Civil engineering market study finds public sector failing on infrastructure
After 11 months, evidence from over 15–20 civil engineering firms and detailed analysis of a decade’s worth of bidding data on public road and railway infrastructure, the Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”) has found that systemic weaknesses in public sector procurement are failing investment and delivery of critical road and rail infrastructure across the UK.
The CMA concludes that there are significant opportunities to improve outcomes, identifying efficiency savings of up to £5bn per year. The report makes 19 recommendations, all directed at the UK, Scottish and Welsh governments and the Northern Ireland Executive, and Network Rail. The clear focus of the CMA’s conclusions on the need for public sector bodies to improve policy and procurement practices gives industry a timely list of initiatives that now need actioned.
CMA market study
The CMA published its final report on 21 May 2026, following an 11-month review of the civil engineering market for public road and railway infrastructure. The market study was launched on 19 June 2025 and conducted under the CMA’s statutory powers in the Enterprise Act 2002. As part of the study, the CMA took evidence from the 15-20 civil engineering firms active in bidding for these contracts and examined ten years’ worth of bidding data from the relevant procuring authorities. An interim report was published in December 2025, with stakeholders submitting written responses in January 2026, before the final report was issued.
What did the CMA find?
The CMA concluded that there are significant opportunities to improve outcomes in the civil engineering sector, which it describes as critical to the UK’s economic growth. As the CMA’s Chief Executive, Sarah Cardell, put it, “a short term and fragmented approach to procurement in road and rail is driving up costs, slowing delivery and holding back innovation”. The CMA identifies the key drivers of underperformance in procurement as funding uncertainty, short-term decision-making, complex regulation and capability gaps. It considers that addressing these challenges could unlock potential efficiency savings of up to £5 billion per year, alongside wider innovation and investment benefits.
Recommendations
| Recommendation | Actions | Objective |
| 1. Strategic ownership for driving change | HM Treasury to take strategic ownership for driving and overseeing system-wide changes to actively shape the market, working closely with the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA). | Overcome fragmentation of accountability for civil engineering across a range of departments and bodies, addressing the persistent failure to track and drive forward the implementation of previous recommendations and reform initiatives. |
| 2. Road and Rail Sector Plan | UK Government, in consultation with the Scottish and Welsh Governments and the NI Executive, to publish a sector plan for civil engineering in the road and rail sector, and to report annually on progress against that plan. | A more coherent, system-wide set of objectives and actions for civil engineering in the road and rail sector, proactively shaping the market through public procurement and regulation. |
| 3. Multi-year capital funding budgeting programmes | With support from the DfT, the UK, Scottish, Welsh Governments and the NI Executive each to implement multi-year capital budgets (of at least three years) for all procuring authorities. | To improve pipeline uncertainty, visibility of future programmes of work, and to reduce key barriers to investment. |
| 4. Longer-term contracts | UK, Scottish, Welsh Governments and NI Executive to permit procuring authorities greater flexibility to commit to contracts that extend beyond budget settlement periods. | To provide suppliers with increased certainty over a programme of work, reduce bid costs for all parties, and to support collaborative and innovative contracting arrangements. |
| 5. UK-wide infrastructure pipeline | NISTA (collaborating with Scottish, Welsh Governments and NI Executive) to expand pipeline with the inclusion of funding confirmation status, planning approvals status, intended timelines for procurement and intended procurement method. | To provide greater visibility for suppliers on upcoming opportunities, with the improved transparency enabling more efficient and effective planning by firms in the supply chain, and facilitating an increase in targeted capacity-building and investment. |
| 6. Sustained capability building | UK, Scottish, Welsh Governments and NI Executive each to publish a civil engineering strategic workforce plan and to regularly report progress. | To strengthen the commercial and technical capability of public procuring authorities, regarded as fundamental to reducing costs and delivering outcomes. |
| 7. Cross-authority pooling of capacity | UK, Scottish, Welsh Governments to guarantee access for local authorities to sources of pooled capacity to support their roads procurement and contracting, to be reported on an annual basis (citing the New Zealand model of Crown Infrastructure Delivery). | Ensure local authorities can access specialist advice and support reducing reliance on external consultancy without requiring each authority to develop and maintain the full range of skills in-house. |
| 8. Cross-authority joint procurement | UK, Scottish, Welsh Governments to work with local authorities to identify opportunities for joint procurement, to be reported on annually. Network Rail to identity and pursue opportunities for more centralised procurement across its five regions. | To provide procuring authorities with more buyer power, drive greater value for money, and combat duplication and/or conflict in authorities’ work. |
| 9. Adoption of best practice | UK government (via GCA and HM Treasury) to mandate compliance with the Construction Playbook for national procuring authorities; Scottish, Welsh Governments and NI Executive to mandate compliance with the Client Guide, Transport Appraisal Guidance, and Construction Toolkit for national procuring authorities; and to publish an implementation plan, with ongoing monitoring and reporting on compliance. | To ensure adoption of best practice procurement across the public sector, regarded by the CMA as fundamental to improving outcomes. |
