Beyond delivery models: What it really takes to build energy infrastructure

The move towards enterprise delivery models across the sector is creating the opportunity to service an unprecedented scale-up in investment and construction in a fundamentally different way. The advantages of Project 13-style collaborative contracting enable access to the construction capability and capacity required. It should also create the platform for a dramatic leap forward in how we transform capital delivery, with the added benefits of more efficiency, agility, and a one-team focus on overall outcomes through digitisation, workforce regeneration, and innovation at scale.

The UK’s recent track record on delivering infrastructure successfully has room for improvement. To avoid squandering the opportunity, it needs leadership – however clichéd that may sound. We can’t have predictable, stable programmes of work needed for efficiency at the same time as having infinite flexibility. We can’t talk about collaborative contracting in theory but then revert to traditional commercial controls and the drip feeding of project briefs. We can’t talk about efficiency and transformation without truly seeing how that is going to come to life in the real world, rather than in a slick presentation, without a credible plan to make it a reality.

Perhaps, most importantly, we can’t run superficial processes to design, procure or implement enterprise models, and then wonder why they haven’t worked or delivered the expected benefits. Getting the strategic intent to translate into operational reality takes time, and it needs detail and sustained effort to work. It also needs experienced leadership to cut through organisational inertia and ruthlessly cut non-value-adding red-tape, without making reckless or ill-judged decisions. Leaders need to balance creating psychological safety to remove the fear of failure whilst also having the courage to address poor quality or performance.

These things aren’t easy or straightforward, nor do they have a single, obvious answer in every situation – hence why we need leadership to cut to what is truly important, and have the confidence, pragmatism, and can-do attitude to lead our sector through this construction boom. Realising the benefits of any new capital delivery model takes time. The @one Alliance is the industry’s exemplar success, but it took years to evolve, embed and mature. It benefitted from that sustained and coordinated leadership commitment to make it work, from all members of the alliance. We need to replicate that with what we do now, and the Capital Delivery Forum is an excellent mechanism for us to share our experiences – both good and bad – and make it happen.

This article was first published in Utility Week.