are typically managed through a variety of systems, often with inconsistent data definitions and reporting standards. Whilst the UK has made progress on encouraging digital information management on buildings,24For example, mandating Building Information Modelling Level 2 for central government projects by 2016, Government Construction Strategy 2016, Infrastructure and Projects Authority, March 20, 2016; and the “digital golden thread” within the Building Safety Act 2022. it has proven challenging to extract the value of data at scale to manage complex programs. Information on cost, scheduling, and progress is often collected in silos at different intervals. It is typically focused on backward-looking, high-level milestones, making it hard for project leaders to identify emerging risks early or to act decisively when delivery issues arise. Perhaps even more importantly, teams and leaders often fail to interrogate the analysis to spot issues, determine root causes, understand impact on delivery, or identify when and how it can be resolved. Those who routinely accept poor data quality and analysis as good enough are missing insights and losing accountability—and a better way is rapidly possible. Overcoming these obstacles does not start with better tools and more data—it starts with a strong culture of data and decision-making discipline. Good practice is to embed this approach before construction—but it can be remediated later, often surprisingly quickly. Improving delivery outcomes will come from project leaders taking the simple but hard actions of enforcing better decision-making, owning the numbers, and interrogating facts to hold everyone accountable for delivery. This includes establishing consistent definitions, developing structured reporting, and prioritising accountability for using data to make decisions. Good practice entails tracking and steering critical-path activities at a granular level, including daily task adherence or weekly production rates. All projects should have a single, up-to-date view of project performance. This means project leaders can hold their stakeholders—such as EPCs, suppliers, and delivery partners—accountable. Material improvements in performance are evident when organisations increase their capability and discipline for data-informed decision-making—including boosting project management productivity by 80 percent, reducing capital expenditures by 5 to 8 percent, and avoiding 15 to 30 percent in future costs by accelerating schedules and boosting productivity. The data-driven culture should not end when the project ends. Good project governance includes robust evaluation of the benefits delivered by the project. If lessons learnt are effectively fed back into the project planning and development cycles, the potential benefits of future projects could be more confidently assessed, potentially unlocking higher-quality cost–benefit assessments. This does not seem to be happening routinely. In 2021, only 8 percent of £432 billion in major UK project spending had robust evaluation plans; two-thirds had none.25Evaluating government spending, National Audit Office, December 2, 2021. Evaluation costs are trivial relative to project costs—the barrier isn’t resources but rather incentive structures. The demand for post-project evaluation is mixed because benefits often only materialise years later. Case studies show that benefits often take ten to 15 years or more to materialise and require sustained postcompletion investment. Embrace digital tools to improve project pace and quality Many critical infrastructure delivery processes and systems remain reliant on manual input, handovers, integration, and reconciliation. Many projects are being run with multiple schedules and cost plans, manually updated daily or weekly with different sources of information. In some cases, designs and scenarios still take days or weeks to rework as new information comes to light, while lessons are not captured and shared in real time (if ever) between projects. Often, projects fall short because contractors or suppliers are unable to provide data to the right level of detail, at the right frequency, or in the right structure, or because multiple stakeholders struggle to integrate differing data systems or digital tools. These challenges are not unique to the United Kingdom, nor are they universal within the country. Still, they are prevalent enough to suggest that a sizable opportunity to improve performance is available by deploying emerging digital and AI tools. Deploying digital and AI tools and capabilities can transform workflows, and therefore, pace and quality. Leading privately funded infrastructure delivery relies on digital and AI tools for a singular view of performance that integrates data sources, is tailored and accessible to different stakeholders, and simulates scenarios to increase accuracy and deliverability. Such an approach was successfully used for the A428 Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet improvement plan, in which a digital twin saved £1.5 million in time and cost.26Will Mann, “Digital Construction Awards 2024 shortlist: Best Use of Data,” Construction