A good start but there’s a lot more work to do: road testing the national infrastructure pipeline

Congratulations to the team at the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) for getting the July 2025 national infrastructure pipeline over the line. With nearly 1,000 programmes, it has been a massive task.

The government was certainly pleased with its launch, and the press release announced grandly that “construction firms have been given the certainty and confidence they need to invest in major UK infrastructure projects…” Even accounting for the relentless optimism of the press office, this is premature.

I prefer the NISTA team’s much more honest assessment that the pipeline will “become a comprehensive database of information… to understand future demand”.

>> Also read: Good luck 10-year infrastructure strategy: you’re going to need it

In the first release a lot of the data is only at a programme level of definition. The pipeline reflects the data available at an early stage of the development of government spending plans: £370bn of work – 70% of the costed value of the pipeline – is derived from the top-line value of 18 programmes.

It is encouraging to see 10-year programmes in the pipeline, but detail from across the whole pipeline will be needed before it can be described as “investible”.

I have now had the opportunity to spend some time under the bonnet of the pipeline database itself. So, what is good about the pipeline? And are any improvements needed?

The exemplary contribution from Gatwick airport describing its forward programme demonstrates the power of combining private and public sector investment opportunities

The first positive that stands out is that the database aims to be very comprehensive. Data from 40 organisations has been collected so far, and the exemplary contribution from Gatwick airport describing its forward programme demonstrates the power of combining private and public sector investment opportunities.

Including the private sector creates a big challenge for the NISTA team, however: the data collecting will require a lot of effort and the database can never truly be comprehensive. The pipeline cannot be a substitute for a leads database.

Programme status data is also well detailed, confirming a high degree of rigour in data collection. Over 60% of entries have an assigned status, ranging from the early stages of scoping through to operation. Around 300 are at the early stages of scoping and design/planning, highlighting the immediate value of the pipeline to the contractor and sub-contractor supply chain.

This data enables the pipeline to be cut in many different ways, separating for example construction expenditure from maintenance and operation. Future iterations of the pipeline have great potential for detailed interrogation, so details for each entry must be kept complete and up to date. That is a big ask for a small team in a department that faces constraints on spending.

A final element of the pipeline which has great potential is spend status, potentially going all of the way to 2035. This is clearly a work in progress. Typically, around 40% of records have this data, which is really useful to understand whether a programme is funded or not.

I appreciate that DESNZ is in a hurry to get going on its critical work, but the inclusion of 185 identical, undefined and uncosted rooftop PV projects from GB Energy helps no one

NISTA takes great care to clarify that inclusion of a project in the pipeline cannot be interpreted as a commitment to build, but to make the pipeline investible, having current status data should be a non-negotiable requirement.

So far, so good, but there are inevitably some wrinkles. The most obvious is the need for much greater editorial control, exemplified by the inclusion of 485 opportunities from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, many of which are poorly defined. I appreciate that DESNZ is in a hurry to get going on its critical work, but the inclusion of 185 identical, undefined and uncosted rooftop PV projects from GB Energy (GBE) helps no one.

The inclusion of these undefined projects also highlights the inherent problem of managing data on individual projects necessary for an investible programme – just what is the right level of detail? Clearly, this is too much.

A second issue is the consequence of inclusion of investment projects within the pipeline. It is a great idea as investors regularly complain that the UK does not have enough investible projects. Currently there are 50 projects and programmes in the dataset, including bundles of contract for difference deals going back to 2019.

Investment requirements evolve over time even as design and construction requirements are completed. Looking forward, it would be helpful for users to toggle between views of investment, construction and operation – it will make the pipeline more user friendly particularly for cross-sector analysis. Making this tool effective is not just about the quality of data it contains, but the ease of the user journey to understand it.

There are other areas for potential improvement. Projects and programmes should have readily identifiable clients or sponsors, and project summaries need to be edited for clarity. Ultimately, the issue of project cost will also need to be addressed, potentially breaking down some of those big programme totals like the New Hospitals Programme (NHP) into individual costed projects, although that comes with a big management overhead.

NISTA has made great progress, but ultimately can the pipeline match its billing? The government claims that it will provide “the clarity needed to plan for the long term… creating good quality jobs and supply chain capacity”. I am still to be convinced.

Certainly, the pipeline can provide background information, but ultimately industry investment planning is best based on data derived from secured spots on frameworks and insights from client relationships. The aggregate picture of the pipeline that NISTA provides will back this up but should not be a substitute. NISTA cannot make the world a more certain place.

NISTA has started well but it has a huge task in filling information gaps to meet sky-high expectations

Where NISTA could really make a difference is in its core role of holding the government’s feet to the fire, tracking the progress of opportunities from scoping through to construction and spend status from identified need to fully funded. Industry would benefit from knowing how well its clients are spending as well as what the future pipeline will look like.

Simply put, NISTA needs to manage scope and expectations. It should resist the temptation of detail that does not add value, as seen with the GBE’s PV programme. Yes, all programmes should have a value, and yes, major programmes like the NHP could be broken down into their constituent parts. But I am not convinced that we need to track every project in every programme, especially now that frameworks provide visibility to the organisations that are going to do the work.

It would be better to focus on tracking progress at a programme level – providing confidence that investment will take place and allowing the supply chain to keep track.

NISTA has started well but it has a huge task in filling information gaps to meet sky-high expectations. Maintaining focus, keeping the data current and managing future scope will now be critical. Less is more.

Simon Rawlinson is a partner at Arcadis