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A new standard, which guides the sector in improving productivity, launched November 2026.
The ICE has been working to improve infrastructure productivity for several years.
It’s an important and intricate area in which consensus, particularly on best-practice principles, has been hard to achieve.
The UK government's 10-Year Infrastructure Strategy, published in 2025, showed that productivity has fallen behind competitors including France, Germany and the United States.
Onsite productivity has flatlined, and a growing maintenance backlog is compounding the cost of new projects.
At least £725bn of public funding has been set for the next decade, with the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) charged with revamping how that investment is planned and delivered.
With this in mind, the sector can't afford to continue on the same trajectory.
To help guide this change, a new publicly available specification (PAS) has been developed.
Introducing PAS 4010:2026 - improving productivity in infrastructure development and delivery
The new PAS establishes a common way of managing productivity in UK projects, including new and adapted infrastructure.
PAS 4010 aims to help all members of the value chain remove constraints by improving effectiveness (doing the right thing) and efficiency (doing things right).
It centres on using a strategy for productivity management (SPM).
This provides the organisational framework, governance structure and performance processes to manage, assure and continuously enhance productivity improvement.
Who is PAS 4010 for?
PAS 4010 is for everyone involved in developing and delivering UK infrastructure.
It's intended to be specified by clients to set out requirements for:
- asset owners
- contracting authorities
- project and programme managers
- designers
- construction and logistics planners
- contractors
- product/material/equipment suppliers
Although they're designed for the UK market, PASs are recognised worldwide as high-quality specifications.
ICE and productivity
The ICE has long expressed concerns about large infrastructure programmes’ excessive time and cost overruns, prompting calls for systemic change.
Ed McCann, ICE Past President, made productivity his theme for the year, and the focus of the 2022 flagship State of the Nation report.
"Improving the productivity with which infrastructure is designed, built and operated means maximising effectiveness and efficiency at every stage of the infrastructure lifecycle," said McCann in the opening pages of the report.
"Only in this way can we hope to meet the needs of society while staying within the carrying capacity of our planet."
In 2025, the ICE published a policy paper outlining how best practice could become the norm in infrastructure delivery.
Who developed PAS 4010?
The British Standards Institution (BSI) facilitated the development of PAS 4010 as a national standards body.
PAS 4010 was project-sponsored by the ICE and the UK government’s Department for Transport (DfT), with the latter also providing funding for the standard.
Its development was supported by a steering group, of which McCann was a member, and a Technical Advisory Panel (TAP), made up of industry experts from across the sector.
Technical author
The BSI appointed Mark Hansford, an independent consultant, as the technical author for this specification.
Steering group
Through consultation with the ICE, the BSI selected expert stakeholders to join the PAS' steering group.
The group, made up of representatives from government, academia, industry and asset owners, was responsible for providing technical insights and comments as well as reviewing and approving drafts of the PAS document during each stage of development.
Technical advisory panel (TAP)
Set up and convened by the ICE, this panel of technical experts and sponsor representatives serves as a conduit to the wider stakeholder community.
The TAP is chaired by Andy Alder, managing director of major infrastructure delivery at Anglian Water and co-chair of the ICE’s Engineering Excellence Community.
This panel also assisted the technical author with developing the ICE guidance note for PAS 4010, which itself was funded by the Infrastructure Client Group (ICG) and the DfT.
This associated document expands on specific topics and provides case study examples of when the approach has been used in real-life projects.
There are plans to expand the guidance document as part of a PAS 4010 dissemination and adoption programme in 2027.
Learn more: How Project 13 is helping to transform infrastructure delivery
Talking productivity
During his presidential year, Ed McCann held Q&As around the world exploring the challenges of productivity. Watch a few:
Related events
Watch Ed McCann's presidential address, a film titled How to thrive in the 21st century.
To launch the 2022 State of the Nation report, a panel discussion with industry experts explored how to enhance productivity at every stage of the infrastructure lifecycle.
As part of a 2023 Next Steps policy research programme, the ICE held a panel discussion on how to improve the productivity of infrastructure delivery in Australia.
Sustainable Development Goals:
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