Programme Status Breakdown
Delay Distribution (Weeks)
Announced vs. Current Cost — All Schemes (£m)
Cost Escalation Forecast to 2032 — Active Schemes
A9 Dualling — 17 Years and Counting
Announced in 2008 at £3bn. Now £3.97bn at Apr 2025 prices. Only 11 of 83 miles upgraded. Contractor appointed for some sections but the full programme completion has slipped from 2025 to 2035. £261m spent on consultancy alone — without completing the road.
Ferguson Marine — A Shipyard Saga
MV Glen Sannox and Hull 802 ordered for £97m in 2015–16. Cost now exceeds £460m — a 374% overrun. Both vessels severely delayed. The nationalised shipyard has faced repeated fire alarms, funding crises, and management upheaval, making this Scotland's most embarrassing infrastructure story.
HMP Glasgow — Prison Costs Balloon
Announced at £400m. An FOI in January 2026 confirmed the total project cost has reached £998m — a 150% overrun. Kier Construction awarded the £684m construction contract in Feb 2026. Completion now expected 2028, three years after the original 2025 target.
NHS Grampian Baird/ANCHOR — £304m Cost Jump
Originally budgeted at £134m in 2020, the combined Baird Family Hospital and ANCHOR Cancer Centre in Aberdeen has ballooned to £438.6m as of February 2026 — a 227% increase. Opening date remains unconfirmed after multiple delays to contractor procurement.
A96 Dualling — Descoped, Not Delivered
Originally announced as full dualling of the Aberdeen–Inverness corridor at £2.5–5bn. Effectively abandoned in favour of a "Refined Package" of £501m–£1bn. Over £80m spent on advisory services with no road built. Ministers now present the descoping as a policy choice — critics call it a retreat.
UK Context — England’s Local Roads Cull
In England, the UK Government is cutting funding for local road schemes to keep spending under control. Its review of the Major Road Network and Large Local Majors programme, announced in July 2025, tests whether schemes are “still needed, deliverable and affordable” and offer the “best overall value for money for taxpayers”; only 16 of the 41 schemes reviewed were kept (DfT Annual Report 2025–26). By October 2026, 24 English schemes had been reported as dropped, including the £930m M5 J9/A46 Ashchurch upgrade, £303m Melksham bypass, £197m Chesterfield Staveley route and £185.3m Kendal Northern Access Route. Schemes are being culled unless a strong business case and funding can be shown (Construction Enquirer, 14 Oct 2026; list compiled by Transport Action Network). This review covers England’s local roads only; roads in Scotland are devolved and funded separately by the Scottish Government.
Scottish Parliament Building — The Original Warning
Announced at £10–40m in 1999. Final cost: £414m — a 4,000%+ overrun. Completed 2004. The Fraser Inquiry found failures in procurement, project management, and political oversight. Its lessons were largely not embedded in subsequent Scottish Government major project frameworks.
| Scheme | Status | Announced | Current Est. | Variance | Delay | ETI | Stranded | Detail |
|---|
Methodology & Sources
CPD Index (0–100): CPD-C (Cost Performance) measures the proportion of schemes delivered at or near announced cost, with a severity penalty for overruns greater than 25%. CPD-D (Delivery Performance) measures the proportion of schemes free from significant delay, with a minor penalty for smaller slippages. The combined CPD score applies a 60/40 weighting — 60% CPD-D (Delivery) and 40% CPD-C (Cost), reflecting the judgement that delivery failure imposes compounding societal and economic costs beyond the overrun figure alone. A score of 100 indicates a perfect delivery record; 0 indicates complete systemic failure.
Clock: The live clock is computed from the scheme table on this page rather than from a stored total. It starts from the accumulated cost overrun on every scheme still live — any status other than Completed, Cancelled or Paused, with announced cost treated as zero where no published baseline exists — and then accrues construction inflation of 3.8% per annum (blended BCIS) on the live estimated portfolio from base epoch 30 April 2026. Completed, paused and cancelled schemes are excluded from the accrual. Both inputs are reproducible from the scheme table below, and the reconciliation panel shows the totals they derive from. Re-based 22 September 2026: the clock previously ran from a hand-selected subset of schemes that no longer reconciled with the published portfolio totals on this page.
Cost data: Announced costs are taken from original Scottish Government press releases, Infrastructure Investment Plan documentation, and parliamentary statements. Current estimated costs are drawn from Audit Scotland reports, FOI disclosures, Infrastructure Investment Plan Progress Updates (Scottish Government, Aug 2025), BBC Scotland, and the Construction Enquirer.
Delay data: Weeks of delay calculated from original target completion date versus revised target or today's date where no revised target exists. Where no completion date was ever formally set, delay is classified as TBC.
Primary sources: Audit Scotland · Transport Scotland · Scottish Gov IIP Progress Aug 2025 · HMP Glasgow FOI · BBC Scotland
ETI — recognised by infrastructure funders and development economists: The ETI framework mirrors the approach used by infrastructure funders, bond markets, and recognised development economists when assessing the productive value of public capital expenditure. Its components draw on HM Treasury Green Book benefit-cost ratio methodology, deprivation weighting consistent with Levelling Up Fund criteria, and network effect analysis aligned with WebTAG multi-modal appraisal guidance — the same analytical frameworks referenced by the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, development finance institutions, and institutional investors when evaluating public infrastructure programmes.
Disclaimer: This tracker is an independent professional accountability tool prepared by QUINTIN QS. It does not replicate, replace, or compete with any official government appraisal process. ETI scores and Stranded Value figures are derived from publicly available benchmark data and established appraisal frameworks — they are not the output of scheme-specific transport models such as TUBA or WebTAG-compliant multi-modal assessments. BCR inputs are drawn from published or analogous benchmarks, not bespoke modelling. Deprivation weighting is adapted from Levelling Up Fund criteria and is indicative in jurisdictions that use different deprivation indices. Delivery certainty scores reflect professional judgement applied consistently across all schemes. The methodology is fully disclosed, reproducible, and grounded in HM Treasury Green Book principles as updated in 2026 — but it carries the status of an independent analytical indicator, not a statutory appraisal. All figures are drawn from publicly available sources and are correct as of the date shown. If any government department holds more accurate data for a specific scheme, QUINTIN QS will update immediately upon notification. 🍓 If you believe any figure or fact shown here is incorrect, please write to mail@kevinbarryqs.com with the relevant scheme name, the correct figure, and a source reference — we will review and correct immediately if the evidence supports it. We are, after all, still human.
CPD Index — cost cap: The cost overrun % contribution to CPD-C is capped at 50 points — schemes with overruns above 100% score the maximum on this component. This prevents extreme outliers (e.g. schemes with 200%+ overruns) from distorting the index beyond its intended range.
CPD — about this acronym: CPD stands for Continued Prolonged Delays — a deliberate reference to Northern Ireland's Central Procurement Directorate, rebranded as Construction, Procurement, Delivery — the NI Executive body whose mandate is to ensure public infrastructure is built on time and on budget. The name is intentional.