Why we should start treating mixed‑use regeneration programmes like infrastructure

Two decades ago, I made what felt like a dramatic career pivot from the water industry – where project controls, quantified risk analysis and disciplined programme management were simply the price of admission – into the property sector. At the time, the speed and pace of delivery felt liberating. But over the years, a question has been quietly nagging at me, and today it’s impossible to ignore.  

Why does the property sector still treat project controls as optional, when the complexity of mixed‑use regeneration now mirrors major infrastructure? 

The complexity gap has closed 

In the early 2000s, a mixed‑use scheme was often a single‑phase project: a few hundred homes above retail, one main contractor, a straightforward funding structure. Today, regeneration looks nothing like that. 

Across the UK and globally, mixed‑use districts have evolved into multi‑decade, multi‑stakeholder, multi‑infrastructure ecosystems. Research from the UK Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) shows that major regeneration schemes increasingly share characteristics with nationally significant infrastructure projects: long delivery horizons, complex interfaces, and high public value outcomes. 

A typical regeneration programme now includes: 

• Live operational environments such as hotels, healthcare facilities, transport interchanges and cultural venues 

• Dozens of funders, JV partners and public‑sector stakeholders, each with different governance requirements 

• Environmental and social obligations, from embodied carbon targets to biodiversity net gain and social value KPIs 

• Infrastructure‑scale enabling works, including utilities diversions, highways reconfiguration and ground remediation 

• Phased delivery over 10–30 years, with evolving market cycles and political landscapes 

This is not traditional property development. This is urban infrastructure.  

And yet, the management toolkit we often reach for is still a risk register that isn’t verified across the programme, a Gantt chart that’s out of date before the next board meeting, and a project manager expected to be a hero rather than part of a system. 

What infrastructure delivery gets right 

When I worked in the water sector, you simply didn’t start a major treatment plant upgrade without a robust project controls environment. The National Audit Office (NAO) and IPA have repeatedly highlighted that strong controls are one of the most reliable predictors of on‑time, on‑budget delivery, as also covered in Mace Consult’s The Future of Major Programme Delivery report.  

At a minimum, infrastructure projects expect: 

• A fully resourced project controls team covering cost, schedule, change and reporting 

• Quantified risk analysis, with P80 budgets and scenario modelling; not optimistic guesswork 

• Formal value management, using function analysis to align cost, design and outcomes 

• Structured programme governance, with auditable decision gates and clear accountability 

In property, these are often the first things to be cut when fees tighten. 'We don’t need that level of rigour, it’s just a building.' But, today, 'just a building' has become a 15‑acre regeneration framework with a life of its own. 

And I’ve seen the consequences first‑hand. Whether it’s programmes drifting, contingency issues or lost value over the lifetime of a project, this failure to focus on what is essential for successful delivery can significantly harm the certainty of getting a programme over the line.  

These aren’t isolated incidents, but systemic symptoms of treating infrastructure‑scale projects with property‑scale tools.

Change is happening, but unevenly

Some major developers and public‑sector bodies are now investing properly in project controls, recognising that regeneration is too complex, and too politically and socially important, to rely on intuition alone. The shift towards outcome‑based delivery, championed by bodies like the Construction Leadership Council, is helping. 

But across the wider sector, the culture still lags. Project controls are seen as overhead, not a value driver; risk management is a compliance exercise; and programme management is often just expediting. 

That mindset was fine when schemes were simple but today it’s a liability.

A call to the industry

If you’re a developer, funder, consultant or contractor working on large mixed‑use regeneration, it’s time to reframe the question. 

Stop asking, 'do we really need project controls?' and instead ask 'how much unmanaged risk are we carrying without them?' 

If you’re a property professional who didn’t grow up with this toolkit, you’re not alone. Some of the best project controls specialists I know started in property, they simply had the humility to learn from other sectors. 

When I first moved from water to property, the lighter governance felt refreshing. But over twenty years, I’ve come to appreciate that infrastructure’s 'heavy' controls aren’t red tape; they’re a hard‑won defence against predictable failure. 

We don’t need to copy infrastructure blindly. But we do need to stop pretending that today’s mixed‑use regeneration can be safely delivered with yesterday’s property toolkit. 

Because regeneration isn’t just shaping buildings anymore. It’s shaping cities, communities and long‑term social value. And that deserves the same discipline we apply to the infrastructure that keeps those cities running.