Management, May 17, 2024. There is already an encouraging level of regulatory support in the United Kingdom for digital twins, for example, via the government-led National Digital Twin Programme.27“National Digital Twin Programme (NDTP),” UK Department for Business and Trade, October 30, 2023. One of the most compelling use cases for AI in infrastructure development is the use of generative scheduling. Many projects still rely on suboptimal “static” schedules that are manually generated, relying on a planner’s previous experience rather than leveraging data and more quantitative techniques. This traditional approach limits planners’ ability to test multiple scenarios or assess the impact of changes in design or procurement, resource constraints, or site conditions—often leading to unpredictable scheduling issues that require a reactive approach to planning rather than a proactive one. Generative scheduling uses advanced analytics to automatically generate and optimise end-to-end, resource-loaded project schedules based on physical constraints and recipe-based logic, simulating millions of delivery scenarios in minutes to identify the most efficient sequence of work with the resources available. This automated process, when deployed with rigorous human oversight, ultimately yields a better plan and enables the planning team to focus on value-adding work, such as evaluating the cost and time impacts of potential risks or refining contracted resource requirements. Deploying generative scheduling can drive 10 percent schedule acceleration, three times faster capital cost estimates, and roughly 15 percent capital expenditure savings. A mining company used AI tools to model an expansion of a critical-materials-handling facility and determine if it could accelerate and derisk any phases of the project. The company developed a generative schedule model to test scenarios against design and construction methodology changes, alongside a range of productivity rates, crew sizes, equipment availabilities, and constraints. By optimising planning this way, it reduced the project length by 17 percent, generated savings through reduced time-related costs, and accelerated revenue realisation. Of course, infrastructure delivery teams and leaders seeking these kinds of gains must put the discipline and culture in place before investing further in tools or technologies. Tools are only as powerful as the teams and ways of working that surround them, the data that feeds them, and the integration among them. Once in place, though, AI and digitally enabled workflows could materially reduce delays and create more agile, data-driven approaches to project execution, and can be effectively adopted at any point of a project’s maturity. Maintain consistent project leadership for better decision-making Across the UK infrastructure landscape, there are examples of repeated change in central government sponsorship of major government programmes and projects that have slowed delivery, injected volatility into the market, and made it harder to realise value and benefits. In the five years up to 2024, most major UK government projects experienced at least one change in the senior responsible owner (SRO), with 20 percent seeing two or more changes over that time period (Exhibit 5).28Government major projects portfolio: Senior responsible owners, UK Infrastructure Projects Authority, Cabinet Office, and HM Treasury, March 25, 2025. Additionally, nearly 15 percent of SROs oversaw more than one project, suggesting stretched leadership capacity in parts of the portfolio.

The National Audit Office raised a similar concern in 2016, when only four of 73 projects in the GMPP, or 5 percent, had a single SRO over a four-year period, while 56 percent had two or more changes. The Committee of Public Accounts has also raised concerns about SROs having responsibility for several projects.29Delivering major projects in government: a briefing for the Committee of Public Accounts, National Audit Office, January 6, 2016. Multiple other studies also show a significant negative correlation between leadership (in particular, project management) turnover and project performance.30See, for example, Biniam Bedasso, Ministerial turnover and performance of World Bank education projects, Center for Global Development working paper, Number 641, April 2023; Stephen K. Parker and Martin Skitmore, “Project management turnover: causes and effects on project performance,”International Journal of Project Management, April 2005, Volume 23, Number 3. While leadership change can sometimes be appropriate (indeed, advisable), it generally reduces on-the-job learning, disrupts institutional memory, and undermines stability within the wider team. Several structural and cultural factors contribute to the pattern of high turnover. One major challenge for the UK public infrastructure sector is that it competes with other countries, companies, and industries for top talent, which can offer greater compensation, stability, and accountability, less bureaucracy, and greater operational autonomy. The UK government has begun to respond with reforms designed to improve stability and retention.

