The holy grail of 'simple, speedy, and low cost' procurements for road and rail projects and what we get right

Firstly, we recommend reading the full report and not just the Executive Summary if you haven't yet done so. The Executive Summary, in its brevity, provides a more pessimistic outlook than one finds in the full report. The CMA report identifies many legitimate systemic challenges to infrastructure procurement-rising costs, delivery delays, and constrained innovation. But it doesn't distinguish between different categories of contracting authority and approaches. For example, it does not adequately differentiate the procurement practices of National Highways - a centrally governed agency, dedicated solely to roads - from those of local authorities operating within markedly different funding, capability, and governance constraints.

We largely agree and support many of the CMA ultimate recommendations, but it's also important to champion the 'good news stories' in this sector, demonstrate where the recommendations are already being delivered, and give positive examples of where major programmes work well. How can best practice be shared and what can we expect "good" to look like?

The broader point is that the CMA’s call for less complex, faster, lower-cost procurement is a great headline grabber, but it underestimates the deliberate legal and policy choices that governments have made which make public procurement for all sectors more rigorous and a mechanism for achieving socio/economic change.

This rigour comes with a time and cost premium attached and, we make no bones about it, is hard to do well. We'd also suggest that the time taken to procure major road projects is similar to lengthy procurement processes in other sectors (e.g. IT procurement); which face many of the same challenges. In achieving further procurement reform, we must identify the right objectives or accept the trade-offs that are inevitable when different priorities conflict.

The CMA’s findings and recommendations

The CMA concludes that the civil engineering market is delivering sub-optimal outcomes, citing high costs, frequent overruns, variable quality, and limited innovation. It attributes these outcomes, in part, to:

• Fragmented procurement and lack of strategic direction
• Short-term funding and pipeline uncertainty
• Inconsistent or poor application of procurement best practice
• Inappropriate risk allocation to the market
• Burdensome regulatory and compliance processes

A summary of the CMA's recommendations are:

• HM Treasury should take strategic ownership to drive system-wide reform and overcome fragmented responsibilities
• There should be a clear UK-wide sector plan for road and rail civil engineering, with defined objectives, actions, and annual progress reporting
• The Government should expand and enhance the UK infrastructure pipeline with clearer data on funding, timelines, and procurement approaches
• It should introduce multi‑year capital budgets (minimum three years) for all procuring authorities to enable stable planning and investment
• Promote joint procurement and greater coordination (e.g. across local authorities and Network Rail regions)
• Ensure access to pooled expertise and shared procurement support, particularly for local authorities
• Build public authority capability and capacity in procurement and publish a strategic workforce plan to strengthen commercial and technical skills
• Authorities should award longer-term contracts beyond funding cycles to reduce stop‑start delivery
• The government should mandate compliance with best practice guidance (e.g. Construction Playbook) and improve consistency
• Encourage innovation by setting clear priorities and supporting funding for new approaches
• Improve frameworks and processes through standardisation, reduced complexity, and adherence to Gold Standards
• Strengthen risk allocation practices (including reviewing excessive contract amendments and Z clauses)
• Promote standardised designs to reduce costs and enable economies of scale
• Introduce a challenge mechanism to remove outdated or duplicative technical standards
• Streamline accreditations and pre‑qualification requirements to support SME participation
• Fast‑track approvals for innovations and improve regulatory responsiveness
• Standardise utility diversion response times to reduce delays and overruns

Challenges

These recommendations are welcome, but what are the real challenges in addressing some of the underlying criticisms and issues the CMA identifies?

National Highways already operates across a five year programme and budget (the Road Investment Strategy (RIS) period) with an agreed pipeline of schemes. It has long since realised that utilising the flexibility of frameworks is the only real option to speed up procurement under the confines of procurement law.

Commencing new procurements for every contract (even from DPSs or Dynamic markets) is inefficient. This is also recognised by the Governments Commercial Agency in its central frameworks. Whilst not suitable for all projects, they are the 'only show in town' if we are to have a centralised strategic plan, budget, and pipeline which will enable recommendations for standardisation etc to be achieved.

