Building faster, planning further: Energy lessons between the UK and Middle East
At a glance
The UK and Middle East have valuable energy infrastructure lessons to exchange. Drawing on experience across both markets, we explore how earlier decision-making and coordinated infrastructure planning can support faster delivery, while a long-term approach to asset management and resilience can help today’s investments remain reliable for decades.
Drawing on experience across the UK and Middle East, this insight examines how earlier decision-making, coordinated infrastructure planning and long-term asset management can support faster delivery and more resilient energy infrastructure.
The UK and Middle East have useful lessons to exchange about energy infrastructure: how to turn ambition into coordinated delivery, and how to help the assets built today remain reliable for decades.
For GHD’s Neil Murdoch, Technical Services Director, who has worked across both markets, one of the clearest differences is how ambition translates into decisions and delivery. The direction towards decarbonisation may be clear, but competing technologies, investment choices and uncertainty about future demand can make organisations reluctant to commit.
This challenge connects to a wider question raised by GHD’s Tom Foley, EMEA Energy Leader, in the recent Energy Without Borders discussion: whether infrastructure can continue to be planned and delivered as a collection of individual projects when it increasingly needs to function as an interconnected system.
Together, their perspectives point to a common challenge. How can organisations make decisions early enough to maintain momentum, while understanding the dependencies and long-term consequences of what they build?
For GHD’s Neil Murdoch, Technical Services Director, who has worked across both markets, one of the clearest differences is how ambition translates into decisions and delivery. The direction towards decarbonisation may be clear, but competing technologies, investment choices and uncertainty about future demand can make organisations reluctant to commit.
This challenge connects to a wider question raised by GHD’s Tom Foley, EMEA Energy Leader, in the recent Energy Without Borders discussion: whether infrastructure can continue to be planned and delivered as a collection of individual projects when it increasingly needs to function as an interconnected system.
Together, their perspectives point to a common challenge. How can organisations make decisions early enough to maintain momentum, while understanding the dependencies and long-term consequences of what they build?
From ambition to action
Murdoch sees the pace of decision-making as one of the clearest distinctions between the environments in which he has worked. In the UK, concern about the long-term consequences of an investment can slow decision-making. In parts of the Middle East, he has seen greater willingness to commit and to adjust when circumstances change.
Different funding arrangements, governance structures and tolerances for risk shape what is possible. The useful question for UK organisations is how to create sufficient confidence to act while retaining the ability to respond to new information.
Individual projects can help build that confidence by testing an approach at a manageable scale. But a pilot also needs a pathway to wider deployment, including an understanding of how it fits within the network and which other investments it depends on.
Different funding arrangements, governance structures and tolerances for risk shape what is possible. The useful question for UK organisations is how to create sufficient confidence to act while retaining the ability to respond to new information.
Individual projects can help build that confidence by testing an approach at a manageable scale. But a pilot also needs a pathway to wider deployment, including an understanding of how it fits within the network and which other investments it depends on.
Planning beyond individual projects
One example comes from integrated water and energy planning. Murdoch described work with a Middle Eastern utility that considered the future resilience of both networks within a single planning project.
The relationship is especially important where water production requires substantial electricity. Planning their development together allows that dependency to be considered from the outset, alongside future demand and the infrastructure needed to meet it.
The transferable lesson is to make dependencies explicit early enough to influence decisions. Across separate organisations, that requires agreement on priorities, information and investment timing.
As Foley argues, this challenge extends beyond individual sectors: infrastructure must increasingly be treated as an interconnected system, not a collection of individual projects. The technologies needed for the energy transition are increasingly understood; the harder task is coordinating generation, storage, transmission and demand, while recognising dependencies with other infrastructure.
That principle extends to major electricity users such as data centres. Murdoch emphasised the importance of treating power infrastructure as part of the development proposition from the beginning. For clients, the question is whether the parties responsible for development, networks and funding are working to a coordinated plan.
The relationship is especially important where water production requires substantial electricity. Planning their development together allows that dependency to be considered from the outset, alongside future demand and the infrastructure needed to meet it.
The transferable lesson is to make dependencies explicit early enough to influence decisions. Across separate organisations, that requires agreement on priorities, information and investment timing.
As Foley argues, this challenge extends beyond individual sectors: infrastructure must increasingly be treated as an interconnected system, not a collection of individual projects. The technologies needed for the energy transition are increasingly understood; the harder task is coordinating generation, storage, transmission and demand, while recognising dependencies with other infrastructure.
That principle extends to major electricity users such as data centres. Murdoch emphasised the importance of treating power infrastructure as part of the development proposition from the beginning. For clients, the question is whether the parties responsible for development, networks and funding are working to a coordinated plan.
Building for long term outcomes
The exchange of lessons also runs in the other direction. Murdoch identified asset management as an area where UK experience can offer particular value. Networks built during earlier periods of rapid development in the Middle East now face the combined challenge of ageing equipment and continued demand growth.
Renewing assets in an established, heavily loaded network is different from extending infrastructure into a new development. Space may be constrained, customers depend on continued service and replacement work has to be planned around the operation of the wider system.
The UK’s experience offers lessons in assessing asset condition, prioritising interventions and maintaining reliability through renewal programmes. It should also influence new infrastructure, with consideration given from the outset to how an asset will be operated, maintained and eventually replaced.
Information is central to that task. Knowing what has been installed, how it is performing and when intervention may be necessary gives future operators a stronger basis for decisions and connects today’s investment with the demands a network may face in 20 or 30 years.
Renewing assets in an established, heavily loaded network is different from extending infrastructure into a new development. Space may be constrained, customers depend on continued service and replacement work has to be planned around the operation of the wider system.
The UK’s experience offers lessons in assessing asset condition, prioritising interventions and maintaining reliability through renewal programmes. It should also influence new infrastructure, with consideration given from the outset to how an asset will be operated, maintained and eventually replaced.
Information is central to that task. Knowing what has been installed, how it is performing and when intervention may be necessary gives future operators a stronger basis for decisions and connects today’s investment with the demands a network may face in 20 or 30 years.
Designing resilience into the system
Resilience adds another dimension. Murdoch highlighted the need to examine how infrastructure will perform under changing climate conditions, physical disruption and cyber threats.
Choices that appear efficient at project level can create dependencies across a wider system. Greater digital connectivity, for example, can improve visibility and control while introducing new considerations around access, security and human oversight.
These trade-offs need to be understood alongside cost and delivery time, with assumptions tested against a range of future conditions.
For Murdoch, the opportunity lies in combining the ability to coordinate investment and move decisively with a long-term understanding of assets, operations and risk.
Building faster is therefore not simply about accelerating individual projects. It requires earlier decisions about how projects fit together, what they depend on and how they contribute to the wider system. Getting those decisions right creates a stronger foundation for moving at pace today without limiting the choices available tomorrow.
Choices that appear efficient at project level can create dependencies across a wider system. Greater digital connectivity, for example, can improve visibility and control while introducing new considerations around access, security and human oversight.
These trade-offs need to be understood alongside cost and delivery time, with assumptions tested against a range of future conditions.
For Murdoch, the opportunity lies in combining the ability to coordinate investment and move decisively with a long-term understanding of assets, operations and risk.
Building faster is therefore not simply about accelerating individual projects. It requires earlier decisions about how projects fit together, what they depend on and how they contribute to the wider system. Getting those decisions right creates a stronger foundation for moving at pace today without limiting the choices available tomorrow.