The Cabinet Office is exploring competency-based pay and milestone-linked rewards that tie bonuses or increments to successful delivery rather than role changes, encouraging SROs to stay through full project cycles.31Tevye Markson, “Capability-based pay, milestone-based rewards and the five-year strategy: everything you need to know about the Cabinet Office’s plans for SCS reform,” Civil Service World, April 19, 2022. New guidance also proposes minimum assignment durations for senior roles, aligned with project timelines or departmental outcomes. In parallel, parliamentary committees have called for greater accountability and empowerment for SROs in the Ministry of Defence, recommending that they receive retention incentives and have direct access to ministers when programmes encounter difficulties.32It is broke—and it’s time to fix it The UK’s defence procurement system, House of Commons Defence Committee, July 11, 2023. One prominent example of a UK infrastructure effort that has overcome these challenges and benefited from stable leadership is the Thames Tideway Tunnel, completed in 2025. One of the largest UK infrastructure projects, it was designed to modernise London’s 150-year-old sewer network and protect the River Thames from pollution. The executive leadership remained remarkably stable throughout the project’s decade-long duration. The chair, CEO, CFO, chief technical officer, general counsel, and other senior leaders served long tenures—most from seven to 12 years—creating continuity in decision-making and institutional knowledge. A project “ownership” culture was built with an investor-like mindset and incentive system, and the top team included infrastructure specialists, rather than senior generalists. The project has been used as a case study in successful delivery, including by the G20’s Improving Delivery Models initiative,33Thames Tideway Tunnel, G20 Improving Delivery Models, accessed February 2026. and it was noted as one of the largest UK infrastructure projects to be completed roughly on time and close to budget. Whilst cost estimates rose during planning, these then remained stable during construction.34Lessons learned: private insurance for infrastructure, National Audit Office, March 25, 2025; Rory Butler, “Tideway ‘super-sewer’ final cost holds steady at £4.5bn,” Construction Wave, August 30, 2023. As the United Kingdom seeks to realise its infrastructure ambitions in a rapidly changing world, policymakers and private-sector delivery partners will be challenged to reverse the past decade of underdelivering on major projects. Taking cues from both government and industry best practices can help transform infrastructure projects by making them more disciplined in spending, planning, using data and AI, and fostering strong leadership. A good place to start is with these four shifts, which can accelerate improvements and turn the next decade into one in which UK infrastructure consistently delivers for society.Emma Loxton is a partner in McKinsey’s London office, where Michael Birshan is a senior partner, Tom Brinded is a partner, and Alexandra Gill is an associate partner. The authors wish to thank Andrew Goodman, Danillo Leite, Erland Spets, Frithjof Lund, Holly Driver, Ingo Aghte, Ishaan Nangia, Keziah Owusu-Attuahene, Koen Vermeltfoort, Nicola Sandri, Oliver Kernick, Patrick Rogers, Robin Nuttall, Tera Allas, and Ye Min Oo for their contributions to this article. This article was edited by Eric Quiñones, a senior editor in the New Jersey office.Explore a career with usRelated ArticlesArticleBest-in-class infrastructure planning: What it takes to excelArticleWelcome to the UK: How can FDI help reignite the country’s growth?ReportThe infrastructure moment A new generation of infrastructure is beginning in the United Kingdom. As investment increases, the country’s infrastructure leaders and stakeholders can consider four relatively simple changes that our experience suggests will lead to immediate improvements in delivery. In 2025, the UK government announced a ten-year strategic plan to invest at least £725 billion in public infrastructure and launched the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) with a mandate to improve project planning and delivery.1“Decade long Infrastructure Strategy to deliver stability, investment and national renewal,” UK Government, June 19, 2025. (The project pipeline was valued at £718 billion as of March 2026.2Infrastructure Pipeline, National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority, March 2026.) This mandate extends across public-sector capital investment and an updated approach to private capital partnering with the government to deliver infrastructure projects. Also in 2025, two major government reviews signalled greater infrastructure spending.

The Strategic Defence Review includes an increased commitment to defence spending, up to 2.5 percent of GDP by 2027, including “substantial” defence infrastructure upgrades.3The Strategic Defence Review 2025 - Making Britain Safer: secure at home, strong abroad, UK Ministry of Defence, July 8, 2025. The 2025 Spending Review includes about £57 billion in capital for the Department of Health and Social Care from 2026 to 2030.4“Autumn Budget 2025: what you need to know,” NHS Confederation, November 26, 2025; note that this includes capital for building and maintaining land, facilities, and equipment (for example, MRI or CT scanners). It also includes £40 billion to £50 billion for energy and net-zero infrastructure over the same period, with spending in 2030 in these two areas projected to be about 140 percent higher than it was in 2025.5Spending review 2025, Institute for Fiscal Studies, June 11, 2025. Meanwhile, collaboration between the public and private sectors continues at pace, with financing deals for UK infrastructure projects in 2025 hitting a record high.6Alexandra Heal, Gill Plimmer, and Ray Douglas, “UK infrastructure financing on track to reach record high,” Financial Times, September 8, 2025; Maisie Grice, “UK infrastructure funding set to break record highs,” City AM, September 8, 2025. The decision to enhance and expand UK infrastructure