Government & Public Infrastructure

Rebuilding Governance for a Public Infrastructure Authority

A regional public infrastructure authority overseeing multiple concurrent transportation and utility capital projects.

We named who decides what across the authority's capital program, and program-level decisions now take roughly 35 percent less time.

~35%

Shorter program-level decision cycle

Situation

Public infrastructure authorities answer to a standard that commercial capital programs seldom face. Legislative oversight bodies and the public examine how contracts are awarded and how contractors are held to account. Informal decision-making that would pass unnoticed in a private company becomes hard to defend.

This authority's program had expanded quickly. Ownership of procurement decisions, schedule escalation and contractor oversight had settled informally within each project team. Practice varied from project to project, and the internal audit said so.

What we did

We first mapped how decisions were taken in practice across every active project. From that we built a program-level operating model with a decision-rights framework, which states who owns each type of decision.

Decision area	Before	After
Procurement	Interpreted by each project team	Named owner at program level
Schedule escalation	Informal and inconsistent	Defined escalation path and owner
Contractor oversight	Different practice on each project	One prequalification and performance-monitoring framework

Impact

Decisions at program level are reached in about 35 percent less time now that each has a named owner. The comparison is with the authority's own cycle before the new model.
Every active project applies the same standard for prequalifying and monitoring contractors.
The authority can explain its oversight model to auditors, regulators and the public in the same terms on every project.

What made it work

We described the existing practice before proposing a new one. Project teams recognized their own work in the map, which made the gaps hard to dispute.

One standard, applied everywhere

Each project's own approach to contractors may have been reasonable. Only a single standard, used on all of them, can be defended under public scrutiny.

Results

Program-level decision cycle time compressed by approximately 35 percent

One contractor prequalification and monitoring framework on every active project

The internal audit finding on contractor oversight addressed

Engagement facts

Sector: Government & Public Infrastructure
Practice area: Transformation & Organization
Client profile: Regional authority running transportation and utility capital projects
Services: Program operating model, decision rights, contractor oversight framework
Key phases: Mapping of every active project; authority-wide rollout

This case study is a composite drawn from multiple engagements. Client details have been changed and combined to protect confidentiality, and figures are representative rather than attributable to any single client.