Major Projects Pipeline Deliverability Review

Awarded under the Ofwat Consultancy Framework, Lot 4: Water Engineering Science and Technology.

We are seeing a number of potential risks and bottlenecks when looking at the pipeline of major infrastructure projects (for example - reservoirs, water recycling, desalination and major new treatment works) that are being developed and delivered by the water sector. Several projects are expected to enter the planning and consents processes in parallel as well as begin construction broadly at the same time to achieve the planning dates for the Water Resources Management Plans (WRMPs). The development and delivery timeline of individual projects may look ambitious but achievable. However, as a national programme, we see a number of challenges to deliverability due to potential capacity constraints in consenting bodies, supply chains etc given the activity levels in the water sector and more widely across other water sectors.

We are looking for a high level review of the deliverability of the current pipeline of major projects and to develop 3-4 scenarios that would drive more realistic pipelines.

Review of the current pipeline should identify the key risks to meeting the programme and the implications for not meeting the planned in service dates for the portfolio. We would expect this to consider factors, but not limited to, such as:

• The capacity to progress multiple projects through the planning system in parallel having regard to major infrastructure development in other sectors;

• Legal challenge risks;

• Competition for limited supply chain capacity across project types and more widely across all infrastructure sectors, concentrating on the UK but bring in international competition where appropriate;

• Likelihood of schedule delays as a result of project risks manifesting.

This should inform a baseline view of the realistic programme. The scenarios should be developed to reflect potential mitigation measures and enabling actions that would reduce the risk of delays on the programme of projects. For each scenario, we want to understand the impact on both time and costs of delivering the schemes.

This work will sit alongside work that we are doing to assess the impacts of project delays on customer and the environment, and will allow partner regulators to assess whether the RAPID community should be more interventionist when prioritising the delivery of specific projects over others.

For the avoidance of doubt, we are not seeking specific advice from the contractor on the sequence of named projects, but would identify the potential sequence of projects by type based on the factors considered.

This analysis should reflect programme information that has been published by water companies as part of the RAPID gated process e.g. gated submissions, and for other sectors information published by the Planning Inspectorate.