Lessons in infrastructure acceleration from North America
AECOM’s Veronica Vanterpool, Americas Transit Lead, and Derval Cummins, Transportation Director for Ireland, explore how to accelerate the delivery of public transport infrastructure, drawing on North American experience and reflecting on how global lessons can be applied in Ireland.
Ireland is under increasing pressure to deliver better public transport. Why has accelerating infrastructure delivery become such a critical issue?
Veronica Vanterpool (VV): These projects deliver a public good, connecting people to resources and opportunities, but delays can increase costs and erode confidence. Early risk mitigation, stronger coordination, and meaningful stakeholder engagement are critical to delivering value earlier. This will help build public confidence in Ireland’s ability to deliver projects, ensuring the support is cultivated to build and invest in infrastructure.
This is not a unique pressure in Ireland; it is experienced throughout the industry at large. There are many challenges associated with project delay in North America as well, and we want to ensure we are delivering on the benefits of these projects sooner rather than later.
Derval Cummins (DC): Ireland’s population growth has been extremely rapid. There are over 750,000 more people here than there were a decade ago, and that is on today’s population of 5.5 million. We hit our 2040 employment forecast in 2022, and it is the people in that demographic who do the most travelling for the purposes that are most essential for social and economic wellbeing. At the same time, ESRI research shows Ireland significantly lagging European peers in infrastructure per capita.
The urgency we are now facing is from this new phrase that we are hearing quite a lot: “The cheapest time to build is now.”
That is new thinking in Ireland; since the financial crisis, our focus has been on not spending money. Now, we are seeing the risks that come from not investing; not only that we will miss out on the benefits from these projects, but that delays will see construction costs continuing to rise due to inflation and the inevitable changes in scope that come with the passage of time.
Before major rail and transit programmes move into delivery, where do organisations most often misjudge what is needed to accelerate successfully?
VV: Projects often misjudge the importance of early prioritisation towards coordination, outreach, permitting, and communication. Identifying a project’s complexities and risks at the very beginning is shown to reduce costs and time.
Early and substantive community engagement supports project acceleration. Community members should be treated as project partners, not just a stakeholder constituency to inform. When engagement is substantive, it can then be incorporated early on, reducing risks and delays.
DC: It is important to avoid treating the project lifecycle purely as a simple sequence of approval ‘gates’. This overlooks the real complexity of the synergies between projects; the need for a programmatic approach to manage risks and opportunities, market readiness, and public engagement.
There is a pre-delivery challenge too, here in Ireland, which is that we have built very few major projects in a long time. Given the scale and complexity of the current pipeline of works, industry will need to partner with international contractors. This has been a challenge because projects only become real to contractors when they see tenders coming to market. It is worrying that the Construction Industry Federation Q1 2026 outlook survey “reveals a deepening ‘wait-and-see’ approach to public projects”, despite government initiatives and visible progress of projects.
As organisations look to accelerate delivery, what are the most important enablers for programmes to move forward with confidence?
VV: There are three key enablers of acceleration. First is leadership. Having a clear project champion is incredibly important for building public acceptance and confidence, as well as for governance and ownership of project milestones, challenges, and successes.
Secondly, teams need structures and tools that enable constant coordination, visibility, and rapid problem-solving. This can involve increasing communication and the visibility of the work being done or having a strategy in place that allows teams to engage regularly to problem solve and troubleshoot.
Finally, technology. Digital tools and AI can safely and confidently accelerate delivery by improving decision-making and freeing up time and resources.
DC: In Ireland, the Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce already reflects these priorities, with four pillars: legal reform, regulatory simplification, delivery coordination, and public acceptance. Of these, coordination will be critical, supported by a central unit that will make necessary project prioritisation decisions.
Bringing this into the Irish context, where do you see the strongest opportunity to apply these acceleration approaches as investment programmes scale up?
VV: Ireland’s challenges are not unique and there is an opportunity to adopt proven international delivery models. The biggest shift will be embedding earlier alignment on risk, opportunity, and stakeholder engagement.
It is important that public acceptance is identified as a pillar of reform. The public can be a powerful voice in supporting or halting a project, as is also the case in North America, and working with the public early on can lead to project acceleration.
DC: We are taking many positive steps in terms of community engagement, and public acceptance has greatly improved. BusConnects Dublin Infrastructure Works shows what is possible: strong early engagement helped schemes gain consent without oral hearings. MetroLink and DART+ West and South West have also gained their planning approvals.
“Community members should be treated as project partners, not just a stakeholder constituency to inform.”
We will need to overcome the aversion to risk that has crept into the system in Ireland, which is outlined in the Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce report, if we are to expedite decision-making. The real risk is the cost of delay: lost benefits, rising construction costs, and missed climate targets. We cannot meet our climate goals without investment in public transport infrastructure. Despite an increasingly electrified car fleet, transportation remains one of the biggest contributors to Ireland’s carbon emissions.
Major programmes often accelerate when there is a clear national catalyst, like an Olympic Games or another major event, that brings people together and drives things forward. While the 2027 Ryder Cup has influenced the accelerated construction of the Adare Bypass through multi-agency collaboration and decisive decision-making, Ireland has yet to find that catalyst despite our burgeoning population, infrastructure deficit, and the climate crisis. In its absence, it falls on both government and industry to work together to build public buy-in and maintain momentum.
