The International Centre for Infrastructure Futures

The International Centre for Infrastructure Futures (ICIF) was a three-year project involving a consortium of researchers from six UK universities – UCL, Southampton, Bristol, Sussex, Cranfield and Brighton.

ICIF brought together engineers, social scientists, industrialists, policy makers and other stakeholders in a facilitated learning environment in which they could research and learn together about improving the performance of infrastructure systems in the context of increasing interdependencies. The Centre, which was funded by the EPSRC, focused on the development and implementation of new business models. An international perspective was taken comparing the UK situation with approaches in different countries.

Compared to many parts of the world, at the time of the founding of the International Centre for Infrastructure Futures (ICIF) in 2017, the UK had under-invested in its infrastructure. It faced many challenges in upgrading its infrastructure so that it was appropriate for the social, economic and environmental challenges it would face in the remainder of the twenty-first century. A key challenge involved taking into account the ways in which infrastructure systems in one sector increasingly relied on other infrastructure systems in other sectors in order to operate. These interdependencies meant failures in one system could cause follow-on failures in other systems. For example, failures in the water system might knock out electricity supplies, which could disrupt communications, and therefore transportation, which would prevent engineers getting to the original problem in the water infrastructure. These problems had begun to generate major economic and social costs. Unfortunately they were difficult to manage because the UK infrastructure system had historically been built, and was operated and managed, around individual infrastructure sectors.

Because many privatised utilities were focused on operating infrastructure assets, they had limited experience in producing new ones or of understanding these interdependencies. Many of the old national R&D laboratories had been shut down and there was a lack of capability in the UK to procure and deliver the modern infrastructure the UK requires. 

On the one hand, this made innovation risky. On the other hand, it created significant commercial opportunities for firms that could improve their understanding of infrastructure interdependencies and speed up how they developed and tested their new business models. This learning was difficult because infrastructure innovation was undertaken in complex networks of firms, rather than in an individual firm, and typically had to address a wide range of stakeholders, regulators, customers, users and suppliers. The UK lacked a shared learning environment where these different actors could come together and explore the strengths and weaknesses of different options. This made innovation more difficult and costly, as firms were forced to 'learn by doing' and found it difficult to anticipate technical, economic, legal and societal constraints on their activity before they embarked on costly development projects.

The centre created a shared, facilitated learning environment in which social scientists, engineers, industrialists, policy makers and other stakeholders could research and learn together to understand how better to exploit the technical and market opportunities that emerge from the increased interdependence of infrastructure systems. 

The centre focused on the development and implementation of innovative business models and aims to support UK firms wishing to exploit them in international markets. The International Centre for Infrastructure Futures undertook a wide range of research activities on infrastructure interdependencies with users, which allowed problems to be discovered and addressed earlier and at lower cost. Because infrastructure innovations alter the social distribution of risks and rewards, the public needed to be involved in decision making to ensure business models and forms of regulation were socially robust. As a consequence, the International Centre for Infrastructure Futures  had a major focus on using its research to catalyse a broader national debate about the future of the UK's infrastructure, and how it might contribute towards a more sustainable, economically vibrant, and fair society.

Beneficiaries from the Centre's activities include existing utility businesses, entrepreneurs wishing to enter the infrastructure sector, regulators, government and, perhaps most importantly, our communities who would benefit from more efficient and less vulnerable infrastructure based services.

The main academic objective was to achieve a step-change improvement in integrating the social and engineering sciences through an innovative research design, based around a shared learning framework that brings different research streams together in a shared learning process. The centre's non-academic objective was to generate a significant impact on government policy and industrial practice, with particular attention on ensuring the exploitation of research by investors and firms in international markets.

Specific objectives were to:

Develop strategies allowing flexible responses to future needs through scenario analysis, cross-sector learning over assets' life-cycles, and case research.
Understand different kinds of inter-dependencies at multiple levels, (including with the environment and society).

Develop new approaches to the design, delivery, ownership, and management of infrastructure services through our new co-produced research space supported by our novel learning framework.

Improve the identification and analysis of risks associated with interdependencies between infrastructure assets and delivery networks, through advanced modelling and analysis.

Extend these modelling approaches for integrated evaluation and comparison of infrastructure options to address financial (risk), economic modelling, and economic, social, & ecosystem impacts. Future proof them across a wide range of stakeholders in our scenario research and feed the results into the UK National Ecosystem Assessment.

Catalyse debate and public discussion about a broad range of infrastructure developments through our social media, public debates, lectures and research outputs designed for non-academic users.

