12 March 2026 – Arcadis (EURONEXT: ARCAD), the world’s leading company delivering data-driven sustainable design, engineering, and consultancy solutions for natural and built assets, today released its latest Market View – an independent analysis of the UK construction sector – highlighting growing concerns over the pace of UK megaproject development, underscoring risks to the government’s ambitious infrastructure investment plans.
Despite the critical importance of megaprojects to the nation’s economic and social future, progress remains uneven, with several high-profile schemes facing delays and viability challenges. The report finds that weak demand triggers further cuts to the Arcadis private sector building tender forecast. Additionally, analysis shows a lack of progress to implement reforms that will reduce risks and accelerate growth, as recommended in Q4 2025.
Arcadis shows that while some major projects including the New Hospital Programme and Northern Powerhouse Rail remain on track, other key initiatives, most notably the critical AMP8 programme, are encountering significant hurdles ranging from low project delivery rates to planning delays and judicial reviews. The stop/start uncertainty of these programmes further illustrates the challenges facing UK clients and their supply chains.
Arcadis also expresses concern that the reforms identified as essential in its Winter Market View, including interest rate stabilisation, reducing regulatory barriers, support for public programmes, network infrastructure delivery, and accelerating power connections, are yet to be fully enacted or have made insufficient impact. Without substantial reform and implementation soon, the government will struggle to deliver on its built-environment driven growth agenda.
The report includes other disjointed conditions affecting the industry, including:
- New build construction workload fell by 2.6% in the three months to December 2025, and the sector has entered a technical recession.
- New construction orders continued to grow in Q4 2025, up 12% annually. However, housing’s recovery continues to lag.
- The Arcadis Sentiment Index, a survey of industry experts, recently reached 77%, the highest reading since mid-2021.
- 2026 has seen the busiest start to the year since 2018 for planning activity in London.
- The conflict in the Middle East is likely to push workload down as well as pushing prices up, however it is too early to assess the total impact of the disruption.
Simon Rawlinson, Head of Strategic Research and Insight, Arcadis said, "Mega projects and infrastructure programmes need to stay on track and government can assist not only through reform but also through their own prompt decision making. For now, recovery feels like one step forward, two steps back process, that might end up limiting the extent to which all construction sectors will grow."
