Government departments do not routinely learn lessons from their own projects or those of other departments, so are missing opportunities to improve effectiveness and efficiency of future projects. Applying learning about what has been successful in major project delivery can bring great efficiency and reduced costs, particularly where standardisation of design is possible. Schools, hospitals and prison building programmes are starting to apply digital methods of design and off-site fabrication and to apply the approach of ‘design one, build many’. Of course, the success of this approach would require the supply chain to have enough of the required skills and capacity. There are government forums for the sharing of lessons about what works well in project delivery, such as the IPA-chaired Government Construction Board. However, learning across government departments still does not occur systematically, and departments must think more broadly about lessons in maximising long-term value, rather than just about lessons in delivering similar projects. The IPA acknowledged it could do more to challenge departments to learn from one project to another. Our February 2024 report on cross-government working also highlighted a lack of routine data sharing between departments and poor arrangements for sharing best practice and learning. Recommendation 6: Alongside their response to this report, the Infrastructure Projects Authority and HM Treasury should write to the Committee outlining their plans for embedding cross-government learning for future major projects. 8 Delivering value from government investment in major projects 1 Identifying, delivering and evaluating value from major projects