| 10. Supporting innovation | UK, Scottish, Welsh Governments and NI Executive to require all national public authorities to publish, at least every 3-5 years, target areas for innovation in their supply chains. | To provide greater confidence for suppliers as to where innovations (such as industrialised construction methods) would be likely to be welcomed by public procurers. |
| 11. Use of frameworks | UK, Scottish, Welsh Governments and NI Executive to ensure all future national road and rail public procurement frameworks adhere to the Gold Standards set out in the 2021 Mosey review. | Improving supplier confidence in public sector frameworks (e.g., ensuring they offer sustainable pipelines of work, a consistent and proportionate approach to economic and financial standing and considering the optimum duration, scope and continuity of framework call-offs). |
| 12. Standardising procurement processes | UK, Scottish, Welsh Governments and NI Executive each to conduct a review to identify opportunities for, and deliver, greater standardisation of procurement processes across procuring authorities. | Improve supplier engagement and competition with more predictable approaches across the procurement lifecycle, including processes, compliance, data and administrative requirements, and approaches to bid evaluation. |
| 13. Improved approach to risk allocation | National procuring authorities to conduct a zero-based review of Z clauses in model contracts. | To remove unnecessary risk-allocating clauses, the CMA having consistently been told they overused by procuring authorities. |
| 14. Standardisation of designs | UK, Scottish, Welsh Governments and NI Executive to determine and mandate the use of a limited set of standard designs for certain road and rail infrastructure outputs (such as bridges, gantries, and other common structures that are repeated across projects). | A more predictable and efficient environment for infrastructure development – reducing system costs, delivery risk, and burdens on procurers, and driving opportunities and incentives to take advantage of economies of scale, including investment in practices such as industrialised construction methods. |
| 15. Alignment of designer’s and procurers’ incentives | UK, Scottish, Welsh Governments and NI Executive to review and strengthen best practice guidance on aligning external designers’ incentives with those of public procurers. | More efficient outcomes – with well-aligned incentives between designers and procurers, deemed fundamental to ensuring that designs deliver long-term value for money, in construction and across the lifetime of the infrastructure asset. |
| 16. Reduce over-compliance | UK, Scottish, Welsh Governments and NI Executive to: (i) direct regulators and public bodies with standards-setting responsibilities to establish and allow industry to challenge any standards on the grounds that they are out of date, duplicative or redundant; and (ii) agree and enforce sets of consistent regional standards for ‘preferential requirements’ by local authorities for civil engineering projects.
The UK Government should also consider updating the Railway Regulation Act so that Network Rail has equivalent legal powers as National Highways to access adjacent land to conduct civil engineering works for enhancement and renewals. | To help reduce system costs, and lower barriers to entry. Ensuring more agility and responsiveness by standards setters and managers will facilitate lower costs for firms, greater innovation, and increased competition. Consistent standards for preferential requirements (elements of design or engineering specifications which reflect preferences rather than technical necessity) will reduce barriers to entry for firms and increase efficiency in cross-regional operations, as well as supporting greater joint procurement.
Granting Network Rail access rights to adjacent land equivalent to those of National Highways would significantly reduce the risk of delays involved in current processes and increase the speed of delivery, though government is best placed to consider if the trade-off between access and landowner rights should be similar in rail as in road. |
| 17. Streamline accreditation | UK, Scottish, Welsh Governments and NI Executive to review the existing range of supplier accreditations for duplication and set a single approved list of accreditations that are acceptable for firms working on public road and rail infrastructure projects. | To reduce administrative burden on suppliers, with particular benefit for SMEs, and facilitating greater market access and competition. Focusing on reducing duplication amongst Safe Schemes in Procurement (SIPP) and use of multiple PQQs or platforms, increasing mutual recognition between accreditations as well as more consistent use of Common Assessment Standard (CAS). |
| 18. Streamline regulatory approvals | UK Government to direct regulators and public bodies to streamline approvals processes for new technologies in road and rail infrastructure and establish fast-track approval processes, which should include the recognition of reference-class data. | To encourage the development and rollout of new innovations across the supply chain (citing similar initiatives to approve new products in Norway). |
| 19. Utility diversions response time | UK, Scottish, Welsh Governments and NI Executive to direct sector regulators to agree and monitor standardised response times for utility diversions. | To reduce delays in addressing such requests, which can contribute to significant cost and time overruns in project delivery. |
Next steps
The UK Government has committed to issuing an official response to the recommendations within 90 days of publication (i.e. by mid-August 2026), with a presumption that it will accept the recommendations unless there are compelling reasons not to do so. The CMA has said it stands ready to work with the UK, Scottish and Welsh Governments and the NI Executive on the recommendations and their implementation. The clear focus of the CMA’s conclusions on the need for public sector bodies to improve policy and procurement practices for the delivery of infrastructure projects also gives industry a timely list of initiatives that it needs to see actioned.
Article co-authored by Ivy Oppong, CMS London.
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