Accelerating pre-construction project delivery

Accelerating pre-construction project delivery

The Chancellor’s tax cuts (and reinstatements) are catching the headlines from the mini budget, but Kwasi Kwarteng also committed on the 23rd of September to review the spending control framework, including the business case process, to accelerate decision-making across government. Continuing the ambition of Project Speed and the forthcoming infrastructure planning reforms, this quiet aspiration has the potential to save UK PLC many millions of pounds in the delivery of major capital programmes. This is welcome news, but those of us in infrastructure will recognise that delivering quicker should not be at the detriment of either the robustness of project justification, or the safety and quality of the project itself.

KPMG’s research has shown that major capital projects spend, on average, more than 60% of their overall delivery timescale in the preconstruction or business case stages.

In an industry where time is money, accelerating these early stages can bring forward benefit realisation, whilst reducing overall capital cost. We outline below three key principles for making this acceleration effective.

Know and follow the guidance

Business cases are drafted in a landscape of wider best practice and policy; aligning with these policies is key to getting the business case right first time. Before drafting, project teams should identify the guardrails which apply to them, be that central government direction such as the Green Book and its supplementary guidance, best practice from the Infrastructure and Project Authority’s Project Routemap and Assurance Toolkit, or current policy, such as requirements for evaluating social value in procurement. Project teams can rely on their networks to generate this, but it’s a clear area where government coordination through a community of practice would assist. A business case which clearly and concisely covers all the bases spends less time in review and approval.

Undertake progressive assurance

It’s frustrating for project teams to spend months preparing a business case, only to learn there’s an issue when they come forward for gateway approval. Quality, robustness and insight can be driven into the business case process by undertaking progressive assurance and critical friend reviews as the drafting proceeds. Project teams should ask themselves; can a third-party reader take a first draft, and clearly see all best practice and policy being addressed? Are we allowing the gateway assurance team early interaction with the drafting team to build in lessons learnt from other business cases, and address their perceived risks? Acknowledging the iterative nature of drafting with progressive assurance positions the business case for success at the gateway approval.

Treat the business case as a project itself

Good programme and project management shouldn’t be reserved for projects in delivery. It’s a good approach to consider a business case as a programme of work, with each of the five cases as projects. Wrapping a programme and project management approach around the business case production supports the complex environment of stakeholders, plus builds a management framework which allows the team to be action-focussed and working to a clear overarching timeline.

Introducing structure and governance also helps to prioritise, identify owners and hold people accountable for key deliverables required to deliver the business case on time and to the right quality. Bringing programme and project management best practices into the heart of the business case drafting allows the team to benefit from merging the talents of policy, economic, technical and project experts together into a single programme of work. As opposed to siloed working with each specialist working on their individual case areas, not communicating and interfacing.