Frameworks provide suppliers with certainty and less competition to incentivise investment - but of course they also come with compromises and are heavily regulated by the Procurement Act 2023 (PA23):

• Frameworks close the market to new entrants during their term. The term of a framework should be limited to 4 years (unless justified in the Tender Notice) but this is not long enough to ensure suppliers commit to investment, supply chains, and capacity building. 'Open' frameworks are not the solution as they must be re-opened after 3 years, and so are limited help if the aim is to obtain supplier commitment and investment
• Frameworks can provide speed of direct award – but only if you can design a lawful, non-subjective, direct award mechanism to achieve fairness of work allocation, and this is easier said than done
• To make further competition quick and simple, you must have done enough work and testing in the framework procurement that further competition can be mechanical; i.e. consistent pricing, designs etc.
• Frameworks can keep costs down for their term by fixing pricing - but that might backfire if you haven't properly tested pricing in detail at competition stage to ensure the prices are sustainable for the term; and for the entire scope; otherwise you can have failing suppliers mid-framework
• They can provide flexibility to increase what you buy - but only if you've done the upfront work to scope everything that might be needed to avoid challenges for "substantial modification" later
• And, of course, the more work you put into designing the framework (and the more policies you must cover in your evaluation criteria), the more complex the tenders proposals which suppliers need to respond with are; putting costs onto the bidding market. Suppliers need to be sophisticated (bid-trained) and ready to be transparent and there is no getting away from this.
• The evaluation burden and regulation on the Authority is significant to manage challenge risk – but complying with best practice in evaluation requires time to do well
• And what of SMEs? The CMA identifies barriers to SME participation, including bid costs, complexity, and accreditation requirements. Large frameworks quite naturally favour the large "prime" suppliers because of the challenges in the bullet points above - so how do you ensure SMEs are encouraged and included in a long-term framework?
• And how does this reconcile with the aspiration in the CMA report that there should be more self-delivery by suppliers and less sub-contracting? There is a clear conflict here between rewarding self-delivery and making opportunities available to SMEs.

The Procurement Act reshaped public procurement through an emphasis on transparency, auditability, competition, and fairness. Public authorities must now produce detailed records justifying all procurement decisions. They must apply (currently 25 and counting) PPNs and assessments into their planning, manage risk of conflict of interest, legal challenge; and ensure compliance across increasingly complex procedures.

As the report notes, fear of challenge and reputational risk can discourage early engagement or innovation but challenge is becoming more frequent as supplier are more aware of their rights and willing to use them. For large, high-value procurements, these compliance burdens are proportionately greater.

Meeting the challenges

National Highways has always been imaginative and non-risk averse in its design of frameworks to try to resolve the conflicts set out above. How does it address the challenges and what lessons could be shared?

• Knowledge of the market - pre-market engagement is absolutely key to good framework design, and at all levels of the supply chain. The CMA and or GCA could assist with providing market insight.
• Work with the market outside of procurements and help to upskill it - SME-specific projects will help to get the smaller players ready for participation in the larger opportunities. Every procurement will not be suitable for everybody, lets be honest about that.
• Do comply with the Construction Playbook - but recognise the trade-off that the rigour of good practice requires time, cost, and investment and won't get you the cheapest solution or a low cost procurement process
• Scope the frameworks widely to provide maximum flexibility. Multi-lot frameworks do take longer to plan and procure but also provide longer term efficiencies and value – it’s another trade off.
• Don't be frightened to justify frameworks of longer than 4 years in your Tender Notice if you need to do so to coincide with funding and planning cycles. National Highways frameworks are typically 6 years with options to extend further, properly justified by investment need to give the market some certainty and pipeline.
• The same principles apply to longer-term call-off contracts. This will not always be appropriate but the CMA could use its market insight to assist Authorities to decide on contract terms with the right balance of competition and not locking up the market.
• Use frameworks to manage and encourage market growth, the inclusion of sub-contractor lots (i.e. smaller suppliers which the primes are encouraged to sub-contract to) is almost unique to National Highways. It provides a role for smaller players, secures cost certainty, standardisation of quality, and solution throughout the contractual waterfall.
• This is matched by carefully calibrated bidding restrictions and award rules to ensure no one supplier can take too much of the pie
• Do not favour lowest price tenders - consider assessing from the medium to stop the race to the bottom, along with both whole life costing and building sustainability criteria into your evaluation. Using value for money indexation scoring is a more sophisticated method of addressing the risk of abnormally low pricing, and looks to calibrate a bidder's pricing with their quality promises

Conclusion

The CMA’s report raises important issues, but the Government should be cautious, recognise the issues are not consistent across the industry, and be more analytical about where the causes of cost, delay, and overrun lie. Organisations such as National Highways are mature, strategically governed procurers who are already aligned with Construction Playbook principles.

The reality is they are operating within a highly prescribed and complex procurement regime. The complexity, cost, and time it takes to procure UK infrastructure projects is not necessarily evidence of inefficiency. It is the inevitable consequence of high standards of compliance, governance, increased legal and regulatory requirements, and a deliberate policy shift towards long-term value.

In this context, calls for “less, complex, faster, lower-cost procurement” risk could overlook an uncomfortable trade off we have made in the UK - our public procurement is designed to be more rigorous, more transparent, and more accountable than anywhere else in the world. Any assessment of performance must recognise that reality and must distinguish clearly between systemic challenges or areas where best practice is already being delivered.