Project Delivery

This theme will consolidate Manchester’s current involvement in the recently awarded £1.1m ESRC strategic investment looking at the delivery of major projects and programmes in government – known as Project X.

Project X focuses on the UK Government’s Major Project Portfolio (GMPP) of Transformation, IT, Infrastructure and Defence projects is worth over £423 billion. This includes well known major
infrastructure programmes such as Crossrail and HS2 but also transformational projects that seek to implement change in the way that the Government delivers services and interacts with citizens.

Projects are the temporary organisational form used to deliver government policy. However, the size and complexity of many of these projects mean that delivery timescales and costs often overrun beyond planned expectations. Yet, recent success stories at Heathrow, the London 2012 Olympics and Thames Tideway suggest that poor performance is far from inevitable.

Project X aims to enrich academic and policymaker understanding of how policy objectives are translated into performance outcomes and why some projects perform better than others. It was established in 2015 as a unique collaboration between a consortium of universities, industry and the government project delivery profession led by The Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA). The IPA is the non-ministerial department within the Cabinet Office, responsible for the oversight of major government projects and programmes.

The Project Delivery theme is led by Richard Kirkham.