assets comes at a time when global infrastructure needs are growing and changing. In addition to traditional assets such as roads, power grids, and housing, modern infrastructure includes fibre-optic networks, data centres, electric-vehicle charging stations, and other assets required to support advanced technologies. McKinsey estimates that $106 trillion in investment will be needed globally through 2040 to meet this rising demand. One of the keys to fully realising the United Kingdom’s new infrastructure goals is to close the persistent gaps between ambition and delivery that have marked past projects. The challenges are well understood and extensively studied, including in reports by the National Audit Office7Lessons learned: Delivering value from government investment in major projects, National Audit Office, February 23, 2024. and the Infrastructure and Projects Authority.8Transforming Infrastructure Performance: Roadmap to 2030, UK Infrastructure and Projects Authority, September 13, 2021. Our analysis shows that failure to address this widely researched issue could lead to more than £250 billion in unrealised spending commitments over the next decade9Our analysis uses the planned infrastructure spending from the National Infrastructure and Construction Pipeline (NICP) publications between 2014 and 2024, and actual spending from the Office for National Statistics’ experimental infrastructure statistics, correcting all to 2024–25 prices.—investment that is designed to improve UK lives and livelihoods and enable long-term economic growth. While there is a wealth of areas where improvements can be made, and many have made suggestions,10Governance and decision‑making on mega‑projects, National Audit Office, March 14, 2025. our experience working on infrastructure delivery efforts across asset classes and geographies suggests four changes will make a difference immediately: addressing funding inconsistency and improving planning quality; establishing a culture of disciplined data usage; applying digital tools across the infrastructure life cycle; and reducing leadership churn across major public programmes. While these solutions are relatively simple, addressing them effectively will require discipline and determination among public and private organisations to transform their current practices and make the changes stick. A decade of underdelivered public infrastructure About the analysisThe £163 billion gap in infrastructure spending is derived by deducting actual spend from “net new” planned spend in each year, assuming that “missed” spend from a prior year comprises part of the “planned” spend in the following year. Our analysis uses planned infrastructure spending from the National Infrastructure and Construction Pipeline (NICP) publications from 2014 to 2024.1Policy papers and consultations, UK Infrastructure and Projects Authority, accessed February 2026. Actual spending is sourced from the Office for National Statistics’ experimental infrastructure statistics.2“Infrastructure statistics – experimental,” Office for National Statistics, July 8, 2025. For years in which no pipeline was published (2019, 2020, 2022, and 2024), planned spending estimates were interpolated using the closest available pipeline data or left blank. It should be noted that each NICP represents a snapshot at the time of publication, with notable inconsistencies in publication cadence and classification of projects year to year—including the absence of a full pipeline in some years and the publication of a procurement-only pipeline in 2020–21. Future spend projections are derived from the July 2025 National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority pipeline.3Infrastructure Pipeline, National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority, October 22, 2025. The pipeline falls short of the £725 million ambition in the ten-year strategy announced in 2025; to extend the projection through 2030–34, a fifth of the £217 billion deficit (£43.4 billion) was distributed evenly across those years. All figures were adjusted to 2024–25 financial year prices using the CPI index (2015 = 100). For the United Kingdom to fulfil its ten-year infrastructure plan, the government and its delivery partners will need to reverse a decade of underdelivery. From 2015 to 2024, for example, only 59 percent of planned spending on UK infrastructure projects materialised (Exhibit 1). This is a shortfall of £163 billion, even when accounting for unspent allocations that were rolled over into future years’ plans (see sidebar “About the analysis”). To achieve the UK government’s investment target, the need to improve delivery is ever more acute. Spending would need to rise by 54 percent from its 2024 level of £47 billion to reach the £73 billion per year needed through 2034 to achieve the UK government’s target (Exhibit 2). Failure to increase spending risks leaving some £254 billion of infrastructure undelivered over the next decade. At the same time, continued productivity and workforce supply issues hinder the pace of delivery. Construction economic productivity grew by 0.4 percent annually from 2015 to 202411Labour productivity time series, Office for National Statistics, February 17, 2026.