Contribute towards improved, socially robust, sustainable regulation and public governance of infrastructure services by opening up the implicit assumptions during BM development in a neutral public space, supported by a range of research studies that can flexibly respond to users' needs.

Improve understanding of the commercial potential of infrastructure investment for different classes of national and international investor and explore how ownership models influence long term infrastructure development through international comparative work and co-produced research with industry and investors.

Develop new infrastructure business models and work through transition pathways, building on the frameworks developed in the ESRC Complex Product Systems Innovation Centre to extend engagement to more stakeholders and support them with cutting edge research from the engineering sciences.

Develop a new generation of researchers and extend existing ESRC funded research future skills and training to address infrastructure engineering, planning and related disciplines.

Participating scholars

Brian Collins (Principal Investigator, Professor of Engineering Policy), UCL

AbuBakar Bahaj (Personal Chair of Sustainable Energy), University of Southampton

Timothy Brady (Profesor in Innovation), University of Brighton

Ruth Deakin-Crick (Reader in Systems Learning and Leadership), University of Bristol

Andrew Davies (Professor in the Management of Projects), UCL

Harry Dimitriou (Professor of Planning Studies), Bartlett, UCL

Andrew Edkins (Senior Lecturer), UCL

Raul Fuentes (Lecturer in Geotechnical Engineering), UCL

Taku Fujiyama (Lecturer), UCL

Patrick Godfrey (Systems Programme Director), University of Bristol

Julien J. Harou (Honorary Professor of Water Management), UCL

Paul Jeffrey (Professor of Water Management), Cranfield University

Nick Jennings (Regius Professor of Computer Science), University of Southampton

Simon Jude (Lecturer), Cranfield University

Wendy Larner (Honorary Professor of Geographical Sciences), University of Bristol

Francesca Medda (Professor in Transport and Infrastructure Studies), UCL

Paul Nightingale (Professor of Strategy), University of Sussex

Simon Pollard (Pro-Vice Chancellor, Energy, Environment and Agrifood), Cranfield University

Sarvapali Ramchurn (Researcher in Agents, Interaction and Complexity), UCL

David Richards (Professor in Ground Engineering), University of Southampton

Colin Taylor (Professor of Earthquake Engineering), University of Bristol

Nick Tyler (Chadwick Chair of Civil Engineering), UCL

Liz Varga (Director of Complex Systems Research Centre), Cranfield University

Michael Yearworth (Reader in Engineering Systems), University of Bristol

Industry Partners

Atkins, Balfour Beatty, Bristol Port Company, CH2M Hill, Clifton Suspension Bridge, Gatwick Airport Ltd, Infrastructure Journal, Infrastructure UK, HMT

Institution of Civil Engineers, International Project Finance Association

John Dora Consulting, KPMG, Laing O’RourkeMWH UK Ltd, Network Rail, 

Secure Meters UK Ltd, Skanska Construction UK Ltd, System Dynamics Society (UK Chapter), The Administrative Center for China’s Agenda 21, United Utilities Water plc, Wessex Water.

The changing balance of public-private responsibilities, risks and relationships in infrastructure provision has created opportunities for private firms to develop innovative business models.

New organisational forms and transactional relationships – such as framework agreements, partnerships, co-located integrated project teams and joint-venture companies – underline the importance of private and public organisations working closely to co-create, capture, share revenues and deliver valuable solutions and services to end users.

The strategic choices about the responsibility and risk are the fundamental determinants of how elements are configured into specific business models.

These decisions influence a client’s value proposition, organisational approach, capabilities in the value chain, revenue sharing mechanisms, and transacting relationships with other partners in the value network.

While cost savings offer opportunities for increasing efficiency these do not necessarily lead to improved outcomes for end users so the focus should be on providing better value rather than simply reducing costs

Outputs

'Governing complex infrastructure developments: learning from successful megaprojects', Tim Brady, Andrew Davies paper presented at ISNGI symposium, 2013. Wollongong, Australia.

'Improving the delivery of UK Infrastructure: a business model perspective', Tim Brady, Andrew Davies and Paul Nightingale. Paper presented at the Australian Academy of Management Conference, Brisbane, December 2016

'Reduction in the Cost of Execution of Current Infrastructure Business Models', Paul Nightingale, Tim Brady, and Andrew Davies, ICIF White paper.

Brady, T. and Davies, A., (2014) ‘Managing structural and dynamic complexity: a tale of two projects’, Project Management Journal, 45 (4) 21-38.