The Infrastructure Podcast

This week's special 151st episode was recorded in front of a live audience at last year’s brilliant Transforming Infrastructure Performance Summit hosted by Bentley Systems and the Institution of Civil Engineers in Toronto Canada.
In fact, right about the time this episode is published I will be in Melbourne helping the team to deliver the next event in this TIP series – so look out for podcast flowing out of that!
Back to this episode and my guest is Peter Weltman, Vice Chair of the Canada Infrastructure Council, Director at consultant Technomics and until 2023, Financial Accountability Officer for Ontario.
We discuss the critical issue of Housing-Enabling Infrastructure and its impact on the future of Canada’s Communities – and in particular the work being done to help Canada respond to its growing housing challenge,. 
Because Canada’s housing challenge is not just about bricks and mortar - it’s about the infrastructure that makes communities liveable, sustainable, and connected. Roads, transit, water systems, energy grids, digital networks, and social infrastructure all form the backbone that enables housing to be built, scaled, and supported over the long term. 
Without this foundation, new homes risk becoming isolated developments rather than thriving communities.
As population growth accelerates, climate shocks intensify, and affordability pressures mount, the question is not whether Canada needs more homes, but whether we can deliver the enabling infrastructure at the speed and scale required. 
That means moving beyond fragmented planning toward coordinated investment, smarter regulation, and nation-building programs that unlock land and create confidence for both communities and private investors. The creation of the new Major Projects Office (MPO) should help by creating a single point of contact to get projects built faster – the question is how - and what needs to change first.
The Council is at the heart of shaping Canada’s infrastructure ambitions – we’ll hear how later on – and has just produced its first National Infrastructure Assessment report which I reckon will provide essential reading for all.
So lots to chat through, and I kicked off by asking why is infrastructure so critical to solving Canada’s housing challenge. 
Resources
Canadian Infrastructure Council
CIC National Infrastructure Assessment report - Building Foundations for Tomorrow:
Transforming Infrastructure Performance Toronto Summit
Technomics website

This week's podcast celebrates the 150th episode by delving into one of the most urgent and complex issues that continues to challenge the UK construction sector – namely the critical shortage of skilled workers.
As we know, government plans to invest public and private funds worth over £725 billion in infrastructure over the next decade or so. That will decarbonise and secure our energy systems, reboot the nation’s transport networks, protect the environment, build 1.5 million new homes and retrofit some five million more.
The scale of ambition is enormous. But none of it can happen without the people needed to deliver it. 
And that’s where the newly launched Construction Skills Mission Board comes in – bringing together senior industry leaders, educators, training bodies, government ministers and unions to ensure the sector can recruit, train and retain the workforce it needs to meet the demands of the decade ahead.
My guest today is Mark Reynolds, Chair of the Construction Leadership Council, Executive Chair of constriction giant Mace and also Chair of this new Construction Skills Mission Board. 
Mark helped CLC to establish the board as a way to support the Government’s commitment to invest an additional £625 million in construction skills. And its inaugural meeting late last year was described as a pivotal moment that signalled a new level of urgency, coordination and commitment to solving one of construction’s greatest long-term challenges.
The goal is clear: to develop and drive a national strategy capable of recruiting an extra 100,000 workers each year. The focus is on five key levers: boosting employer confidence to invest, building clear entry pathways, improving access to training, ensuring effective funding and creating reliable, rewarding career structures.
So big ambitions but what’s next? Let hear more…
Resources
Construction Skills Mission Board
Construction Leadership Council
Mace website
Mace Group announces majority investment in Mace Consult from Goldman Sachs Alternatives
Transforming Infrastructure Performance