—mainly driven by increased labour productivity in building construction, as labour productivity in civil engineering (including roads, highways, railways, bridges, tunnels, utilities, and water projects) remained essentially flat. At the same time, the current UK construction workforce of 2.1 million is down 12 percent from its prepandemic level of 2.4 million in 2019, and has remained flat in recent years.12EMP13: Employment by industry, Office for National Statistics, August 12, 2025. If construction productivity growth remains static, the sector workforce would need to grow by more than one million people—or 40 percent—to meet the increased planned spending ambition. Although total vacancies in construction are in line with the UK average for vacancies,13VACS02: Vacancies by industry, Office for National Statistics, February 17, 2026. the sector has relatively more skills shortages and hard-to-fill vacancies than others.14Suban Abdulla, “Britain pledges 600 million pounds to tackle construction skills shortages,” Reuters, March 22, 2025. Increasing the workforce is likely to be challenging, making improved productivity essential. An unpredictable public infrastructure pipeline Over the past decade, the United Kingdom has averaged around 630 infrastructure projects per year in the National Infrastructure and Construction Pipeline (NICP). But the numbers have been volatile, ranging from 16 percent above the average in 2016 to 16 percent below in 2021.15Calculated using available years’ data from Policy Papers and Consultations database, UK Infrastructure and Projects Authority, accessed February 2026. Some level of volatility is to be expected due to external events such as the COVID-19 pandemic or geopolitical tensions, or due to uncertainty during the planning and design phases. Indeed, our analysis of the NICP pipeline from 2015 through 2023 shows 17 projects were in the “planning and consents” stage for three years or more, generating uncertainty about the timing of more than £8 billion of spend. This volatility, coupled with slow or stalled progress, destabilises delivery: The supply chain, workforce, contractors, and decision-making systems cannot predict or plan for the medium to long term, creating supply and demand imbalances. The range of project sizes in the pipeline—from police station refurbishments costing less than £10 million to megaprojects of close to £50 billion, such as the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant—also creates challenges in identifying and addressing priority projects and in managing the administrative requirements of many smaller projects. More than half of projects in the 2023 pipeline have a forecast spend of less than £100 million, up from 33 percent of projects in 2014.16National infrastructure and construction pipeline 2023, UK Infrastructure and Projects Authority and HM Treasury, February 2, 2024; National infrastructure pipeline December 2014, HM Treasury, December 2, 2014. Project delays and overspending Looking even more closely at the past ten years, the problem is not only that the United Kingdom has underdelivered on planned spending (Exhibit 3). Individual projects and programmes also tend to be delivered late and over budget. The ten biggest projects in the Government Major Project Portfolio (GMPP)17A major government project is any central government-funded project or programme that requires HM Treasury (HMT) approval during its life, as set out in Delegated Authority Letters, or is otherwise of special interest to the government. Analysis uses Government Major Project Portfolio (GMPP) data sets from 2013–25, using the top ten 2025 infrastructure projects by whole-life cost.

The New Hospitals Programme excluded as an outlier (estimated cost increased by 1,626 percent between 2024 and 2025, with end date delayed by 15 years over the same time period).

The High Speed 2 railway project is also not shown because the current forecast of whole-life spend is not provided in the GMPP data. Whole-life cost includes capital, operating, and decommissioning costs as per Cabinet Office guidance. are forecasting, on average, 161 percent higher whole-life costs than the original baseline and a delivery date 57 months after the initial estimate.18Major-projects-data, National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority, Cabinet Office, and HM Treasury, August 11, 2025. This appears to be true across sectors, with housing, transport, communications, and energy projects all showing cost overruns. Reasons cited include changing priorities under new governments, which create uncertainty and delay decision-making, short-term budgetary pressures, scope changes, and unforeseen complexity in implementation. For example, a delay in agreeing to changes in scope for the Transpennine Route Upgrade led to about £190 million being spent on work that was not ultimately used.19The Transpennine Route Upgrade Programme, National Audit Office, July 20, 2022. Typically, UK projects are spending more time and capital in the planning phase than they previously have,20“Factsheet: Critical infrastructure reforms,” UK Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, September 19, 2025. with multiple regulatory approval processes for any asset and multiple stakeholder groups to bring on board. Nevertheless, execution often commences with an incomplete perspective on what is being built, leading to late, costly changes. There is also the question of incentives: whilst delivering below cost is a positive outcome, at a government department level, it may not be well incentivised because unspent budgeted funds are forfeited. The short-term funding cycle (five years for road and rail) can also lead to suboptimal allocations and scope decisions. Closing the gap between ambition and delivery Many people and organisations have roles to play to close the gap between current delivery and collective ambition in UK infrastructure. Two groups that can have outsize roles are UK public delivery engines (including NISTA, individual government departments and delivery bodies, local authorities, and regulators) and those delivering the projects, including engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contractors and other partners. Collectively, some challenging questions need to be asked up front, such as: Is there clarity about why this infrastructure is needed? How can better asset life cycle management help shift part of the portfolio from build to better ways of maintaining critical assets to extend their lifespan and retain their full capacity? How will the benefits that it will deliver be measured? What is a reasonable timeframe for completion, and what headwinds might the project encounter? What permissions, licenses, and assessments are required? What are the real trade-offs? The range of proposed and possible solutions to these questions is almost endless. Below, we describe four immediate changes that, our experience suggests, are relatively simple to make and have immediate and lasting impact (Exhibit 4). Stabilise the