Institutional Structure
How the organisation is composed
Three layers, separated so that the function preparing a project is never the function that approves its advance.
Oversight
Accepts or refuses readiness gate advances, reviews claims and holds the conflict register.
Why it is separate
It reports to nobody who carries a delivery target. That is the whole point: a gatekeeper whose own performance is measured by how many projects pass the gate is not a gatekeeper.
What happens without it
Fold this into the programme functions and the readiness ladder becomes self-certified. Every project is ready, because the people who prepared it say so.
Programme functions
Strategy, preparation, structuring, investment, delivery and measurement — the work of moving programs along the ladder.
Why it is separate
Six functions rather than one department, because each holds evidence the next one depends on and none may supply its own. Preparation cannot declare itself investment-ready; delivery cannot rewrite the milestone it is reporting against.
What happens without it
Merge them and the handovers disappear — and the handovers are where a weak assumption is caught, because they are the only points at which somebody with different incentives reads the same document.
Platform functions
Technology, assurance and compliance: the registry, the portals and the controls that keep published material honest.
Why it is separate
Technology runs the ledger and does not write the entries; assurance reviews claims and prepares none. Neither has a project of its own to advance, which is what lets both say no without cost to themselves.
What happens without it
Give the team that operates the registry the ability to edit records and the audit chain becomes decorative — it would still verify, and it would verify whatever had last been written.
Functions
Functions in detail
Each function's remit, and the decision it is specifically barred from taking. The second is what makes the first a structure rather than a list.
Strategy & Diagnosis
Maintains the diagnosis and the sector strategies derived from it.
Cannot
Advance a project up the readiness ladder. Strategic importance is not evidence, and a priority is not a feasibility study.
Project Preparation
Takes concepts through the readiness ladder and holds the evidence at each step.
Cannot
Classify its own output as investment-ready. That classification is Assurance’s, precisely because Preparation has an interest in the answer.
Commercial Structuring
Determines delivery, ownership, risk allocation and financing structure.
Cannot
Commit a public authority to anything. It proposes structures; the authority with the mandate approves them.
Investment
Records mandates, prepares opportunities and manages expressions of interest.
Cannot
Publish a figure, a return or a participation that Assurance has not confirmed against a source. Matching is discovery, never advice.
Delivery
Supports procurement, construction oversight and commissioning.
Cannot
Change a milestone definition after the fact. A baseline that moves to meet performance is not a baseline.
Impact & Measurement
Defines indicators, holds baselines and reports outcomes against them.
Cannot
Report an outcome without naming who verified it. An unattributed indicator is an assertion.
Technology
Operates the registry, portals and interoperability infrastructure.
Cannot
Alter a record’s content. It runs the ledger; it does not write the entries, and the audit chain exists so that this is checkable rather than promised.
Assurance & Compliance
Reviews claims, data confidence classifications and conflicts of interest.
Cannot
Prepare, structure or market the projects it reviews. A reviewer with delivery targets is not a reviewer.