CIHT welcomes the announcement's focus on increasing productivity in the sector which has been notably lower than other areas of the economy for over a decade. With over £600 billion pounds worth of physical infrastructure planned or in progress improving those levels will be key to meeting future challenges, and our members will be vital to achieving those goals.

As part of the wider industrial strategy it includes support for transport infrastructure, electric vehicles, and the wider automotive sector. Key points of interest for our members include

• A new Transforming Cities fund that will provide £1.7 billion for intra-city transport. This will fund projects that drive productivity by improving connections within city regions
• Delivering 25,000 industry apprenticeships by 2020
• Moving towards 'whole life asset performance' measures of the costs of construction
• Modernising the way procurements takes place

Ginny Clarke, Chair of the CIHT's Learned Society and Technical Strategy board says:

"This is a welcome approach from Government with a focus on working with the construction industry to deliver a transformation that has some very ambitious aims. The Sector Deal incorporates the Transport Infrastructure Efficiency Strategy (TIES), published in December last year, and sets out the significant opportunity for major public sector Transport clients to drive transformation in the sector, aligned with the Industrial Strategy’s Future of Mobility Grand Challenge.

Looking across these policy and strategy documents, we need to ensure that through our work as transport professionals we do focus on how we can benefit from making our sector a more diverse and digitised contributor for the future. The focus on collaboration and bringing forward innovation by industry and government will be an important aspect of delivering the ambitions of the Sector Deal"

These are areas CIHT has continually advocated for and we look forward to working with government to ensure that these ambitions are achieved.