Government’s construction pipeline lacks “consistency and accuracy” as a quarter of work disappears

Last Updated:

24th September 2015

With more than a quarter of its projects disappearing since December 2014, more needs to be done to improve the consistency and accuracy of the UK Government construction pipeline, according to analysis published by KPMG.

The report, UK Government Construction Pipeline - KPMG Analysis, indicates that number of construction and infrastructure projects has fallen by 886 (28%) since the previous pipeline analysis in December 2014. The fall in the number of projects mainly relates the Defence, Justice and Police sectors (a drop of 860 projects relates to these sectors alone).

KPMG report that the decrease in the number of projects is largely due to potential schemes being removed from the pipeline to avoid pre-empting decisions in the forthcoming Spending Review. Unfortunately their removal move that does little to provide the construction industry with the long-term certainty and stability in demand that will provide it with the confidence to invest in technology and its workforce There are also a number of projects that have been completed since the December 2014 iteration.

Commenting on the decline, Richard Threlfall, KPMG’s UK Head of Infrastructure, Building and Construction said: “It is clear that more needs to be done to improve the consistency and accuracy of the Government’s construction pipeline. A stable pipeline would give the construction industry good visibility of future demand and the ability to plan and invest for that demand. It would lead to efficiencies for the Government and hence for the taxpayer. Instead we have a pipeline whose data is so incomplete, and which fluctuates so wildly and erratically that the industry can place no detailed reliance on it.”

In addition the removal of planned projects, the overall value of the pipeline has also declined as major contracts have been completed. Most of the decrease in value attribute to projects completing in two sectors:

£6.7 billion decrease in Transport projects as contracts on a number of on-going programmes, including Crossrail are completed.
£2.8 billion decrease in Housing and Regeneration projects due to completion of Decent Homes Backlog projects and a number of Affordable Housing projects and programmes.

The KPMG analysis also reveals that 1,784 projects did not specify a construction start date, further raising questions about the completeness of the data.

The Glenigan database contains thousands of publicly funded projects unlisted in the Official Pipeline due to a number of unique and exclusive sources allied to the largest phone & web research team working on the UK construction industry – unconstrained from any Government restrictions, a Glenigan subscription gives you the earliest, most accurate and complete view of public-sector schemes in the UK.

Glenigan subscribers can access full details of all Government funded schemes by selecting the specific client (e.g. “Dept for Education”) or by choosing the funding type of “public” in the search filter.