You are Rhian Powell, Senior Responsible Owner of Pennine Connect, the public company set up to deliver 38 kilometres of railway and two new stations between Manchester and Leeds. HM Treasury and the sponsor have just frozen second-stage funding. In 120 days you face the sponsor board; before that, you must decide what your 140 people are for.
The situation
The scheme's benefit-cost ratio, the value of its benefits divided by its whole-life cost, stands at 1.30; the sponsor requires 1.80 to release full funding. Below 1.50, its rules remove the second station: £620 million of cost and about 40% of the forecast benefits. Of a £4,800 million envelope, not a pound has been authorised. If the works ran 50% over, the overrun for the public owner would be £2,400 million. There are 18 months of float to the 2034 opening, with a city-centre tunnel and a live-rail junction on the critical path.
The record is not encouraging. UK rail schemes of this size have ended 40% to 60% above their sanction estimates. The sponsor's previous regional scheme ran 60% over and opened four years late; its owner let a single lump-sum contract and held the builder to it. The single-contract strategy now under attack was drafted by the team before you, and you endorsed it at your first board, in 2024.
Your board does not agree on what your job is. For some, it is to secure the money and release it on programme. For others, to buy a finished railway under one contract. Some want the team itself to manage the works. Others see an investment you make on the public's behalf, to be shaped, structured and released in stages. You have spent your whole career buying work from people who build, never building.