Mind-sets thwarting infrastructure investment
More money won’t address the shortfall of good infrastructure projects. Better planning and governance arrangements will help, but a shift in mind-sets is the key. Many people in the infrastructure ‘community’ are captured in a false narrative and mind-set. Better approaches are being overlooked as effort goes into solving the wrong problems. It’s possible to create lower risk, lower cost infrastructure that delights customers and investors alike. But to achieve this result, mindsets and beliefs must be challenged. Humility will be required on the part of the collective leadership in the infrastructure sector. Who’s going first?
For a more detailed description of the problem and opportunity, read Innergise’s short paper.
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Thank you for your article Nick. On page 2 you make a note about a finding from Infrastructure Australia that Australia is not good at infrastructure planning and encouraging innovation. Could you provide a link or reference to support this assertion?
Kind Regards,
Glenn
Glenn, take a look at either of Infrastructure Australia’s National Infrastructure Plan or the prior Audit Report. There are number instances throughout these documents that directly or indirectly flag deficiencies, such as lack of cohesion between land use and transport planning, isolated projects lacking network context, and project plans without robust business cases. Furthermore, many of the recommendations within the National Infrastructure Plan have been around in one form or another for years, similarly signalling a lack of innovation and political will amongst other things. Certainly there are plenty of other reports, new and old, that cite similar findings (e.g. see latest from Garry Bowditch at John Grill Centre), but the IA report consolidates the findings usefully.