The CMA’s road and rail report: how to stop it gathering dust

The CMA’s civil engineering market study finds that fragmented, short-term procurement of road and rail infrastructure is leaving potential savings of up to £5bn a year unrealised and makes 19 recommendations for reform. The greatest risk in our view is not rejection, but polite acceptance followed by inertia. The sector has been diagnosed before, from Latham to Farmer, with familiar results. The Government’s response, due by mid-August, should convert the key recommendations into binding obligations, through secondary legislation, a revised National Procurement Policy Statement and funding conditions, rather than leaving them as guidance.

The problem, through the industry’s eyes

The CMA’s final report, published on 21 May after an 11-month study, drew on a wide evidence base, including 25 responses to its interim report, information requests from contractors and public authorities, independent qualitative research with Tier 2 and Tier 3 firms, and engagement with UK and devolved governments, in a market in which around 15 to 20 civil engineering firms regularly bid for major contracts. Around £19bn of public money was spent on road and rail infrastructure in 2023/24, excluding HS2, and the study concludes the market is underdelivering on cost, speed and innovation, with potential savings of 10 to 25%, roughly £2bn to £5bn a year.

What the industry told the CMA will be no surprise to those who work in the sector. Hundreds of procuring bodies act with no common strategic direction. Funding arrives in short cycles that make it irrational for contractors to invest in skills, plant or innovation. Risk is allocated to whoever is least able to price it rather than best able to manage it. Bid costs are high, specifications are bespoke where they could be standard, and smaller firms struggle to enter at all. Regulation compounds the problem: overlapping accreditation schemes and slow approvals processes for new products and techniques add cost and inhibit innovation, particularly in rail. Industry bodies, including the Civil Engineering Contractors Association, have welcomed the diagnosis, and the Institution of Civil Engineers has gone further, calling for the Construction Playbook to be made mandatory.

The prescription

The CMA makes 19 recommendations (seven of which it flags as critical)  to the UK, Scottish and Welsh governments and the Northern Ireland Executive, grouped around a few ideas: HM Treasury taking strategic ownership of reform, with central coordination through NISTA; a published sector plan with annual progress reporting; credible multi-year funding and visible pipelines; procurement designed for long-term value rather than lowest bid; investment in public-sector capability; and simpler regulation. The Government has committed to respond within 90 days, by 19 August, with a presumption that recommendations are accepted unless there are compelling reasons not to.

The real risk: another report on the shelf

Here is the uncomfortable history. Latham said much of this in 1994. Egan said it again in 1998. The Farmer Review told the industry to modernise or die in 2016, and the Construction Playbook has embodied much of the same wisdom since 2020, on a comply-or-explain basis that central government departments apply with varying enthusiasm. The disease has been diagnosed repeatedly. What has been missing is not analysis but obligation: recommendations addressed to hundreds of autonomous procuring bodies, binding on none of them, tend to dissolve on contact with day-to-day delivery pressure.

Acceptance in August is therefore not the finish line. A response that welcomes all 19 recommendations and commits to guidance, reviews and working groups would follow a well-worn path to the shelf.

Making it stick

The way to avoid that fate is to focus on implementation rather than aspiration. Not everything can be legislated. Treasury ownership, workforce planning and capability-building are primarily matters of government organisation rather than legal drafting. But several of the CMA’s recommendations lend themselves to hard-edged implementation measures.

1. Mandate best practice, rather than merely recommending it. The CMA’s most obvious candidate for immediate action is its recommendation that compliance with the Construction Playbook should become mandatory. The current “comply or explain” approach has produced inconsistent adoption. Government should remove the discretion and require compliance for in-scope road and rail procurements, with monitoring and reporting against delivery.
2. Use the National Procurement Policy Statement to extend the reforms beyond central government. Contracting authorities are under a statutory duty to have regard to the NPPS. A revised statement could embed the CMA’s recommendations on long-term value, pipeline visibility, innovation, collaboration and risk allocation across the wider public sector, rather than leaving them as guidance aimed primarily at central government bodies.
3. Make pipeline transparency a requirement, not an aspiration. The CMA recommends an expanded UK-wide infrastructure pipeline containing information on funding status, planning approvals, procurement timing and procurement routes. Publication should be mandatory and regularly updated. Firms cannot invest confidently in skills, technology or capacity if they do not know what work is likely to reach market.
4. Tie funding certainty to reform. The CMA calls for multi-year funding settlements and longer-term contracting. Government should go further and make funding certainty conditional upon delivery of reform commitments, including publication of pipelines, implementation of the Construction Playbook and adherence to standardised procurement approaches. Authorities respond to funding conditions far more reliably than to exhortation.
5. Standardise where differentiation adds no value. One of the CMA’s most significant recommendations is the mandatory use of standard designs for repeatable infrastructure such as bridges and gantries. The same logic applies to procurement processes and administrative requirements. Standardisation reduces bid costs, lowers barriers to entry and increases opportunities to achieve economies of scale.
6. Reduce avoidable friction in the system. The CMA identifies overlapping accreditations, burdensome standards and slow approvals processes as barriers to innovation and competition. A single recognised accreditation framework and fast-track approval routes for new technologies would probably do more to promote innovation than another round of guidance documents.

The CMA has done the analysis and started the clock. Whether this becomes the moment the market changed, or the latest volume in a long shelf of well-meaning reports, now turns on whether government creates mechanisms that make compliance easier than non-compliance. The sector does not suffer from a shortage of recommendations. It suffers from a shortage of recommendations that survive first contact with day-to-day procurement practice.

We advise contracting authorities, contractors and investors on public procurement and infrastructure delivery, including the Procurement Act 2023 and the reforms this report may bring. If you would like to discuss what the CMA’s recommendations mean for your projects, please contact Paul Henty and Charlie Bayliss.