The National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority has appointed a former senior civil servant at the Department for Transport as its first chief executive.
Becky Wood, who is currently a partner at consultancy firm EY, will join NISTA in June.
Nista was launched on 1 April as a joint unit of the Treasury and the Cabinet Office, created through the merger of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority and the National Infrastructure Commission.
As its first chief exec, Wood will be tasked with establishing the organisation as an "authoritative and respected new body within government".
Before joining EY, Wood was a commercial adviser at the Infrastructure and Projects Authority. She also spent more than a decade at DfT, where she oversaw major infrastructure developments, serving as the senior responsible officer for the Crossrail, Thameslink and Intercity Express programmes, and rose through the ranks to become a director.
Wood also has international experience, having worked on significant infrastructure programmes in the public and private sectors in Australia and New Zealand.
Darren Jones, chief secretary to the Treasury and lead minister for NISTA, said Wood “brings a wealth of experience from the public and private sector, overseeing some of the biggest transport projects around the world in the past decade”.
“Her appointment is an important milestone for NISTA’s work in getting a grip on infrastructure delivery, powering growth across the country and delivering on our Plan for Change,” he added.
The senior civil service pay-band 3 role was was advertised in December with a salary of £200,000 a year.
The advert set out that the NISTA chief exec will be asked to lead a team of around 240 civil servants and have oversight of the government’s highest-profile infrastructure and transformation programmes, with a remit to apply "independent and expert judgment" to improve efficiency, assess and escalate risks and "take corrective action" to maximise projects' success.
Sir John Armitt, chair of NISTA's council of expert advisors, said Wood will join at “a critical moment for transforming how we plan and deliver the nation’s infrastructure” and that her leadership will be “vital for building an effective and credible institution that can do just that”.
Wood said it is “an honour to be appointed to a role that has so much potential to make a vital difference to the everyday lives of people across the UK, ensuring robust delivery of infrastructure and enabling growth”.
A memorandum of understanding for NISTA was published last week, setting out the framework for the body's functions, operations and governance.
It set out the organisation's five functions as:
- Overseeing the implementation of the government’s 10-year infrastructure strategy
- Unblocking barriers and speeding up delivery of government’s major projects (including supporting departments in overcoming challenges and barriers to achieve delivery outcomes, and advising departments on their highest priority projects, and their financing)
- Providing effective assurance for the government’s priority projects
- Setting standards and improving the government’s project delivery capabilities
- Leading expertise on private finance