Recommendation 23

We have asked the Department for the lessons it has learned from these experiences on several different occasions and we asked again at this session in July. The Department referred again to the report it had produced with the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, following the announcement of delays and cost increases on the Crossrail programme in July 2018: Lessons learned from transport for the sponsorship of major projects.61 The Department repeated that as well as the lessons learned report, it has run an “extensive project development improvement plan” across the Department. It told us that the plan aims to strengthen the Department’s capability, governance, culture and transparency. It also said that it had shared its plan with colleagues across government through an infrastructure steering group.62