Cogna

📊Chart of the week📊 One avoidable day of streetworks could soon cost £2,500 in far more parts of England. At the start of 2026, five authorities operated lane rental schemes. From 30 September, 26 will be operating or approved to introduce one. Utilities can be charged for occupying the busiest roads at the busiest times, even when work remains within its permitted duration. Companies need to understand where they are exposed, arrive ready to work, and reduce time spent on the road. Is your streetworks process ready for the expansion of lane rental?

We're proud to announce that Cogna has been selected to join the Tech Nation Upscale 2026 cohort, standing alongside some of the UK's fastest-growing and most ambitious scaleups. We're in great company!

📊Chart of the week📊 Despite big plans for new reservoirs, schools, prisons, and transport links, the UK invests less than every other G7 economy. Financial Times analysis of OECD data shows the UK had the lowest average investment as a share of GDP between 2015 and 2024. Britain has a long list of projects and a funding and delivery model that cannot keep pace. Planning delays, rising costs, and policy uncertainty make infrastructure slower to build and less attractive to investors. Closing the gap will require public and private capital, faster decisions, and greater certainty over the life of a project. Until Britain makes infrastructure easier to finance and deliver, the gap between its plans and what actually gets built will continue to grow.

We’re very excited to see 10 Downing Street open its doors to Britain’s technologists with an upcoming hackathon. On 5–6 October, builders and civil servants will work together on real problems facing government and the people it serves, with the strongest teams presenting directly to senior leaders. This is the ambition we need: bring technical talent closer to public services and give promising ideas a route into production. We hope this is only the beginning.

Too often, GSOP reporting becomes a year-end reconstruction exercise. Evidence sits across different systems, clear cases are checked by hand, and teams have to explain decisions months after the work happened. Our new guide shows how gas networks can build reporting into the work itself: create one case per property, automate clear decisions, and send uncertain cases to a person for review. https://lnkd.in/e68JBbV8

📊Chart of the week📊 Only 29 of the 189 projects in the Government Major Projects Portfolio are rated green. But the more interesting number is 109: the projects rated amber. Amber means delivery is still feasible. These projects have significant issues, but there is still a path through them. The question is whether teams get what they need while that window remains open: quicker decisions, suppliers involved before plans harden, and project leaders with the information and authority to act. Get that right, and the amber majority becomes a pipeline Britain can deliver. Leave those issues unresolved, and they become the delays and cost overruns we will be talking about for years.

Last week the Cogna team got together for our annual Summer Sports Day. We went old school! We're talking egg and spoon races, tug of war and a mysterious relay race with flippers that no one quite remembers from their childhood! If this sounds like fun, check out our Careers page for open roles. We're hiring!

📊Chart of the week📊 Britain’s energy and utilities sector has a hidden workforce crisis. By 2030, the power sector must recruit the equivalent of almost its entire current workforce. Gas networks need more than four new people for every five employed today. Across the sector, 312,300 people must be recruited. About one-third will replace retirees; the rest will fill new jobs. As experienced workers retire, decades of operational knowledge leave with them. We need to make these careers a first choice, expand apprenticeships and graduate routes, and give new entrants time to learn from the people keeping essential services running today.

"Envoy gives our team more capacity to focus on the work that matters most to customers" - James Reed, Head of Energy Accounting and Markets at Mitie. We're extremely excited about our partnership with Mitie and the launch of Envoy - a bespoke solution to bring agentic workflows to billing and invoice management, giving their team more time to focus on higher-value work for customers. https://lnkd.in/egb8R-zB

Our US team is on the road again this week 🚗 Next stop is Chicago for the DTECH Reliability and Resiliency event. Swing by the booth to meet the team and learn how we're helping utilities companies make huge productivity gains across important operational processes.