You can trace every pound in your capital programme. The approvals are signed, the contracts are governed, the reporting lines are clear.
Now try doing the same with your consultancy and services spend.
For most CFOs overseeing Transmission and Distribution programmes, that question lands differently. Because the honest answer, across much of the sector, is that you cannot. Not fully. Not reliably. Not with the confidence you need when a regulator or board asks you to account for it.
That gap is not a process failure.
It is a structural problem.
And as T&D investment scales up to meet the demands of RIIO-T3, offshore wind connection and the broader energy transition, it is becoming an increasingly expensive one to ignore.
The Spend No One Can See.
Capital expenditure in grid infrastructure is well governed. Major contracts go through structured procurement, are subject to board approval thresholds, and generate clear financial reporting lines.
The consultancy and statement of work spend that surrounds those programmes is a different story.
Engineering advisory work, project management consultancy, design and technical assurance, digital transformation support, these engagements are typically negotiated individually. By project managers. Against no central benchmark. With no consolidated view of what the organisation has already paid for equivalent capability elsewhere.
The result is a cost line that is fragmented across dozens of separately negotiated contracts, managed by different business units, and largely invisible at a programme level. The aggregate is significant. The visibility, for most organisations, is close to zero.
When consultancy spend is negotiated in isolation, suppliers know it. Rates drift upward. Scope creep goes uncontested. Extensions are granted without renegotiation.
What Fragmentation Actually Costs.
The financial risk of unmanaged services spend does not grow in line with programme size. It compounds.
Without central oversight, there is no commercial pressure on individual engagements. Each one is a standalone event. The project manager engaging the supplier has no view of what the organisation paid for similar work last quarter, and no leverage derived from the scale of the overall spend relationship.
That dynamic creates predictable outcomes. Day rates that are higher than they need to be. Statement of Work (SOW) contracts that absorb additional scope without renegotiation. Engagements structured to stay below approval thresholds, avoiding scrutiny individually while representing significant aggregate spend with no consolidated oversight.
Multiple business units engaging the same or equivalent suppliers independently, paying different rates for the same capability, with no mechanism to consolidate or standardise.
And for CFOs in regulated utilities, the exposure does not stop at cost. Regulatory price controls, shareholder reporting obligations and government oversight of network investment create a compliance environment in which the inability to account clearly for services expenditure is not just an internal control weakness. It is an external one.
In a fragmented supply chain, the question is not only whether value for money was achieved. It is whether a defensible, documented process existed to ensure it could be. Often the honest answer is that it did not.
Why T&D Makes the Problem Acute.
This is not a challenge unique to grid infrastructure. But the current investment pipeline makes it particularly pressing here.
The scale of activity flowing into T&D over the next decade is substantial. RIIO-T3, the new electricity transmission price control running from April 2026, marks the start of a major investment cycle, with the upcoming ED3 price control extending it further. Combined with the National Energy System Operator's network investment requirements and the volume of offshore wind connection work, these price controls represent a sustained and significant increase in capital and project spend. Ofgem has approved £28.1 billion of upfront funding within a wider investment pipeline of around £90 billion through to 2031 (Ofgem, 2025). The professional services demand attached to that pipeline is proportionally large.
At the same time, the pool of firms and individuals with genuine depth in these disciplines is limited, with the ECITB's 2024 Workforce Census reporting that 71% of engineering construction employers face hiring challenges (ECITB, 2024). Power systems engineering, HVDC design expertise, substation protection and control, asset management consultancy: the pool of firms and individuals with genuine depth in these disciplines is limited, and demand from multiple network operators running concurrent programmes is putting pressure on both availability and pricing.
Organisations without a consolidated supplier relationship strategy are competing for that scarce resource on the worst possible commercial terms. Urgently. Individually. Without the leverage that comes from being a significant, well-governed client.
Centralised Reporting Changes the Equation.
The solution is not a new approval threshold or a tighter sign-off process. Those are governance patches applied to a structural problem.
What changes the equation is consolidating services spend under a single managed framework. A Managed Service Programme (MSP) that centralises reporting, applies consistent rate benchmarking across the supply chain, and gives CFOs the spend visibility they need to make informed decisions about programme investment.
The starting point is visibility. Before any cost reduction is achieved, the act of consolidating services spend into a single framework reveals the true scale and composition of what is being spent. For most T&D organisations, that picture alone is a significant finding.
From there, the commercial levers follow. Category analysis becomes possible. Rate benchmarking becomes meaningful. Supplier performance can be assessed against a complete dataset rather than isolated engagements.
In practice, a well-governed MSP framework delivers:
- Consolidated spend visibility across all consultancy and SOW contracts, reported in real time
- Standardised commercial terms and rate benchmarks applied consistently across the services supply chain
- Structured SOW governance with defined change control, milestone tracking and deliverable sign-off
- A single audit trail covering the full lifecycle of every service engagement
- Regulatory-grade reporting that supports price control submissions and external scrutiny
- Reduced management overhead through a single point of accountability for all project-based services spend
Industry research has documented savings of between 10% and 20% on managed contingent and services spend through MSP consolidation (Staffing Industry Analysts, 2024; Everest Group, 2024). In T&D, where the volume of services spent attached to the current investment pipeline is substantial, the benefit of applying that discipline is proportionally significant.
Where to Start.
The organisations that bring services under the same financial discipline as capital expenditure will spend less on consultancy and SOW, carry less compliance and audit exposure, and be better positioned to access the specialist capability their programmes require.
The practical starting points are straightforward. Map the current services spend landscape. How many active consultancy and SOW engagements exist? Under what commercial terms? Managed by whom? At what total cost? Then identify where the greatest financial exposure sits: rate inconsistency, scope creep, threshold fragmentation or compliance gaps.
That picture will make the case for change more clearly than any benchmark figure. Because for most CFOs in T&D, the spend is already there. It is just not yet visible.
We can help you see it.
About Matchtech
Matchtech is a specialist Engineering and Technology recruitment business with over 40 years of experience placing professionals across transmission and distribution, energy transition, nuclear and infrastructure. Our MSP capability is built on deep sector expertise, rigorous commercial governance and a genuine understanding of project-based services markets. We work with CFOs and programme leads to bring spend visibility, rate benchmarking and measurable cost control to services procurement.
