Benchmarking and the Bottom Line. A proposal to improve infrastructure value for money in Britain

A submission to ippr's Britain's Got Brains competition.

Matti Siemiatycki's entry to ippr's Britain's got Brains competition outlines a scheme to reduce the amount of public money wasted on massive public contracts. Contracting out big infrastructure projects wastes millions of pounds of public money every year: £11bn was spent on constructing new transport, water, waste, school, stadium and hospital facilities in 2007, but seven in ten government construction projects are completed over tender price, and seven in ten are delivered late. For example, the total cost of delivering new roads between 1998 and 2006 was £489 million - 40 per cent - more than initially estimated. Matt Siemiatycki has proposed a new benchmarking scheme for construction and service companies that tender for government projects which would keep a record of which companies go over budget so they are not used again.