The way society measures the success of major infrastructure programmes is changing. As programme managers we must respond.

In response to stimulus packages and investor focus on sustainability, client organisations and funders are changing their expectations of success on major infrastructure programmes to include environmental and social legacy objectives. Programme managers that do not meet this new value environment may fail to deliver sustainable legacies that investors and clients now demand, says Ambrose McGuire, Regional Programme Management Business Line Lead, Europe and India.

The days when a programme manager’s principal concerns were schedule, quality, and cost are long gone. In many jurisdictions, the value proposition for major infrastructure projects has evolved to embrace complex environmental, social and governance (ESG) objectives as well.  The effects of this shift on the discipline of programme management (PgM) have been seismic.

Major infrastructure programmes have long held the power to transform lives, but new stimulus packages – such as the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) in the US and European Union long-term budget and Next GenerationEU (worth approximately €2 trillion) – are moving the dial. National governments are demanding greater evidence of transition plans and reporting on climate-related risks and opportunities, particularly in the UK. As a result of these drivers, the value environment around a major infrastructure programme is often determined by government, regulators, funders, and stakeholders outside of the organisation.

In response, infrastructure owners require a clearly defined value proposition to measure success. It follows then that a programme team must include a far greater breadth of skills and much deeper capability from programme partners in response. A modern, complex infrastructure project of scale requires digital, social value, carbon management and environmental experts (amongst others) to closely collaborate with traditional disciplines from the outset. Success depends on how these teams integrate and interact throughout the programme lifecycle. Programme leadership teams are often better informed and benefit from diverse thinking if they include representation from the full range of capability required for successful execution.

Collaboration and integration

A fully integrated and truly collaborative approach is the most effective way to utilise the vast array of skillsets needed to meet the full circle of performance objectives. Managing the ‘white space’ between technical disciplines, programme and delivery functions and projects at various stages of the lifecycle is a critical component of any management approach.

To support decision making at the right time, all specialist teams and supply chain partners need to be fully informed. The integration of all stakeholders into a one team structure is central, and is driven by the programme management team, working closely with the client’s senior responsible officer and programme sponsor.

Armed with this programme knowledge, it is crucial that all specialist teams are given the delegated authority to make the right professional decisions in their span of control. However, they must not work in silos. It is the programme manager’s role to create a collaborative environment where individual teams meet regularly to share challenges, mitigate risks, develop opportunities, and bring their subject matter expertise to the conversation. This is the process through which we can arrive at those creative solutions that solve a programme’s most pressing challenges.

Let’s look at some examples.

1/Social impact

Teams from the AECOM-Arup joint venture working on the Second Avenue Subway program – the first major expansion of the New York City Transit (NYCT) subway system in over 50 years – were faced with significant engineering challenges. Through focussed integration between all project teams opportunities emerged to deliver on our core values of improving social outcomes for the people of New York.

In the tunnelling programme, we accommodated escalator and elevator connections to street level – a huge improvement on the typical New York stairway-only access. To create a less stressful environment, we drew on innovative acoustics to reduce train noise, and modelled passenger foot flow to ‘design out’ unpleasant and unsafe overcrowding.

2/Carbon

It is now commonplace for the value environment on a complex infrastructure programme to include processes and actions to support the net zero carbon transition. This performance objective is leading to increases in capital programme cost forecasts, driving an assessment of how successful the programme is in reducing carbon from the initial baseline that was set at the point where the investment plan was put in place.

To meet the challenge of the net zero transition, carbon needs to be managed at every point of the programme. This requires the right standard of expertise at strategy level to create the environment for identifying, modelling, and implementing carbon reduction through the programme lifecycle, but particularly during design as that presents the greatest opportunity to influence and embed change. This influence does begin and end during design, but must continue through close collaboration between specialist teams, contractors, operators and the supply chain, so that low carbon products, materials, construction and maintenance techniques are specified and implemented. By taking a more systemic and holistic approach from the outset, better practice and wider sustainability benefits can be realised, such as the adoption of circular economy processes and net biodiversity gain.

3/Stakeholder engagement

Finally, given the high level of scrutiny on major programmes, the quality and breadth of your stakeholder engagement and communications materials can often determine whether or not a project achieves the necessary approvals for consents and licenses. When done well, good stakeholder engagement can mitigate schedule delays, with less cost and less risk.
Typically, in-house communications specialists as well as external organisations will be working with different statutory and non-statutory stakeholders from government and local authority levels through to local businesses, interest groups and individual residents, so it is vital that they are all fully aligned and integrated.

To ensure full transparency and for the programme team to evaluate how stakeholder relationships are progressing against the engagement strategy objectives, careful recording of information into a secure GDPR compliant CRM system is paramount.

Everyone has a part to play

Ultimately, every member of the team has a part to play in responding to a programme’s value environment, and it is up to the programme manager to bind these skillsets together for the benefit of the whole. Managing the ‘white space’ is fundamental to the art of programme management, and it is critical to successful delivery of today’s major infrastructure projects.