Mr Rami Saadi – Written evidence (NTB0027)

Inquiry: New Towns: Bricks and Mortar

This submission was drafted from the author’s own delivery record, figures and judgment. The author has reviewed every statement and takes full responsibility for the accuracy of the evidence.

Author and declaration of interests

  1. I am Chief Executive of Technical Methods Limited, a United Kingdom real-asset development business, and Partner and Group Chief Operating and Information Officer of TM International Group, which operates across the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and the United States. I am triple-chartered, a Chartered Engineer (FIET), a Chartered Project Professional (FAPM ChPP) and a Chartered Manager (FCMI CMgr), and I hold an Executive MBA with Distinction from Henley Business School.
  2. For ten years, I was Chief Operating Officer of the group's Saudi delivery arm, where I led national multi-site programmes and giga-scale settlement and infrastructure delivery for sovereign clients. I submit this evidence in a personal capacity, drawing on that delivery record. Interests to declare: I am an active real estate developer and an applicant for doctoral study in the organisation of major programmes. I hold no financial interest in the New Towns Programme.

Summary

  1. On this Committee's central question, what limits the physical construction of new towns once locations are agreed, my evidence is that the binding constraint is rarely a single shortage of bricks, labour or pipes. It is the absence of a capable client organisation, a single guiding mind, that owns the whole programme, sets one standard, and integrates design, procurement, utilities and skills across many sites at once. Where that organisation exists, materials and labour become solvable logistics problems. Where it does not, each town becomes a separate project with a separate outcome, and the shortages compound. I have built to both models. This submission sets out what transfers from giga-scale delivery to the New Towns Programme, and, honestly, what does not. It closes with five measures that need no new money, only decisions.

 

The binding constraint is the client organisation, not the bricks (Question 1)

  1. The default delivery model for a portfolio of settlements is many parallel projects, each let, designed and procured on its own. That model manufactures variety in outcome and multiplies every shortage, because no single party carries the whole. On a national programme of eleven hospitals delivered to one government standard on fixed-price terms, I replaced that model with a single programme management office carrying one reporting and assurance rhythm across all sites. The programme closed with a 20% compression in schedule and a 60% reduction in energy against baseline, and the client adopted the model as its reference for multi-site delivery. The lesson for new towns is that the first thing to build is not a town, it is the client organisation and the guiding mind above it, with real decision rights and accountability for the whole.
  2. The United Kingdom does not need to invent this organisation; it needs to constitute it properly. The development corporation, the instrument that built the post-war new towns and, at Milton Keynes, held design, land, infrastructure and delivery under one accountable body, is the guiding mind in law. Whether it becomes one in practice depends on three choices: decision rights that cover standards, procurement and utilities across the whole programme rather than one town at a time; a remit held at programme level, so that many towns are run as one production system rather than many separate projects; and delivery leadership recruited from people who have run multi-site delivery, not only administered it. Everything that follows is what such a body should do with those powers.

 

Design standardisation and modern methods of construction (Question 1)

  1. Scale is won by repeatability. A standard, repeatable design platform, delivered through modern methods of construction and procured once for the whole programme, converts a series of bespoke builds into a production system. Mobilising a fully operational settlement for 1,200 people, with its own power and water, I used modular flat-pack methods that cut assembly time by 40% and delivered the settlement in 60 days, two weeks ahead of schedule and to one million safe man-hours. On a separate programme, I delivered 750 homes across three phases to a single standard, where the second and third phases were faster and cheaper than the first, precisely because the design and the supply chain were held constant. New towns should be designed as platforms, not as one-off places, with modern methods and standard components procured at programme scale.

 

Aggregated procurement and supply logistics (Questions 1 and 5)

  1. Supply-chain risk is best managed at the level of the programme, not the individual town. By consolidating procurement across all eleven sites of the hospital programme, I secured scale pricing, priority in the supply queue and genuine supplier commitment that no single site could command. The same discipline applied to critical materials removes the volatility that stalls individual builders. A new towns delivery body should aggregate demand, commit early to suppliers and manufacturers, and use that committed pipeline to bring modern-methods capacity into being, rather than hoping the market supplies it town by town.

