Jonathan Simcock

Sometimes, government has to build something big. Really big. A high-speed railway network, a fleet of nuclear submarines, an IT system big enough for the health records of every person in the country. But Britain has a woeful record of delivering projects of this scale. They are either late, over budget, deliver less than promised – or all three. Some are never completed at all. What is going wron? n the wake of the cancellation of HS2, Jonathan Simcock, former Major Projects Director of the Office of Government Commerce, provides answers. This eye-opening text draws on testimony from the Ministers, officials and project managers who have tried, and mostly failed, to deliver the country’s biggest projects. To face up to its challenges – productivity, growth, national security, and the changing climate – Britain needs huge publicly funded investment. So how do we close the Delivery Gap?