portfolio through better planning and budgeting The published pipeline for UK infrastructure projects is subject to volatility and a potentially lengthy planning process. Those responsible for project delivery can better insulate their projects from that and increase chances of success by developing—and sticking to—a more robust, long-term approach to planning and budgeting. Such planning would give those responsible for project delivery a longer-term horizon for making supply chain and workforce decisions. It would also help limit unnecessary trade-offs driven by delivery shortfalls and unspent budgets, protecting work that relies on credible funding and delivery forecasts. Norway’s State Project Model offers an example of how to take a structured approach to assessing public infrastructure projects and stabilise the portfolio. Under Norway’s model, all projects above one billion Norwegian kroner require two independent quality-assurance reviews21“Norway – State project model and quality assurance scheme,” OECD, accessed February 2026. by accredited external advisers.22“A description of the quality assurance scheme – QA1 and QA2,” Norwegian University of Science and Technology, accessed February 2026. The first review is conducted before the government approves detailed project planning, and the second is conducted before Parliament releases funding. This approach is designed to reduce the risk of needing to revise the project scope at a later stage and to prevent costs from escalating. This process is not foolproof but has yielded tangible results: while global infrastructure projects typically report average cost overruns of about 30 percent, evaluations of Norwegian projects reveal overruns of just 2 to 6 percent.23Morten Welde et al., Estimating costs in large government investment projects. How good are the estimates and uncertainty analyses in the QA2-reports?, Concept Research Programme, December 2019. This kind of gated process ensures that projects that make it into the overall portfolio are more stable and more likely to stick to initial funding estimates and delivery plans. This can make the whole system more stable and improve longer-term capacity and workforce planning. Those responsible for delivering infrastructure can also apply principles for managing uncertainty to both the portfolio and individual projects. This could include a requirement to undertake scenario planning for larger projects or to deploy “challenge teams” to pressure test a project business case and mitigate biases within a project team. The UK government is taking steps to stabilise infrastructure planning by exerting greater control over the quality of projects entering the pipeline. If the NISTA and GMPP multiyear project pipelines become more stable, that will likely lead to more realistic project plans, cost discipline, supply chain confidence, and more long-term private investment. This, together with the government systemically employing lessons learnt from others on major projects, can help close the gap between ambition and delivery. Build a disciplined, data-driven culture for greater insights Despite greater access to data and information, decision-makers in infrastructure programmes are often “flying blind” as they seek to turn reporting into actionable, practical insights that can improve performance. At almost any point in a project’s maturity, leaders can make changes to improve their culture related to data and, ultimately, their decision-making and performance. Our analysis across many capital projects shows that projects are typically managed through a variety of systems, often with inconsistent data definitions and reporting standards. Whilst the UK has made progress on encouraging digital information management on buildings,24For example, mandating Building Information Modelling Level 2 for central government projects by 2016, Government Construction Strategy 2016, Infrastructure and Projects Authority, March 20, 2016; and the “digital golden thread” within the Building Safety Act 2022. it has proven challenging to extract the value of data at scale to manage complex programs. Information on cost, scheduling, and progress is often collected in silos at different intervals. It is typically focused on backward-looking, high-level milestones, making it hard for project leaders to identify emerging risks early or to act decisively when delivery issues arise. Perhaps even more importantly, teams and leaders often fail to interrogate the analysis to spot issues, determine root causes, understand impact on delivery, or identify when and how it can be resolved. Those who routinely accept poor data quality and analysis as good enough are missing insights and losing accountability—and a better way is rapidly possible. Overcoming these obstacles does not start with better tools and more data—it starts with a strong culture of data and decision-making discipline. Good practice is to embed this approach before construction—but it can be remediated later, often surprisingly quickly. Improving delivery outcomes will come from project leaders taking the simple but hard actions of enforcing better decision-making, owning the numbers, and interrogating facts to hold everyone accountable for delivery. This includes establishing consistent definitions, developing structured reporting, and prioritising accountability for using data to make decisions. Good practice entails tracking and steering critical-path activities at a granular level, including daily task adherence or weekly production rates. All projects should have a single, up-to-date view of project performance. This means project leaders can hold their stakeholders—such as EPCs, suppliers, and delivery partners—accountable. Material improvements in performance are evident when organisations increase their capability and discipline for data-informed decision-making—including boosting project management productivity by 80 percent, reducing capital expenditures by 5 to 8 percent, and avoiding 15 to 30 percent in future costs by accelerating schedules and boosting productivity. The data-driven culture should not end when the project ends. Good