Global investment ambition

This week's 151st episode of The Infrastructure Podcast was recorded live in Toronto with the brilliant Peter Weltman, chairman of the Canadian Infrastructure Council and explores what can be learned from Canada’s radical approach to kickstarting its much-needed housing sector. The episode was record at last year’s Transforming Infrastructure Performance Summit Toronto, hosted by Bentley Systems and the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE). The TIP Live summit travels next week to Melbourne as we continue to share global ideas about how to boost the effectiveness of our infrastructure delivery Have a listen here or find all 151 episodes wherever you get your podcasts - search “The Infrastructure Podcast” on Spotify, Apple, Google or YouTube (and there’s a video version available too this week). CIC has just produced a report outlining the future challenges and needs around so-called housing-enable infrastructure - definitely valuable global learning and worth a read. Peter brings some fascinating insights and learning around how Canada is aligning its investment in housing with investment in transport, energy and communication - bringing together public and private cash - to accelerate to delivery for real communities. Because the global infrastructure needs to learn – and share - as many infrastructure delivery lessons as possible. As population growth accelerates, climate shocks intensify and affordability pressures mount, the key question is still whether we can deliver and maintain infrastructure fast enough and efficiently enough to support our society needs. And that’s what TIP is all about – learning and sharing knowledge. Right. I’m off to Melbourne – see you there!

This week I am celebrating the 150th episode of The Infrastructure Podcast (yes doesn’t time fly!!) by chatting to Mark Reynolds CBE, executive chair of global construction giant Mace and co-chair of the Construction Leadership Council about the skills challenge – still one of the biggest constraints on the UK’s £725bn+ infrastructure ambition. Have a listen here or find all 149 episodes wherever you get your podcasts - search “The Infrastructure Podcast” on Spotify, Apple, Google or YouTube. Alongside his ongoing work to restructure the Mace business (interesting changes going on there for sure) Mark now also chairs the new Construction Skills Mission Board. This bring together senior industry leaders, educators, training bodies, government ministers and unions to ensure the sector can recruit, train and retain and extra 100,000 workers a year - creating the workforce it needs to meet the demands of the decade ahead. So big ambition. Big investment. Now the big question: can we create the jobs to meet the training and build the workforce to match that ambition? Mark says yes, we can.

Eighteen months into his new job as Member of Parliament for Northampton South, Mike Reader , my guest on this week’s episode of The Infrastructure Podcast , has pretty much completed the transition from Mace work winning director to fully fledged politician. And that makes him hugely qualified to provide us with a progress report on the government’s much discussed ambition to back infrastructure investment as the key to driving economic growth and raising living standards across the UK. Have a listen here or find all 149 episodes wherever you get your podcasts - search “The Infrastructure Podcast” on Spotify, Apple, Google or YouTube. Mike’s straight-talking update from the heart of Parliament unpacks what’s actually moving and what’s stuck and discusses whether, for all the policy talk, the UK is finally turning its infrastructure ambition into real-world delivery. Enjoy!

There are some infrastructure projects that leave you literally gasping and grappling with the scale of ambition and complexity. The UK’s Geological Disposal Facility is one such project – and one we explore on The Infrastructure Podcast this week. My guests are Neil Hyatt, chief scientific advisor and Malcolm Orford, Head of Major Permissions at Nuclear Waste Services. They explain the hugely ambitious plan to build a vast underground vault system designed to protect future generations for literally tens of thousands of years into the future. Have a listen here or find all 145 episodes wherever you get your podcasts - search “The Infrastructure Podcast” on Spotify, Apple, Google or YouTube. We dive into one of the toughest long-term challenges of safely managing and disposing of the UK’s nuclear waste. Because for 70+ years, nuclear has powered our homes, advanced medicine and strengthened national security. Some of its most hazardous wastes will remain radioactive for thousands of years and so surface storage isn’t the permanent answer. A new underground facility, most likely in Cumbria, is the preferred option.

My guest on this week’s episode of the The Infrastructure Podcast is Matthew Cannon, chief executive of The Clancy Group - and a former international pro rugby player - as we tackle the tricky issues of building and retaining high performance teams in infrastructure. Have a listen here - or find all 147 episodes wherever you get your podcasts - search “The Infrastructure Podcast” on Spotify, Apple, Google or YouTube. Alongside Matt’s hugely insightful take on the current challenge facing the UK contracting market, I found it really insightful to chat to a former high performing sportsman (Matt played at London Irish and London Welsh and was a member of England’s successful 2003 Hong Kong Rugby 7s squad) about the way his sports team experiences crossed over into the world of work. While I have never personally been involved in high performance of elite sports, I have witnessed close up the absolute power of sports teams working together to, literally “make the boat go faster”. And given that we talk so much about collaboration and leadership as being key to successful infrastructure project delivery, there is surely much to learn from those experiences.

