Transforming the public estate: Chris Law on the future of delivery
Following the launch of the UK Government’s 10-Year Infrastructure Strategy, the pressure is on to deliver smarter, faster and more collaboratively.
In this blog, we speak to Chris Law, Regional Director and Central Government Lead within our Social Infrastructure market sector in the UK and Ireland.
He unpacks what meaningful, outcomes-led partnerships will be required in the decade ahead, as well as the trends and challenges shaping central government delivery.
Chris joined AECOM over a decade ago and became Regional Director and Central Government Lead for Social Infrastructure in 2024. He previously led our Security and Resilience subsector within our National Security market sector, delivering projects for clients including the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Defence Infrastructure Organisation and the Ministry of Justice.
Since 2018, Chris has provided strategic leadership as Account Director for the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) Framework, overseeing high-quality, consistent delivery across our nationwide commitments. He also chairs the CCS Construction Professional Services (CPS) Social Value Focus Group, a role he has held since 2023.
Through this work, Chris supports CCS’s ambition to integrate procurement across UK government departments, driving more coordinated and efficient delivery while maximising social value for communities. Chris has taken on a range of roles within AECOM and the wider industry in the past decade — each one building on his drive to lead, collaborate and push for better outcomes.
From your perspective, how has the relationship between central government and its delivery partners such as AECOM in the UK & Ireland changed or evolved over the years?
We’ve seen a real shift to more collaborative and outcomes-focused partnerships.
Government clients increasingly want their delivery partners to be aligned not just to project scope, but to long-term policy goals. The discussion is evolving, focusing on the longer term: building capacity, prioritising ‘place-based’ decision making, developing wider relationships with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and aligning to the government’s long-term policy goals — whether that’s net zero, regional devolution or digital transformation.
Transparency is key. Frameworks like CCS have rightly pushed and developed guidance for early market engagement, the recent UK Industrial Strategy seeks to treat data as a shared, transparent asset, and the new Treasury Green Book is mandating that business cases for major infrastructure projects and programmes are published publicly.
I think these ongoing shifts are going to change the relationship between us and our government clients. I see a future where we have deeper, trust-based partnerships, with suppliers aware of data and pipelines much earlier and government deploying our advice and outputs more frequently.
You’ve worked with a range of government departments. What trends are you seeing in how the public estate is being shaped to support future needs?
The public estate is being reimagined with adaptability, sustainability and social value at its core. Place-based decision making is now at the heart of the recent Treasury Green Book updates, as well as a move away from simple benefit-cost ratios, which have been relied on too heavily in the past to appraise complex investments in the public estate.
Across our portfolios, we’re seeing a decisive move away from siloed, single-use buildings to more multi-functional, data-enabled assets that can integrate with evolving community and departmental needs. Recent announcements on the Cabinet Office’s ‘Places for Growth’ programme, for example, continue to double down on the ambition to move the centre of gravity out of London, with at least 50 per cent of UK‑based Senior Civil Service roles located regionally by 2030.
We’re also continuing to see how hybrid working has totally reshaped central office strategies. Almost all UK government departments are taking the opportunity to rationalise their footprints whilst investing in regional hubs and smarter workspaces. There’s a renewed focus on decarbonising assets through retrofit and modern methods of construction, and on embedding ESG principles from day one. The public estate is no longer just a cost on the balance sheet — it’s evolving to become a platform for delivering policy, wellbeing, innovation and wider community benefits.
The public estate is no longer just a cost on the balance sheet — it’s evolving to become a platform for delivering policy, wellbeing, innovation and wider community benefits.
How do you balance the technical complexity of major programmes with the need to leave a lasting legacy for communities?
Balancing complexity with legacy starts by embedding purpose into the project brief from the outset. One example is our work on the Defence Estate Optimisation Portfolio. It’s a technically complex and high-profile portfolio, spanning multiple sites and heritage assets, with stringent security requirements.
Allianced with other industry suppliers, our team have worked closely with both the Ministry of Defence and local community stakeholders to ensure that the outcomes aren’t just about military readiness and site disposal, but also about supporting local economies and improving the public realm.
For example, on a number of projects under the programme, we brought our social value specialists to the team to ensure our commitments to community outcomes were purposeful, impactful and achievable. We also prioritised low-carbon construction techniques and advised the client on how these could be more thoughtfully integrated with specific site security requirements. Technical excellence is essential, but lasting impact comes from making projects truly place-based, in collaboration with local stakeholders.
That goes back to why we shouldn’t think in a siloed way around the public estate. If the Ministry of Justice is planning a new prison, the question isn’t just about the prison itself — it’s about what this public asset can deliver for the wider community, local supply chains and how it can support broader regeneration goals. We need to continue working with government to reimagine our public estate cohesively and help to identify opportunities for regional devolved authorities to deliver more by simply approaching the challenge in an integrated way.
Technical excellence is essential, but lasting impact comes from making projects truly place-based, in collaboration with local stakeholders.
What excites you most about the opportunity to support government in delivering its ambitions over the next decade?
I always say to people joining our Central Government sector: you have the chance to be at the heart of solving some of the UK and Ireland’s biggest challenges. Whether it’s climate resilience, regional inequality, housing pressures or digital transformation, the UK and Irish governments have set out ambitious goals, and the scale of delivery needed over the next decade is not only a huge challenge but also a significant opportunity.
There’s a growing appetite for innovation, and it’s great to see our teams deepening their understanding of how government seeks to optimise its functions — and how we can support that. It’s also about how we use our sector-specific skills to respond to key challenges: unlocking better community outcomes, embedding nature-based solutions, empowering investment decisions, and shaping our services to enable those changes.
It really excites me that we are part of the change. I think organisations like ours are in a privileged position to serve not only as a technical delivery expert, but as a long-term partner to government, helping turn policy into tangible, real-world outcomes.
I heard a great quote at the recent UKREiiF (UK Real Estate Investment and Infrastructure Forum) conference, “If you don’t shape the market, be prepared to be shaped by it.” And I think that’s really important, because if you’re not there setting the agenda with government and influencing through associations and institutions, then you’re on the other side waiting for policy to be developed and responding.
So, I see us moving, generationally, into a role where we sit much closer to our clients, integrating across government, and engaging earlier in the process. And it’s this ability to really effect change that drives me; it’s what gets me out of bed in the morning.
Image credit: Hufton + Crow