project governance includes robust evaluation of the benefits delivered by the project. If lessons learnt are effectively fed back into the project planning and development cycles, the potential benefits of future projects could be more confidently assessed, potentially unlocking higher-quality cost–benefit assessments. This does not seem to be happening routinely. In 2021, only 8 percent of £432 billion in major UK project spending had robust evaluation plans; two-thirds had none.25Evaluating government spending, National Audit Office, December 2, 2021. Evaluation costs are trivial relative to project costs—the barrier isn’t resources but rather incentive structures. The demand for post-project evaluation is mixed because benefits often only materialise years later. Case studies show that benefits often take ten to 15 years or more to materialise and require sustained postcompletion investment. Embrace digital tools to improve project pace and quality Many critical infrastructure delivery processes and systems remain reliant on manual input, handovers, integration, and reconciliation. Many projects are being run with multiple schedules and cost plans, manually updated daily or weekly with different sources of information. In some cases, designs and scenarios still take days or weeks to rework as new information comes to light, while lessons are not captured and shared in real time (if ever) between projects. Often, projects fall short because contractors or suppliers are unable to provide data to the right level of detail, at the right frequency, or in the right structure, or because multiple stakeholders struggle to integrate differing data systems or digital tools. These challenges are not unique to the United Kingdom, nor are they universal within the country. Still, they are prevalent enough to suggest that a sizable opportunity to improve performance is available by deploying emerging digital and AI tools. Deploying digital and AI tools and capabilities can transform workflows, and therefore, pace and quality. Leading privately funded infrastructure delivery relies on digital and AI tools for a singular view of performance that integrates data sources, is tailored and accessible to different stakeholders, and simulates scenarios to increase accuracy and deliverability. Such an approach was successfully used for the A428 Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet improvement plan, in which a digital twin saved £1.5 million in time and cost.26Will Mann, “Digital Construction Awards 2024 shortlist: Best Use of Data,” Construction Management, May 17, 2024. There is already an encouraging level of regulatory support in the United Kingdom for digital twins, for example, via the government-led National Digital Twin Programme.27“National Digital Twin Programme (NDTP),” UK Department for Business and Trade, October 30, 2023. One of the most compelling use cases for AI in infrastructure development is the use of generative scheduling. Many projects still rely on suboptimal “static” schedules that are manually generated, relying on a planner’s previous experience rather than leveraging data and more quantitative techniques. This traditional approach limits planners’ ability to test multiple scenarios or assess the impact of changes in design or procurement, resource constraints, or site conditions—often leading to unpredictable scheduling issues that require a reactive approach to planning rather than a proactive one. Generative scheduling uses advanced analytics to automatically generate and optimise end-to-end, resource-loaded project schedules based on physical constraints and recipe-based logic, simulating millions of delivery scenarios in minutes to identify the most efficient sequence of work with the resources available. This automated process, when deployed with rigorous human oversight, ultimately yields a better plan and enables the planning team to focus on value-adding work, such as evaluating the cost and time impacts of potential risks or refining contracted resource requirements. Deploying generative scheduling can drive 10 percent schedule acceleration, three times faster capital cost estimates, and roughly 15 percent capital expenditure savings. A mining company used AI tools to model an expansion of a critical-materials-handling facility and determine if it could accelerate and derisk any phases of the project. The company developed a generative schedule model to test scenarios against design and construction methodology changes, alongside a range of productivity rates, crew sizes, equipment availabilities, and constraints. By optimising planning this way, it reduced the project length by 17 percent, generated savings through reduced time-related costs, and accelerated revenue realisation. Of course, infrastructure delivery teams and leaders seeking these kinds of gains must put the discipline and culture in place before investing further in tools or technologies. Tools are only as powerful as the teams and ways of working that surround them, the data that feeds them, and the integration among them. Once in place, though, AI and digitally enabled workflows could materially reduce delays and create more agile, data-driven approaches to project execution, and can be effectively adopted at any point of a project’s maturity. Maintain consistent project leadership for better decision-making Across the UK infrastructure landscape, there are examples of repeated change in central government sponsorship of major government programmes and projects that have slowed delivery, injected volatility into the market, and made it harder to realise value and benefits. In the five years up to 2024, most major UK government projects experienced at least one change in the senior responsible owner (SRO), with 20 percent seeing two or more changes over that time period (Exhibit 5).28Government major projects portfolio: Senior responsible owners, UK Infrastructure Projects Authority, Cabinet Office, and HM Treasury, March 25, 2025. Additionally, nearly 15 percent of SROs oversaw more than one project, suggesting stretched leadership capacity in parts of the portfolio.