It was so great to finally sit down with David Porter, the recently installed 161st President of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) , to record this week’s episode of the The Infrastructure Podcast. Have a listen here - https://lnkd.in/eFB_Pzwd or find all 146 episodes wherever you get your podcasts - search “The Infrastructure Podcast” on Spotify, Apple, Google or YouTube. Over the last couple of years I have had the pleasure of spending time with David as we both helped deliver the Transforming Infrastructure Performance Summit series with ICE and Bentley Systems in various locations around the world. As you will hear in this week’s podcast, David’s absolute passion for engineering and infrastructure as a route to public service is truly inspirational. And as David makes clear, infrastructure professionals have to work much harder to convince the public of the value of investment. Because while we all depend on infrastructure - the roads railways, power water and communications of everyday life - most people barely notice it until it fails. So how do we make infrastructure personal again? Check out this episode as we discuss trust, long-term investment, public value, skills, AI, and why engineers must rethink how they communicate the impact of their work on everyday lives. I hope you enjoy listening to David as much as I did!

New year; new energy. We kick off The Infrastructure Podcast for 2026 by tackling one of the UK’s biggest and potentially most exciting infrastructure challenges: the future for Small Modular Reactors. My guest is Ruth Todd CBE, Operations and Supply Chain Director at Rolls-Royce SMR - the person tasked with turning a long-held nuclear ambition into a lower cost, deliverable reality. With experience spanning the Covid 19 Vaccine Task Force and HS2 (High Speed Two) Ltd, she knows what it takes to lead at moments of national importance. Have a listen here - https://lnkd.in/ef_AXvZR or find all 145 episodes wherever you get your podcasts - search “The Infrastructure Podcast” on Spotify, Apple, Google or YouTube. The latest Fingleton Review of UK’s nuclear sector described it as facing “strategic failure”. The government has responded with one of the most ambitious energy interventions in decades - including £2.5bn to accelerate SMRs. At the centre of it all sits Rolls-Royce SMR: factory-built, standardised, and designed to overcome the cost and delivery pitfalls that have plagued nuclear for years. Plans are underway to deploy at Wylfa with each SMR capable of powering a million homes. And the ambition is to export the technology around the world. So is this the start of a new golden age for UK nuclear?

It’s the last episode of The Infrastructure Podcast for 2025 this week and to close out the year I’m joined by Canadian Member of Parliament Jennifer McKelvie to see what the UK can learn from the way Canada is ambitiously reshaping its approach to infrastructure as key to nation building. Thanks for your support in 2025. Have a listen here - https://lnkd.in/ectKZhJD or find all 144 episodes wherever you get your podcasts - search “The Infrastructure Podcast” on Spotify, Apple, Google or YouTube. Canada’s infrastructure moment is certainly right now as - like the UK - the nation wrestles with housing shortages, congested transport links, climate pressure and the need for increased economic growth. Add in the complexity of geopolitics and the on-going tariff war with the US Trump administration … As Jennifer pointed out to the recent Bentley Systems-backed Transforming Infrastructure Performance Summit in Toronto last October, Canada is certainly reacting to the challenge with investment at scale and with speed. It has a renewed nation-building ambition and a transformation in the way it plans, funds and delivers major infrastructure - from new federal delivery agencies to the expanding role of the Canada Infrastructure Bank/ Banque de l'infrastructure du Canada. The UK and Europe could maybe learn from Canada’s approach?

The NHS New Hospital Programme is one of the most ambitious pieces of public infrastructure in a generation. In the latest episode of The Infrastructure Podcast , I explore Hospital 2.0: a standardised, industrialised approach to hospital design and delivery that aims to bring certainty on cost, quality and pace — while strengthening UK supply chains and capability. I’m joined by Emily King , Director of Industrialisation and Doug Baldock , Technical Servies Director who brilliantly explain this vast and transformational programme. Have a listen here or find it wherever you get your podcasts — search “The Infrastructure Podcast” on Spotify, Apple, Google or YouTube. With a 12-year, £37bn pipeline, rolling five-year funding and urgent RAAC rebuilds to tackle, this conversation gets into what it will actually take to turn policy into delivery — and whether this model can reset how we build complex social infrastructure at scale. And perhaps also finally turn the manufacturing ambitions of the Latham and Egan reviews 30 plus years ago into reality. 🎧 Listen now and join the debate on what Hospital 2.0 means in reality.