Productivity and the infrastructure pipeline: creating the opportunity for change

Alan Couzens
21 July 2015

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National Infrastructure Plan

Productivity

This week’s update of the National Infrastructure Plan is a platform for addressing productivity says Infrastructure UK’s Alan Couzens.

This week the government updated its National Infrastructure Plan pipeline. The value of the refreshed pipeline is £411bn to 2020 and beyond, comprising projects across energy, transport, waste, flood defence, communications, water and science and research sectors. Importantly, the pipeline will continue to be an underpinning element of a new longer-term NIP and assessment of future infrastructure need.

Put another way, the pipeline represents annual public and private spending of over £48bn over the next five years. Add to that, the summer budget productivity plan (aptly dubbed ‘Fixing the foundations’) reiterated commitment to long-term public and private investment in infrastructure - a key driver of productivity improvement.

"The skills challenges, critical to improved productivity, and the desire to do something about it are at least universally acknowledged."

What better platform has there ever been to address lagging productivity and skills - key issues that perennially weigh on the industry’s ability to raise its game?

The productivity plan also set out ambitious measures to increase the quality and quality of apprenticeships in England to 3M starts this parliament, alongside a raft of measures to streamline, simplify and refocus vocational provision. But how well prepared is industry to respond to the opportunities and challenges afforded by the recent announcements?

The skills challenges, critical to improved productivity, and the desire to do something about it are at least universally acknowledged. Interventions and strategies across industry could, if they were more joined-up, provide the scale of impact needed to meet the challenge.

IUK has been working with industry stakeholders on a comprehensive assessment of the skills required to meet this sustained investment in infrastructure. The National Infrastructure Plan for Skills, to be published September, will provide for the first time an overarching picture of the skills needed to deliver and maintain world-class infrastructure in the UK - around 250,000 construction and 150,000 engineering construction workers by 2020. That’s 100,000 additional workers by the end of the decade.

"What better platform has there ever been to address lagging productivity and skills - key issues that perennially weigh on the industry’s ability to raise its game?"

The report will set out key actions and a framework, within which key public and private sector industry leaders will be better placed to respond with their own coordinated action plans – starting with transport in the autumn.

The theme for the autumn and the 2nd Annual Infrastructure Client Group Symposium will be about accelerating the pace of industry change. The NIP for Skills will kick this off with a challenge to industry employers to make the most of this pipeline opportunity, to get organised and invest in our future skills and productivity.

Alan Couzens is head of infrastructure tracking and performance at Infrastructure UK