Improving the delivery of major UK infrastructure

Project X investigates how project delivery can be improved and how this can be translated into delivering government policy.

Projects are the organisation structures used to design, build and maintain transport, energy and water infrastructure systems. They account for almost a quarter of global GDP. All government policy is delivered through project structures: from responding to COVID-19 to delivering Brexit and Net Zero. Unfortunately, many large-scale projects run late, over budget and fail to achieve successful outcomes. However, in recent years, the UK has produced some important project successes, such as the Heathrow Terminal 5 and London Olympics. Why then do some projects perform poorly, while others succeed?

Professors Andrew Davies and Paul Nightingale have long-argued that the traditional focus on managing projects needs to be complemented by more attention to the actual capabilities, practices and processes necessary to manage unpredictability. They recommend moving away from conceptualising project delivery as a process of optimising the production of pre-defined outputs. Instead, recommending a new project delivery model which engages with processes of innovation, learning and the development of project capabilities mediated by flexible planning and control approaches. Dr Rebecca Vine is a Co-Investigator and researcher on Project X and her research extends this to examine how “intelligent” risk-control instruments distribute and build delivery capabilities and how this influences delivery outcomes.  This pragmatism underpins much of the work undertaken by Project X. 

Funded by the ESRC, Project X undertakes research on how project delivery can be improved and how this can be translated into delivering government policy. It is a unique research collaboration that brings together academia, industry and several government departments with ultimate ambition of delivering savings for the project delivery and enhancing project management capability across government departments and industry, particularly across the Government’s Major Project Portfolio (GMPP).

Capabilities, causes and cures for poor delivery performance

Professor Andrew Davies became Principal Investigator in October 2019 and is also co-leader of Theme E which examines the capabilities, structures, processes and simple rules underpinning innovative improvements in project delivery. So far, research has focused on how innovation and new capabilities are required to improve project performance, the importance of front-end decision making and leadership, managing and preparing for an unknown future, the causes and cures of poor megaproject performance, and balancing gender and fostering control capability. Several high-profile megaprojects (>$1bn) including Heathrow, Crossrail and Westminster Palace, have been used as the setting for these studies.

Dr Siavash Alimadadi, who carried out research for Project X while at UCL on the Westminster Palace Restoration and Renewal project, has recently joined SPRU to work with Professor Davies.

Professor Davies’ recent study has looked at how existing research identifies the main causes and cures of poor megaproject performance and categorised these into six themes: (1) decision-making behaviour; (2) strategy, governance, and procurement; (3) risk and uncertainty; (4) leadership and capable teams; (5) stakeholder engagement and management; and (6) supply chain integration and coordination.

The researchers found that no single concept or framework can account for the multiple and varied causes and cures for poor performance and instead, they argue the case for new research and theory building to adopt a systemic view, taking into account some of the different aspects impacting megaproject performance.

Professor Davies commented:

“Project X is at the forefront of developing new thinking about how to improve the delivery of megaprojects. Recent research highlights that what is missing is an understanding of megaprojects as a complete production system—from planning, through design, manufacturing, and construction, to integration and handover to operations.

It is necessary to identify how different elements impacting megaproject performance interrelate and work together to achieve a project's goals and deliver valuable outcomes in order to develop a comprehensive theory for megaproject management”

Dr Vine’s latest research considers a different angle of project performance and looks at control capabilities and the role that accountability practices can play in the dynamic and plural setting of a megaproject. Her forthcoming paper ‘Riskwork in the construction of Heathrow Terminal 2’ is a study of the innovative risk architectures that successfully maintained progress on a £2.5bn megaproject.  The paper examines how the use of everyday risk metrics, reports and reporting forums moved away from the traditional narrative of boundary preservation and blame avoidance. Instead they were strategically developed as mediatory technologies to broker consensus about which risks were worthy of protection and who ought to be held to account.