 

Utilities and enabling infrastructure must be sequenced first, through a single integrator (Question 2)

  1. In my experience, the connection of utilities is the most common cause of settlement delay, because it sits across many parties, and no one owns the interface. Two points from delivery. First, enabling infrastructure must be sequenced ahead of vertical construction, not in parallel with it, or the homes finish before the power, water and digital connections that make them habitable. Second, the interface needs a single accountable integrator with authority across the utility providers. I have delivered autonomous power and water to a remote settlement so that construction and occupation could begin before permanent networks arrived, and I have retrofitted a national data centre while it was running live, maintaining 100% uptime, which is an extreme case of sequencing and integration under a no-failure constraint. New towns need a body empowered to contract and sequence utilities at programme scale, not developers negotiating connections one at a time.

 

Labour and skills are programme infrastructure, not a market to hope for (Question 1)

  1. Labour shortages are real, but they are also a choice about who builds the pipeline. Over a decade, I took 300 people from unskilled to certified professionals through a structured development pipeline and lifted the local workforce to over 50% of the total. That pipeline was treated as part of the programme's infrastructure and funded accordingly, rather than left to individual contractors. For new towns, a centrally funded skills and training pipeline, tied to the programme and its standard methods, would widen and localise the builder base, reduce dependence on a thin market of large house builders, and leave a trained workforce behind in the new community itself.

 

Quality, sustainability and place-making beyond the minimum (Question 6)

  1. Quality is affordable when it is written into the commercial incentives rather than inspected at the end. On a residential community of 60,000 square metres for 11,000 residents, designing for 50% more liveable space and a 60% energy optimisation did not destroy value; it created it: the scheme achieved a 25% higher exit value. In the United Kingdom, a three-city mixed-use scheme completed in 2024 on a carbon-linked joint venture, with profit tied to beating net-zero targets, sits within a portfolio in which sustainability-led projects have returned a 10-14% premium since 2017. And a digital golden thread to BIM ISO 19650, adopted from the outset, protected £43m of value against retrofit risk under the Building Safety Act. The mechanism that delivers quality beyond the minimum is incentive design, carbon-linked and outcome-linked returns, plus a mandated digital record from day one, not a longer specification.

 

Financing capacity for delivery at scale (Questions 4 and 5)

  1. Delivery at scale depends on the capacity to structure and match long-term capital. I raised a 9-figure sustainability-linked bond at a 4.0% coupon inside the conventional curve, which cut the cost of capital by about 300 basis points, and I built a platform that has matched several billion pounds of institutional capital into a multi-billion-pound development portfolio. The transferable point is that patient, sustainability-linked institutional capital exists for well-structured, standard-platform programmes, and that a credible client organisation with a real pipeline unlocks it. That is also the assurance suppliers, builders and developers actually price: a committed, programme-scale pipeline led by a credible client converts new towns from a political announcement into a bankable order book.

 

The quick wins (Questions 3 and 4)

  1. If the Committee is seeking low-hanging fruit, five measures need no new money and mostly need decisions; they are also the short-term acts that most improve the delivery vehicles’ odds over the coming years:
    1. Establish one client guiding mind with real decision rights and accountability for the whole programme, not for individual towns.
    2. Mandate a standard, repeatable design platform and modern methods of construction, procured once at programme scale.
    3. Aggregate procurement and utilities contracting at programme level, and sequence enabling infrastructure ahead of vertical build through a single accountable integrator.
    4. Fund a skills and training pipeline as programme infrastructure, tied to the programme's standard methods, to widen and localise the builder base.

e. Write quality, carbon and place-making into the delivery body's commercial incentives, and mandate a digital golden thread to ISO 19650 from day one.

 

Case studies, and an honest note on transferability (Question 7)

  1. I would be glad to give the Committee detailed case studies of construction and supply logistics at scale: the rapid modular mobilisation of a 1,200-person settlement with its own utilities; the single-PMO delivery of an eleven-site national programme to one standard; a 60,000 square metre residential community delivered on a public-private partnership; and, in the United Kingdom, a completed three-city carbon-linked scheme.
  2. I offer these with a caveat that the Committee will value more than an over-claim. The programmes I led at giga scale were sovereign-funded, with compressed planning and land assembly and a single powerful client. The United Kingdom's New Towns face different constraints, on debt, on planning and democratic consent, on land assembly, and on a fragmented utilities landscape. The transferable lessons are organisational and methodological, the guiding mind, the standard platform, aggregated procurement, sequenced utilities, and skills as infrastructure. The funding model is not transferable, and I would caution against any comparison that assumes it is.

 

13 July 2026