If you’re a contractor in the UK’s infrastructure sector, you don’t need me to tell you it’s tough out there. It feels like we’re caught in a perfect storm: productivity has flatlined for decades, we’re facing a critical skills shortage, and margins are thinner than ever.
For years, the game was simple: be the cheapest. But that game is over.
The rules for winning major UK infrastructure work have changed for good. Clients like National Highways, Network Rail, and the major Water companies are rolling out tens of billions in new frameworks. But they’re not just buying projects; they’re buying performance.
A new ‘Compliance Trinity’ has created a new benchmark for selection. If your business isn’t built to meet it, you’re not just going to lose bids; you’re going to become uncompetitive.
But read on, we’ll explain how you can meet this challenge head on and at little, or no, extra cost!
The New Rules: Why Bids are Failing on More Than Just Price
Survival now depends on your ability to provide data-backed proof of your quality, competence, and value. This new landscape is built on three pillars:
- The Procurement Act 2023: This is the big one. The law has officially shifted from awarding contracts based on the ‘Most Economically Advantageous Tender’ (MEAT) to the ‘Most Advantageous Tender’ (MAT). This isn’t just a wording change; it’s a revolution. It empowers clients to give massive weight to non-price factors like quality, innovation, and sustainability.Need proof? The new £14.5 billion Scheme Delivery Framework 2 (SDF2) has an evaluation model that is 70% quality and just 30% price. National Highways has issued a direct mandate expecting suppliers to “drive innovation and Lean ways of working”. Your ability to prove your value is now more than twice as important as your price tag.
- BS 8670 (The Competence Mandate): Born from the Hackitt Review, this standard ends “assumed expertise”. It demands a verifiable blend of skills, knowledge, experience, and behaviours. It’s no longer enough to just have the right cards; you must now prove your team, and your supply chain, are competent for the job. Clients will use this to audit their supply chains, and if you can’t provide the evidence, you’re a risk.
- BS 99001 (The Quality Mandate): This is the new standard for Quality Management, built specifically for UK construction because the old ISO 9001 wasn’t good enough. It forces a focus on genuine collaboration, clear accountability, and creating a “Golden Thread” of information. At its core, it’s about proactively preventing defects and eliminating rework, the very things that destroy your productivity and margins.
These three pillars are interlinked. You can’t have a BS 99001-compliant quality system if you can’t prove your people are competent under BS 8670. And you can’t win a MAT bid (Procurement Act) if you can’t evidence both.
The Generational Prize: Who Will Win the £100bn+ Infrastructure Boom?
Against this challenging backdrop sits a massive opportunity. We’re talking about a pipeline of work that will define a generation:
- Network Rail CP7: £43bn
- Combined Water Market: £104bn
- Scheme Delivery Framework 2 (SDF2): £14.5bn
- New Hospital Programme: £3bn a year
These clients are crystal clear.
Chris Taylor-Dawson of Ofwat commented “The industry is set to deliver a huge pipeline of investment for future water supplies and delivering this affordably and sustainably for customers is non-negotiable. Doing what we’ve done before isn’t going to achieve the required outcomes.
Water companies and their supply chains will need to demonstrate how they will drive efficiency and eliminate waste. Approaches such as this, which verify that a workforce that is competent in Lean delivery, moves a supplier from ‘making promises’ to ‘providing proof’. This is the kind of change we are looking for to ensure long-term value for customers and the environment.”
Martin Bolt of National Highways commented; “This hits the nail on the head. At National Highways, Lean is not a buzzword; it’s fundamental to our continuous improvement journey and our ‘Customer, Safety, Delivery’ imperatives. We are building a Lean-enabled organisation from the inside out, but we cannot achieve our goals in isolation.
The supply chain provides our delivery partners, and ‘proof of delivery’ is where our philosophies must align in practice, not just in tenders. We need partners who speak the same language of value, waste elimination, and respect for people. Investing in formal Lean competence, through CITB supported programmes like the LCDP, is the clearest evidence a supplier can provide that they are genuinely equipped to work with us. It shows they can move beyond rhetoric and actively help us deliver a safer, more efficient, and customer-focused strategic road network for the taxpayer.”
This changes everything. Historically, your internal inefficiency was your problem. Now, it’s a direct, quantifiable weakness in your tender. When a client asks how you will drive productivity, reduce carbon, and deliver value, “the usual way” is the wrong answer.
They are explicitly evaluating your management systems, your resource planning, and your productivity methods. A bid that can’t demonstrate a robust system for cutting waste is fundamentally non-compliant.
The Answer: Turning Lean from a Buzzword into a Bid-Winning Machine
So, how do you provide this data-backed proof?
This is where the Lean Short Courses and Lean Construction Development Pathway (LCDP) come in. These aren’t just another training course. They provide an industry-standard competency framework, developed with clients like National Highways, to build and prove the exact capabilities these new rules demand – ‘created by the industry, for the industry’.
A Cost-Neutral* Investment in Survival
The market has split in two: those who can provide data-backed evidence of their competence and value, and those who cannot. In a 70% quality-weighted tender, the second group will be rendered uncompetitive.
The primary barrier is always cost. But by utilising the new CITB way of ‘grant funding’ via local Employer Networks, for levy-registered companies, this makes LCI-UK courses a “potentially cost-neutral solution” to building this essential, verifiable capability.
This removes the financial objection. The question is no longer “Can we afford to do this?” but “Can we afford not to?”.
Your competitors are already mobilising. The clock is ticking.
Here’s how it gives you the winning edge:
- Lean PROVES Competence (BS 8670): People trained under LCDP benefit from it being built around a ‘gold-standard’ Learning Management System (LMS). This system meticulously tracks every individual’s progress, every module, every workshop. It creates a verifiable, auditable, data-rich record of your entire organisation’s competence. It is the perfect, powerful answer to the evidence requirements of BS 8670.
- Lean BUILDS in Quality (BS 99001): The core principles of the LCDP, like ‘5S Workplace Organisation’, ‘Problem Solving’, and ‘Collaborative Planning’, are the building blocks of a BS 99001-compliant system. The focus on customer value, reducing waste, and continuous improvement systematically builds the exact culture and processes the standard demands.
- Trained people WIN Bid (Procurement Act – MAT): This is the payoff. The LCDP’s LMS functions as an “evidence engine”. It transforms Lean from a vague idea into a data-driven commercial weapon. It allows you to extract hard data on improvement projects, tracking tangible outcomes.
The Lean short courses run by LCI-UK and the LCDP pilot programmes, ran across six National Highways schemes, and delivered evidence of over £20 million in savings and generated significant, quantifiable carbon reductions.
Imagine putting that data in your next tender.
When you authentically adopt lean and participate in the LCDP, you’re not just training your people; you are actively building a library of bespoke, data-backed case studies that you can deploy directly into your most important bids. The training programme itself becomes a bid-winning content generator.
Your Next Move: Your Immediate Action Plan
The path forward is clear.
- Start Now. The best way to understand the power of Lean is to experience it. Book your team onto one of our Lean Construction Short Courses today. It’s the perfect, practical introduction to the principles that win bids.
- Get Strategic. Contact the Lean Construction Institute UK team today at admin@leanconstruction.org.uk. We can show you how the full Lean Construction Development Pathway (LCDP) can be tailored to your business to build the evidence you need to win.
- Get Connected. Join us at upcoming LCI-UK events, like the annual Lean Construction Summit, and hear directly from the clients and industry leaders driving this transformation.
There is no room for bystanders. The time to act is now.
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