In this week's episode we are seeking a new year parliamentary progress update to discover how 18 months of government infrastructure ambition is actually being turned into real economic and social growth potential. 
To help me with this I am joined once again by Mike Reader, MP for Northampton South, the newly re-elected chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Infrastructure and Construction. 
And, of course, as we heard in his first visit to the Infrastructure Podcast a year ago, before he was elected to parliament in July 2024, Mike was a director at construction giant Mace.
Well it is certainly an interesting moment for the sector. The UK entered the new year with infrastructure right at the centre of its growth strategy. Ministers are clear that better transport, energy, housing and digital networks are essential if we are to unlock regional productivity, raise living standards and support the transition to Net Zero. 
As we have heard in so many episodes of the podcast, large projects are already under way - from new nuclear capacity and grid upgrades to major transport links and hospital programmes. And the pipeline is real and ready.
But the real test now is whether long-promised ambition can be converted into delivery, economic value, and public confidence.
At the same time, familiar structural challenges persist. Slow planning, skills shortages, fragmented procurement, high costs and stubbornly low productivity continue to constrain output. The housing crisis remains acute, energy infrastructure is racing against time, and the UK’s ageing assets demand smarter stewardship, not just new concrete. 
Meanwhile technology, data and AI offer huge potential, but meaningful adoption depends on a stable pipeline and the right capability in the workforce.
So let’s get a progress update from the heart of power and explore whether government is actually now doing enough to provide long-term certainty, mobilise private investment, modernise delivery, and turn infrastructure ambition into real social and economic outcomes. 
Resources
Mike Reader MP website
All Party Parliamentary Committee on Infrastructure 
Energy Security and Net Zero Committee
Construction Leadership Council
Transforming Infrastructure Performance
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe's Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development Committee

In this week's podcast we’re talking about the tricky challenge of safely managing and disposing of the UK’s expanding stock of nuclear waste. Creating a Geological Disposal Facility.
For more than 70 years, the UK has benefited from nuclear technology - generating low-carbon electricity, advancing medicine, supporting industry, and contributing to national defence. 
Alongside those benefits comes responsibility. 
Because the most hazardous radioactive wastes produced over those decades will remain radioactive for many thousands of years.
And while they are currently stored safely at a number of surface facilities across the country, - as we heard on the podcast in episode 126 last year – those stores require ongoing monitoring, management, and periodic rebuilding. They are secure for the short to medium term - but they are not permanent solutions.
My guests today are tackling that very issue. Malcolm Orford is Head of major permissions and Neil Hyatt, chief scientific advisor at Nuclear Waste Services who are leading the hugely ambitious and challenging project to develop a Geological Disposal Facility for long term disposal of this waste.. 
As we will hear, it is one of the largest environmental protection programmes in its history: a deep underground facility, between 200 and 1,000 metres below ground, designed to isolate higher-activity radioactive waste within engineered vaults and rock formations, using a multi-barrier system to keep it safely contained long after today’s institutions no longer exist.
Nuclear Waste Services is leading this programme on behalf of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. Its dual challenge is to find a suitable geological site and identify a willing host community in which to embed the facility. 
Progress is being made with community partnerships established in Cumbria, alongside extensive scientific evaluation, engineering studies, and international collaboration. But it all comes at a huge cost over vast timescales and in often uncharted technical grounds.
Resources
Nuclear Waste Services
The Geological Disposal Facility
Video explaining the challenge
Community engagement
GDF benefits

In today's podcast we talk about skills and the challenge facing contractors to build a productive workforce fit for the future. 
The UK is in the middle of a huge moment for infrastructure. Government has committed to a long-term national infrastructure strategy, has published a £725 billion pipeline, and repeated its commitments to “build for the future”. 
All this points towards a sector finally moving beyond decades of stop-start investment.
Yet on the ground, delivery remains under pressure. Projects are competing for the same finite pool of people. Productivity stubbornly lags behind other sectors. 
And despite tens of thousands of people entering construction-related training each year, too many never translate that training into long-term jobs.
Well my guest today is Matt Cannon, chief executive of major contracting group Clancy, someone who understands and faces this challenge - this fundamental tension - day in day out. So I hope he will give us something of a reality check.
Because while the industry is being asked to scale at pace, modernise how it builds, adopt digital tools, and deliver safer, more efficient outcomes, it continues to operate in a system that too often lacks long-term certainty. 
Short forward order books, fragmented procurement, and a skills system that still leans heavily on supply rather than real demand continue to undermine confidence to invest in people.
In reality, before the industry can build a larger, more productive workforce, it must first build a safe one - getting more people on site today, working competently, consistently, and with confidence. 
Apprenticeships and long-term training programmes are critical, but they take time to mature, and they rely on employers believing that work will still be there in two, five, or ten years’ time.
So the question is no longer whether skills matter  - it’s whether the UK’s infrastructure system is set up to support the workforce it says it needs. And of course, what needs to change to turn ambition into delivery.
Let’s find out more from the coal face of contracting 
Resources
Clancy Group website 
UK government announces £600M investment in skills
UK backs investment in technical colleges 
Vocational level training
Construction Skills Mission Board demand led economy
£725 billion infrastructure pipeline