Infrastructure Productivity: How to save $1 trillion a year

The size of the infrastructure “gap” and the undoubted challenges there are in finding the financing necessary to close it dominate political and public discussion on this topic. Yet this focus diverts attention from what we believe is just as compelling and urgent an issue —how the world can get more, better-quality infrastructure for less. This report focuses on rethinking how governments, together with the private sector, select, design, deliver, and manage infrastructure projects, and make more out of the infrastructure already in place. We argue that there is an emerging opportunity to raise the productivity of infrastructure investment by a substantial margin.
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In this report we begin by sizing the global infrastructure investment challenge. We then present a road map for improving infrastructure productivity, which we define broadly to include making better choices about which projects to execute, streamlining the delivery of projects, and making the most of existing infrastructure. These three main levers can result in annual savings of $1 trillion.
In the final chapter, we discuss critically important improvements to infrastructure governance systems that can enable the capture of the potential to improve productivity. By implementing the reforms and best practice that we discuss, the world’s governments can reduce the anticipated infrastructure challenge to a more manageable size, avoid paralysis, and build the foundation for continued economic growth and development.

Contents

Executive summary

1. Sizing the world’s infrastructure investment challenge
2. How to boost infrastructure productivity by 60 percent
3. Overhauling the infrastructure system

Technical appendix
Bibliography