The National Audit Office raised a similar concern in 2016, when only four of 73 projects in the GMPP, or 5 percent, had a single SRO over a four-year period, while 56 percent had two or more changes. The Committee of Public Accounts has also raised concerns about SROs having responsibility for several projects.29Delivering major projects in government: a briefing for the Committee of Public Accounts, National Audit Office, January 6, 2016. Multiple other studies also show a significant negative correlation between leadership (in particular, project management) turnover and project performance.30See, for example, Biniam Bedasso, Ministerial turnover and performance of World Bank education projects, Center for Global Development working paper, Number 641, April 2023; Stephen K. Parker and Martin Skitmore, “Project management turnover: causes and effects on project performance,”International Journal of Project Management, April 2005, Volume 23, Number 3. While leadership change can sometimes be appropriate (indeed, advisable), it generally reduces on-the-job learning, disrupts institutional memory, and undermines stability within the wider team. Several structural and cultural factors contribute to the pattern of high turnover. One major challenge for the UK public infrastructure sector is that it competes with other countries, companies, and industries for top talent, which can offer greater compensation, stability, and accountability, less bureaucracy, and greater operational autonomy. The UK government has begun to respond with reforms designed to improve stability and retention.

The Cabinet Office is exploring competency-based pay and milestone-linked rewards that tie bonuses or increments to successful delivery rather than role changes, encouraging SROs to stay through full project cycles.31Tevye Markson, “Capability-based pay, milestone-based rewards and the five-year strategy: everything you need to know about the Cabinet Office’s plans for SCS reform,” Civil Service World, April 19, 2022. New guidance also proposes minimum assignment durations for senior roles, aligned with project timelines or departmental outcomes. In parallel, parliamentary committees have called for greater accountability and empowerment for SROs in the Ministry of Defence, recommending that they receive retention incentives and have direct access to ministers when programmes encounter difficulties.32It is broke—and it’s time to fix it The UK’s defence procurement system, House of Commons Defence Committee, July 11, 2023. One prominent example of a UK infrastructure effort that has overcome these challenges and benefited from stable leadership is the Thames Tideway Tunnel, completed in 2025. One of the largest UK infrastructure projects, it was designed to modernise London’s 150-year-old sewer network and protect the River Thames from pollution. The executive leadership remained remarkably stable throughout the project’s decade-long duration. The chair, CEO, CFO, chief technical officer, general counsel, and other senior leaders served long tenures—most from seven to 12 years—creating continuity in decision-making and institutional knowledge. A project “ownership” culture was built with an investor-like mindset and incentive system, and the top team included infrastructure specialists, rather than senior generalists. The project has been used as a case study in successful delivery, including by the G20’s Improving Delivery Models initiative,33Thames Tideway Tunnel, G20 Improving Delivery Models, accessed February 2026. and it was noted as one of the largest UK infrastructure projects to be completed roughly on time and close to budget. Whilst cost estimates rose during planning, these then remained stable during construction.34Lessons learned: private insurance for infrastructure, National Audit Office, March 25, 2025; Rory Butler, “Tideway ‘super-sewer’ final cost holds steady at £4.5bn,” Construction Wave, August 30, 2023. As the United Kingdom seeks to realise its infrastructure ambitions in a rapidly changing world, policymakers and private-sector delivery partners will be challenged to reverse the past decade of underdelivering on major projects. Taking cues from both government and industry best practices can help transform infrastructure projects by making them more disciplined in spending, planning, using data and AI, and fostering strong leadership. A good place to start is with these four shifts, which can accelerate improvements and turn the next decade into one in which UK infrastructure consistently delivers for society.Emma Loxton is a partner in McKinsey’s London office, where Michael Birshan is a senior partner, Tom Brinded is a partner, and Alexandra Gill is an associate partner. The authors wish to thank Andrew Goodman, Danillo Leite, Erland Spets, Frithjof Lund, Holly Driver, Ingo Aghte, Ishaan Nangia, Keziah Owusu-Attuahene, Koen Vermeltfoort, Nicola Sandri, Oliver Kernick, Patrick Rogers, Robin Nuttall, Tera Allas, and Ye Min Oo for their contributions to this article. This article was edited by Eric Quiñones, a senior editor in the New Jersey office.Explore a career with us