Today I am working from our London office and spend a lot of time travelling around the UK to see our customers, visit our other offices, and also travel overseas several times per year. With the Olympics shortly upon us, and given the fact that Project Resource has a vested interest in the built and infrastructure environments, I am regularly speaking with my colleagues, peers and customers about how the UK will cope with the massive influx of people for the 2012 Olympics in London.
I have come through T5 and T3 at Heathrow in the last 6 months and was impressed with T5 and the refurbishment work at T3, however, the cuts in the public sector are noticeable.
A friend of mine works for border control at Heathrow and they had stated that they are really suffering from the public sector cut backs. I agree after my experience this weekend. Returning back to the UK at T3, I was shocked to see a massive queue for UK Nationals and EU Citizens, and only 3 desks open (there were 8 possible desks, so 5 closed), and a tiny queue for Non-EU Nationals. It took me and my family 1 hour to get through passport contract at the weekend. Is this the 1st impression we want to give the rest of the world when they first land in the UK?
Onto London Underground and the train system. At peak times these transport methods are too crowded, so how are they going to cope with the expected hundreds of thousands of extra people?
Richard Threlfall, head of UK infrastructure at KPMG, wrote for the BBC in October 2011, in an article titled The importance of infrastructure investment “that the need for infrastructure development is one of the great global challenges of our time.”
I’m sure you will all agree with me that we need better roads, railways, airport capacity, energy generation (nuclear power plants, wind farms, solar, hydro, coal, etc.) to meet our sustainable energy needs, more housing, affordable housing, schools and hospitals.
Mr Threlfall goes on to say “Failure to invest means failure to grow and develop our social and economic fabric – we all have a stake in this. Experts estimate that about $40tn (£25tn) is needed globally to build or upgrade roads, railways, power plants and other infrastructure in order to keep up with demand. According to the Treasury, in the UK alone infrastructure spending may need to run at £40bn to £50bn each year up to 2030.”
The UK has a National Infrastructure Plan which sets out:
- A clear plan for the UK’s infrastructure;
- A new strategy for coordinating public and private investment;
- New investment in critical infrastructure projects; and
- A new focus on delivery.
Crucially five infrastructure sectors were identified: energy; transport; digital communications, flood management, water and waste; and intellectual capital, and suggests that over the next five years £200bn will be invested in these sectors.
On 29th November 2011 the Chancellor announced the Autumn Statement in which he announced an infrastructure package of £30 billion. This includes unlocking up to £20 billion of private investment through signing a Memorandum of Understanding with two groups of UK pension funds, an additional £5 billion of infrastructure spending in this Spending Review period, and commitments to £5 billion of capital projects in the next Spending Review period. In addition, the Government is supporting around a further £1 billion of investment by Network Rail.
So, back to the Olympics and the question, is UK infrastructure ready. Well in my opinion we will cope, we always do, however, it will be apparent to many visitors that our infrastructure is dated and struggling with capacity. The UK government has now realised with its 2011 Autumn Statement that investment has to be a priority, however I cannot help but feel that this is a little late, but they do say better late than never.
I only hope that the government can be bold and maybe press forward with the Thames Estuary Airport and other innovative and grand infrastructure projects in the coming years and decades. All these projects have one thing in common – they will contribute to the economic growth of the country and improve the lives of millions of people.
Grand infrastructure projects offer inspiration for the countries people and numerous new job opportunities.
The infrastructure challenge won’t be solved overnight, but the National Infrastructure Plan is an important step in the right direction.
Do you have an opinion on the UK’s infrastructure? If so, let’s hear it, will the UK’s infrastructure cope with the influx of people for the Olympics?
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