Our Parliamentary Engagement.
We believe that academics play a crucial role in supporting parliamentary scrutiny. To secure research impact, we have contributed to PAC and PACAC enquiries and on improving major project delivery in government.
‘The Government’s management of its major projects’.
Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) Inquiry.
The Government’s Major Projects Portfolio (MPP) has 133 projects with a value of £423 billion, and these are only a fraction of the projects delivered by Government. Major projects are the main mechanism by which the government invests in infrastructure, transforms services, and improves IT. The MPP includes high-profile projects such as Crossrail, Gov UK Verify, and the 30 hours free childcare programme.
There are many examples of costly project management failures across Government and the National Audit Office (NAO) highlighted the same issues afflicting multiple projects leading to cost and time overruns and failure to achieve benefits. In March 2019, a NAO report on Verify stated that it was an “example of many of the failings in major programmes that we often see, including optimism bias and failure to set clear objectives”.
The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee is holding an inquiry into how well such projects are managed by Government. The inquiry asks cross-cutting questions about how well the Government delivers projects, its ability to learn from mistakes, and the usefulness of published information for holding the Government to account.
View Project X’s submission to this inquiry under ‘written evidence’:
‘Concerns around the short, medium and long-term impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak’
Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) Survey
Project X Researcher, Dr Dicle Kortantamer, contributed to a POST survey on concerns around the short, medium and long-term impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak (May 2020).
The 15 areas of concern identified are listed here, along with the methodology for both conducting the survey and synthesising the insights. See the POST’s Horizon Scanning pages for synthesised reports on each of the 15 concerns of the 15.
‘Delivering the Government's infrastructure commitments through major projects’.
Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) Inquiry.
Follow the link below to watch Project X present evidence at parliament under invitation from PACAC on 9th July 2019.
Watch: Parliament Live TV: How can research improve Government’s management of major projects?
Project X Witnesses: Professor Michael Bourne, Cranfield University, Dr Richard Kirkham University of Manchester, Professor Michael Lewis, University of Bath, and Professor Terry Williams, University of Hull.
View the PACAC Report published from this inquiry below:
(Project X’s submission to this inquiry can be accessed through the Report under ‘Project X (MMP0014)’ of ‘Published written evidence’, p39)
Lessons from major projects and programmes
Project X evidence summary:
1. The scope of government major projects and programmes are always susceptible to variation; changes in political priorities and ministerial churn are recognised factors but we also know that ambitious transformation programmes, which account for a significant proportion of the Government Major Projects Portfolio (GMPP), require a sophisticated understanding of interdependencies and behaviour change, and that this is not always captured in the original scope.
2. The desire for reliable cost and schedule estimates must be tempered with a recognition that government projects and programmes are inherently complex; this introduces high levels of risk and uncertainty at the ‘front-end’ of the project or programme. The effective communication of risk and uncertainty is therefore crucial, as is the responsible use of probabilistic methods (models) in a format that is understandable to decision-makers.
3. We can understand complexity, to an extent, through an appreciation of the interdependencies that occur at any given time during the life-cycle. This is not an easy task however, particularly in very-long duration projects and programmes where changes in policy may interact with budget constraints. Complex systems are by definition ‘unknowable’ and thus, we must learn to live with the consequences of complexity in the context of major government programmes. We have produced the world’s largest systematic review to date on the performance of major and megaprojects with > 6000 academic summaries analysed, generating a map of our understanding so far and charting future avenues. The paper identifies 18 main causes of poor performance and proposes 54 ‘cures’, concluding that no isolated factor is responsible for failure in megaprojects, with a number of interrelated factors contributing equally to poor performance.
4. Effective and robust governance of major projects and programmes is crucial to the accountability of state spending. Our soon to be published research on GMPP assurance demonstrates that ‘delivery confidence’ of the major projects and programmes included in the study improves during the time that they are assured on the GMPP. This would suggest that ‘enhanced’ governance routines are desirable in programmes and projects that exhibit high degrees of complexity and scale.
5. World-class research into project delivery is crucial to supporting the government's post-pandemic recovery strategy . We are concerned that the availability of UKRI funding for research in project studies doesn’t match the scale of the UK government’s ambition for the delivery of the major project portfolio and the crucial role of successful government projects in a post-pandemic world.