ICE response to the Competition and Markets Authority’s civil engineering market study interim report

The CMA’s market study into the civil engineering sector's supply of railway and public road infrastructure takes a look at the industry and asks: ‘what could improve?’

The interim report, published late last year, lays out the challenges and possible solutions to improving how land transport is delivered. The ICE submitted its views on the interim report.

The CMA’s final findings are expected to be released in May this year.

In its response, the ICE said that it's positive that the CMA has laid out many of the challenges facing the sector.

However, many of the proposed remedies included in the report are covered in the government’s Construction Playbook and Professor David Mosey’s independent review, Constructing the Gold Standard – An Independent Review of Public Sector Construction Frameworks (CGS). 

As identified by the CMA, the ICE has long advocated for mandating the use of the Construction Playbook and CGS for government departments, which can be achieved by converting the current ‘comply or explain’ requirement to ‘comply’.

This does not require legislation but simply means making playbook and CGS compliance a clear requirement for any NISTA project (and programme) business case. 

The ICE also responded to a series of consultation questions on: 

• How supply chain fragmentation contributes to poor outcomes
• Specific procurement, policy and regulatory barriers where change would make a difference to firms' incentives to innovate, and public authorities' incentive and ability to encourage innovation
• What would make upfront scoping and planning for projects more effective
• How early contractor involvement can be used more effectively
• The design and use of procurement frameworks
• How open competition could be made less resource intensive as a method of procurement
• Risk allocation and aversion in contracts and across public authorities
• The potential extension of multi-year capital funding approaches to public authorities
• The role and contents of the government’s infrastructure pipeline
• The improved use of procurement and engineering capability within procuring authorities