British Isles
Infrastructure Tracker

This tracker was built by a RICS Chartered Quantity Surveyor to do something that public bodies rarely do voluntarily: place the announced cost of a public infrastructure project alongside what it actually costs, and measure the gap. Across seven jurisdictions — Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, London, England, and Australia — 280 major schemes are tracked from first announcement through to completion or cancellation. Australia is included as an international comparator outside the British Isles, providing a benchmark against a comparable common-law, English-speaking jurisdiction with its own substantial record of infrastructure cost overrun. Each scheme is now assigned an Economic Transformation Index (ETI) score — a 0–10 measure of a scheme's potential to drive economic growth — and a Stranded Value figure quantifying the economic return being lost to delay or cancellation. Across all 280 schemes, total Stranded Value exceeds £43 billion.

For each scheme, the original budget, the current confirmed estimate, and the delivery timeline are recorded, sourced only from named audit office reports, government accounts, and official parliamentary records. No estimates or media figures are used where a primary source exists.

The CPD Index (Continued Prolonged Delays) scores each jurisdiction from 0 to 100 across two dimensions: cost performance and delivery performance. A score of 100 would mean every scheme came in on budget and on time — no jurisdiction has ever come close. The scores are weighted 40% cost and 60% delivery, reflecting the view that a project delivered late imposes compounding societal and economic costs beyond the overrun figure alone.

Each of the 280 schemes is also assigned an Economic Transformation Index (ETI) score from 0 to 10. The ETI measures the potential contribution a scheme would make to economic growth once delivered — drawing on five weighted factors: benefit-cost ratio (35%), deprivation impact on the communities served (25%), network effect and connectivity uplift (20%), scale relative to the host jurisdiction's GDP (10%), and delivery certainty based on current project status (10%). A score of 7 or above indicates high transformative potential; below 5 indicates limited economic return relative to cost.

Alongside the ETI, each scheme carries a Stranded Value figure — the economic potential that is being lost, locked up, or forfeited as a direct consequence of delay or cancellation. Stranded Value is calculated as the gap between a scheme's theoretical ETI score (if delivered on time and on budget) and its actual ETI score, scaled against the scheme's current cost estimate. Across all 280 schemes, total Stranded Value exceeds £43 billion — economic capacity that communities are being denied, every year these projects remain unbuilt or unfinished.

The ETI framework is designed to be recognised by infrastructure funders and development economists. Its components mirror the analytical approach used by bond markets, development finance institutions, and institutional investors when assessing the productive value of public capital expenditure — drawing on HM Treasury Green Book benefit-cost ratio methodology, deprivation weighting consistent with Levelling Up Fund criteria, and network effect analysis aligned with WebTAG multi-modal appraisal guidance. These are the same frameworks referenced by the Infrastructure and Projects Authority and institutional infrastructure investors. ETI is a CPD-derived analytical tool — not an official government appraisal — but its methodology is explicitly grounded in the same evidence base that public funders use.

Cost overruns and delivery failures on public infrastructure are not accidents — they are a pattern. Budgets announced at political approval stages routinely understate true costs. Timelines slip by years, sometimes decades. The public pays the difference, but the accounting is rarely placed in one visible, comparable place.

A quantity surveyor works at the interface between what a project is supposed to cost and what it actually costs. That professional lens — applied systematically across jurisdictions — is what this tracker provides. It exists because the information is already public, scattered across audit reports, parliamentary answers, and freedom of information releases, and because assembling it in one place makes the scale of the problem harder to ignore. This dashboard does not advocate for or against any particular project. It advocates for honesty in public accounting.

Each clock shows the confirmed active cost overrun for that jurisdiction, compounding in real-time at the blended BCIS construction inflation rate for that portfolio. Clock base excludes completed and cancelled schemes. ROI denominated in €; all others in £.

CPD Combined = weighted score: 60% CPD-D (Delivery) + 40% CPD-C (Cost). Delivery is weighted higher to reflect that delay is the primary accountability failure in public infrastructure. Higher score = better performance. Ranked worst to best by Combined score.