Recommendation 13

We asked how government will be defining mega-projects. The OVFM told us that its selection criteria is focused on strategic importance, complexity and size, using £10 billion whole-life cost as a threshold. The OVFM’s selection criteria also excludes all scalable projects with repeatable elements, explaining to us that with mega-projects, you either do all the project or none of it.24 The Treasury told us that there are currently three projects in the government’s portfolio defined as ‘mega’: High Speed 2, Sizewell C and Dreadnought.25 The OVFM added that the Department for Transport is currently looking at delivery models and governance for Euston as a large and complicated project in its own right. NISTA stated that due to its size, complexity, and separate governance arrangements to HS2, Euston has the potential to become a mega-project.26