IN MARCH 2016 the UK Government published the National Infrastructure Delivery Plan 2016-2021. Should this matter to tunnellers in the UK? Yes it should, as it’s another major step forward in the transformation of the way that economic infrastructure (transport, energy, water supply, waste management and telecommunications) is planned and delivered. This is the best chance we have had to lose the "boom and bust" cycle of tunnelling work and replace it with continuity. This will be a great step forward but it will require us to play our part too.

The idea of a strategic approach to infrastructure planning is not new. However, with the Coalition Government in 2010 came a resolve, not only to take a strategic look at infrastructure planning, but also to tackle the relatively high cost of building the UK’s infrastructure and to improve productivity in the UK. In 2010 the first National Infrastructure Plan (NIP) was published, hot on the heels of the recommendations for saving money (the IUK Cost Review, published in December 2010). Since then the NIP has been updated several times, and the Cost Review has led to a number of guidance documents aimed at improving the UK’s efficiency and our clienting and delivery capabilities.

The two government bodies leading the work were Infrastructure UK (IUK), a part of Her Majesty’s Treasury, and the Major Projects Authority (MPA), part of the Cabinet Office. On 1st January 2016 these were merged into one organisation, called the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA), reporting to both HMT and Cabinet Office, with the brief to improve delivery of infrastructure. The IPA’s new report addresses not only economic infrastructure but also housing and social infrastructure such as hospitals and schools.

Working alongside the IPA is the newly created National Infrastructure Commission, currently under the chairmanship of Lord Adonis. The precise terms of reference of the Commission have yet to be worked out but essentially it is there to provide expert independent advice on pressing infrastructure issues and to help make planning policy more responsive (and hence more efficiently deployed). It is intended also to provide a structure for better dialogue between government, politicians, the infrastructure industry and the public.

So, what does all this mean to tunnellers? It means that the pipeline of UK infrastructure work into the future is more visible than ever before. And lots of it involves tunnels. You no longer need to guess or make dozens of phone calls to find out what’s the plan – you can read it on line.

It also means that the public is better informed about the benefits of infrastructure, and can better understand the link between disruptive construction works now, and improved prosperity, job prospects and standards of living in the future. London’s Olympic Park was a success, Crossrail is a good news story already (and not even opened yet!) and the talk of the future includes HS2, HS3, Crossrail 2, and many others. But it also means that the construction industry needs to step up to the plate and deliver. Construction costs keep going up – largely in line with inflation at the moment, but why do they go up at all? We should be driving costs down, as virtually all other industries do.

We also need to improve productivity and build capacity in the industry – through better training and staff development, better knowledge management, longer-term employment prospects for workers, and improvements in health & safety. We need to build on the government/public sector/ private sector dialogue that is currently happening, building strong and transparent relationships between the different sectors and organisations.

We need to be quicker to embrace technology and new ways of working, and cleverer with it, learning from other industries.

The days of confrontational contract management need to be put behind us. The future has to lie in collaborative win-wins, not entrenched battles. So, the Government would say that it is very active in changing things for the better – we must ask ourselves what are we doing to improve our industry, and will it be enough, quickly enough?