Crunch point. Does Tier 2 capacity put infrastructure delivery at risk?

With a record increase in infrastructure investment, how can we prevent Tier 2 & supplier capacity risks from impacting delivery?

A record increase in infrastructure investment

Investment in infrastructure is increasing across water, energy & the wider built environment:

• £80Bn investment in the Great Grid Upgrade

• £104Bn investment in UK Water Infrastructure to 2030

• Consents to move forward with new transport & aviation schemes including Gatwick Airport, the Lower Thames Crossing & Transpennine Route Upgrade

• 1.5m new homes through the 10 year affordable homes programme & 35 New Hospitals

Over the next 10 years thousands of companies will be working at pace with Clients to design, build & deliver this new infrastructure (alongside the existing projects & programmes of renewals already in place). These suppliers span from the large Tier 1 contractors & designers to the specialist services provided by Tier 2 SMEs. And these skills are in restricted supply.

Annual average capital investment by water companies in England and Wales, grouped by five-year investment periods (£bn, 2023-24 prices) Water UK

Why is Tier 2 capacity an issue now?

Although the projects span different markets - they all need the same skills (& often the same specialist suppliers).

One of the challenges of the infrastructure sector is the number of companies that operate - with a highly fragmented supply chain with over 37,000 consultant architects & engineers where over 50% of people work in SMEs [Source: UK Business Population Estimates 2025]. Many of these suppliers are working at Tier 2 - working for the large Contractors & engineering design partners. The risk is that the same suppliers are working with multiple design partners - creating capacity risks that are hidden from view.

The new Project 13 Enterprise Models help in managing this risk - creating a single integrated supplier ecosystem that spans multiple delivery partners. At IAND we have been working with our clients in Network Rail, United Utilities & Anglian Water to identify how we can better provide visibility on this capacity challenge & enable the re-balancing of resources across the supply chain, helping secure the capacity needed to deliver on these critical projects.

As with physical infrastructure, it is the investments that you can't see that often drive the biggest benefits.

Over the past year we have been investing behind the scenes in the IAND platform to help clients gain better visibility on supply chain capacity risks when operating a major project. Our latest release in October tackled three key challenges:

• How to manage multiple sources of supplier data when operating an alliance (in a way that is maintainable)?

• How to handle data structured in different ways, with multiple records of the same supplier spanning one or more systems?

• How to see where the same supplier is working with different partners and provide a forward look at their capacity & utilisation rates?

Unlocking visibility on supplier capacity

The IAND platform is designed to make it simple to gain visibility & operate a complex ecosystem of partners, systems, projects, suppliers & teams. This new release makes it simpler to see capacity constraints - where multiple Tier 1s or alliance partners are working with the same supplier. Enabling commercial teams to see at-a- glance where risks may be emerging and the supplier categories under most strain.

New features include:

• New insight reporting showing the volume of overlap in use of suppliers across an alliance.

• See a live list of the suppliers' capacity incl. the total number of partners a supplier is working with. Filter by category, buying organisation & more.

• Upgrade to our financial reporting, making it simpler to track both purchase order & spend (from your P2P & ERP systems), to gain a better forward view of capacity.

• Enhanced supplier profiles making it simpler to see at a glance the overall use & utilisation.

It's an exciting time to be working in infrastructure. This crunch point on capacity provides the opportunity to leverage technology to support major project delivery, from new pipelines to renewals. To explore how IAND can help your project or team, do get in touch.