The Delivery Gap: Why Government Projects Really Fail and What Can be Done About It

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 wrong?

In the wake of the cancellation of HS2, Jonathan Simcock, former Major Projects Director of...