IPA Gateway Review

The UK Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) conducts Gateway Reviews on major public-sector programmes at specified points in the lifecycle. The reviews test whether a programme is ready to proceed past the relevant gate — typically including strategic assessment (Gateway 0), business case (Gateway 1), delivery strategy (Gateway 2), investment decision (Gateway 3), readiness for service (Gateway 4) and benefits realisation (Gateway 5). Each review produces a Delivery Confidence Assessment rated from Green (high confidence) to Red (successful delivery appears unachievable), along with recommendations.

Project controls evidence is central to how a programme performs at Gateway. The Gateway team will scrutinise the schedule baseline, cost estimate and QRA model; the risk register and its relationship to quantified exposure; the performance measurement baseline and how actuals are being reported; and the governance arrangements that ensure controls outputs actually inform decision-making. A programme with weak controls evidence — an unintegrated cost and schedule model, a risk register that does not reconcile to the QRA, a baseline that is not under change control — typically receives an Amber or Red rating regardless of how competent the delivery team appears.

For the programme team, the value of a Gateway Review is not the rating itself but the specific recommendations that flow from it. Gateway reports are private to the Senior Responsible Owner, but the recommendations drive prioritisation of controls improvement work between gates. SOMA structures QRA and controls evidence to the standard that Gateway reviewers apply — AACE-compliant methodology, HM Treasury Green Book alignment, transparent assumption documentation — so that the controls function is ready for scrutiny rather than racing to be ready in the weeks before the gate.