Cabinet office minister Francis Maude said that £188m had already been saved on construction contracts placed in the past 18 months.
The cost reductions are part of the government’s five-year construction strategy, using new models of procurement designed to foster collaboration and innovation.
The government has already published its forecasted spend on construction up to 2015, setting out plans for around £8bn-worth of projects in each of the next three financial years. This will not be reduced, government promises. Instead, more can now be built – the equivalent to approximately 60 new secondary schools.
Cost data published today will be used to provide standard average project costs for setting budgets. Contractors will be challenged to go further and cmoe up with ways to ‘beat the benchmark’.
For example, the data shows that in the period up to and including 2009/10, on average it cost:
- £2,350 per square metre to build a new secondary school (including small extensions);
- £9.6m per kilometre to build each additional lane for trunk road improvements;
- £2,120 per square metre to build a new primary care or community hospital.
Mr Maude said: “Over the next few years taxpayers will get much more bang for their buck when it comes to construction. We will keep investing in the construction industry, which is vital for growth, and which sustains thousands of SMEs, but we want to stamp out wasteful variation in costs and help to create a stronger cost lead for the industry.
"Publishing this data on costs will give the public sector a vital planning and bargaining tool as well as setting a challenge to the industry. Setting out clear costs to industry challenges construction firms to innovate and come up an idea that offers both lower cost and better value."
Chief construction adviser Paul Morrell said: “Every element of our plans is designed to improve value in public sector construction. I believe we are seeing a fundamental shift in the way the government relates to the construction industry: in short, getting a more intelligent answer by asking a more intelligent question.
"We also need to learn the lessons from projects that go well and apply them consistently to drive out unnecessary cost and waste in the construction process – not just by streamlining processes, but by being more innovative in the way government approaches its construction programmes.”
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