Major programmes are essential to reducing the economic and social imbalances in the UK.
This week saw the state opening of Parliament, where the Queen’s Speech outlined the Government’s proposed policies and legislation for the coming parliamentary session. As expected, levelling up was high on the agenda.
To Daniel Armanios, the newly appointed BT Professor of Major Programme Management at Oxford Said Business School, major programmes can play a key role in making this a reality:
‘Major programmes are essential to achieve the UK government’s ambition to ‘level up’, just as they are in any country. Not only do they physically improve the area, by building on infrastructure and resources, they also provide scope for social and economic empowerment and can do so at scale.’
Levelling up has been the flagship policy of Boris Johnson’s premiership, but it’s not without its critics.
For many people it is a hard concept to grasp as its purpose, costs, impacts, and benefits differ for each stakeholder. This challenge is compounded by each levelling up action having an inherently complex and evolving set of stakeholders.
Tension arises between the grand price tag of a policy speech versus the distributed nature of how it is executed. For instance, while a grand renewable policy may require billions, executing it is often across 1000s of installations, each at a fraction of that policy number.
Major programmes have the same challenges of managing numerous, complex, interdependent, and distributed stakeholders, which, unless addressed, risk stakeholder exclusion and future political risk.
To Daniel, the impact these projects can have at the smallest level is key to providing economic opportunities:
‘Within every major project, is thousands of smaller ones. It is at this more granular community level, that you can create a series of long-lasting economic and social benefits. The opportunities created here reach multiple groups, from a local citizen employed by the project to the entire community that prospers directly as a result of the new infrastructure.
We see this not just with physical projects but also virtual projects; major programmes of the future are not just “in the ground” but also “through the air”. As we see with cloud computing and the UK’s Project Gigabit, the benefits are also increasingly distributed and decentralized. Coordinating and executing across these smaller projects is key to success, because it is here, at the micro/community-level, where the lives and prospects of ordinary people benefit, achieving what the government calls ‘levelling up.’
Therefore, we are convening efforts to develop novel strategies and perspectives that account for these unique features that will influence the major programmes of the future. Through our collective action across sectors, we can better ensure programme benefits go to those most in need and can be replicated across locales to scale such impact.
Major projects, Daniel’s specialist area, are also essential to tackle the cost of living and facilitate the transition to green energy, by building domestic sustainable energy infrastructure.
His recent research, focused in the US showed how building bridges specifically, lead to a direct increase high tech innovation within the area, and he believes similar effects can be achieved in the UK.
Daniel’s comments come ahead of the Oxford Future of Major Programme Management Conference 2022, held between May 17 – 19.
The theme for this year’s global biennial conference for major programmes and large-scale projects, is ‘Cutting-Edges’ and will aim to define the extremes of new and innovative major programme ideas and research, and their potential for impact in practice.