Major Infrastructure Delivery MBA

London, Stratford (UCL East)

This course is designed to equip mid-career professionals with innovative management and leadership practices to successfully deliver major infrastructure projects. A unique new MBA programme, combining theoretical insights with practical applications. Classes are based on infrastructure case-studies being addressed using latest academic thinking.

UK students International students
Study mode
Part-time
UK tuition fees (2024/25)
£22,200
Overseas tuition fees (2024/25)
£22,200
Duration
2 calendar years
Programme starts
September 2024
Applications accepted
Applicants who require a visa: 16 Oct 2023 – 28 Jun 2024
Applications close at 5pm UK time

Applications open

Applicants who do not require a visa: 16 Oct 2023 – 30 Aug 2024
Applications close at 5pm UK time

Applications open

Entry requirements

A UK Bachelor’s degree awarded with at least a lower second-class Honours, or an overseas qualification of an equivalent standard. In addition, candidates need at least 5 years of relevant professional experience (middle management level) in the management of projects.

The English language level for this programme is: Level 2

UCL Pre-Master's and Pre-sessional English courses are for international students who are aiming to study for a postgraduate degree at UCL. The courses will develop your academic English and academic skills required to succeed at postgraduate level.

Further information can be found on our English language requirements page.

Equivalent qualifications

Country-specific information, including details of when UCL representatives are visiting your part of the world, can be obtained from the International Students website.

International applicants can find out the equivalent qualification for their country by selecting from the list below. Please note that the equivalency will correspond to the broad UK degree classification stated on this page (e.g. upper second-class). Where a specific overall percentage is required in the UK qualification, the international equivalency will be higher than that stated below. Please contact Graduate Admissions should you require further advice.

About this degree


Major infrastructure projects are high profile and critical to the economy, where leadership is essential to navigate several aspects of project delivery. However, leaders are in short supply and there is a necessity to enhance the understanding of the dimensions and interfaces between technical, organisational, and political topics. Considering the complex nature of such projects, this programme provides a platform for mid-career professionals to strengthen and develop further their values-led leadership, which will be the foundation of their strategic decisions and shape the dynamics of future cities and societies.

The Major Infrastructure Delivery MBA engages in a global challenge of providing capabilities to attend several immutable factors, namely: increasing urbanisation, growing population, and fast development of emerging economies. The scope of this new Major Infrastructure Delivery MBA is to provide experienced project managers with the necessary training to assume increasingly higher management positions in organisations delivering major infrastructure projects.

Major Infrastructure Delivery MBA has several aims:

  • Develop an advanced understanding of the key managerial components of major infrastructure organisations, and the strategic importance of infrastructure in the next decades across the world.
  • Analyse the impact of innovative management and leadership practices and design strategies to deal with the poor performance of complex organisations that deliver major infrastructure projects.
  • Incorporate and apply the underpinning personal and collective values of complex organisations, which will provide the leadership foundation for the strategic decisions.
  • Critically analyse the latest theoretical and practical developments in the fields of management, organisation studies, and social science with regards to the management of complex infrastructure organisations.
  • Evaluate the multi-level nature of major projects and lead the proposition of managerial solutions to navigate the interfaces between the external environment, the infrastructure organisation, and the multiple projects being coordinated.
  • Develop the intellectual skills required for interpreting and reacting to changes at different levels of those political projects, navigating the myriad of stakeholders and contractual relationships.
     

Who this course is for

After completing this course, you are expected to go on to work in many related areas across several infrastructure sectors: government agencies sponsoring major infrastructure projects, public and private sector infrastructure client organisations, management consultancies, engineering consultancies, contractors, and enterprises with significant portfolios of major infrastructure projects.

What this course will give you

The Major Infrastructure Delivery MBA offers students the chance to take the next step in their leadership career with a global top 10 university, ranked global #1 in the Built Environment field

Offering a unique combination of general management and leadership skills with industry-specific learning, the curriculum is developed in partnership with an external advisory group of industry leaders with professional expertise in major infrastructure projects.

Students will have access to London mega-projects through case studies and hands-on site visits, learning directly from teams delivering major projects onsite.   

The Major Infrastructure Delivery MBA is delivered by The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, a global centre of excellence at the forefront of major and megaproject management, sustainable construction, environment and real estate.

The foundation of your career

After completing this course, you are expected to go on to work in many related areas across several infrastructure sectors: government agencies sponsoring major infrastructure projects, public and private sector infrastructure client organisations, management consultancies, engineering consultancies, contractors, and enterprises with significant portfolios of major infrastructure projects.

Employability

The course is purposefully open-ended in the sense that it allows the development of a number of transferable skills, qualities and behaviours to deliver major infrastructure projects. Some modules focus on leadership, teamwork, interpersonal and digital skills, which are essential to future career effectiveness.

Through events aimed at industry and alumni and organised by the Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, you will have the opportunity to meet like-minded professionals in the field. Each year the School also hosts a series of careers events for students - including CV and interview skills sessions, a dedicated Careers Fair, site visits and an alumni panel event. UCL Careers also offers a regular programme of careers fairs and practical sessions on careers advice.

Networking

You will learn from infrastructure industry leaders, making valuable connections in your field. World-leading practitioners are incorporated in all modules through guest lecturers and case-studies, leveraging the outstanding position of The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction in the construction industry.

Teaching and learning

The course structure is focused on learning through a mix of lectures, seminars, workshops, and analyses of case studies. All core modules are delivered through lectures by faculty and guest lecturers from industry. The guest lecturers come from the industry or policy field to reflect the multi-level nature of stakeholders and professions involved in major infrastructure projects.

The principal modes of assessment of these skills are analytical essays, coursework, examination and the MBA dissertation undertaken as a piece of independent research.

Around 20% of students' time is spent in lectures and tutorials, 50% on assignments and coursework and the remainder in independent study.

Modules

The programme is delivered part-time over two years. The flexible modular structure of the programme enables students to continuing working full-time while completing the MBA, allowing them to put learning immediately into practice.

Students will attend five periods (nine days each) in London over the two-year programme. Each nine-day period will take place from Saturday morning to the end of Sunday of the subsequent week. 

The in-person teaching takes place at our new UCL East campus, offering cutting-edge learning facilities in the heart of east London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

The cohort is up to 35 students and formed by a global audience of professionals. Teaching consists of eight modules and a dissertation, which works as a management consultancy project.

Year 1: October (Modules 1 and 2), February (Modules 3 and 4), May (Modules 5 and 6).
Year 2: October (Modules 7 and 8), May (Dissertation).

The students of the Major Infrastructure Delivery MBA must take all eight compulsory modules and the dissertation.
The course is based around the following core modules:

  • Analysing the anatomy of major projects – the context in which major infrastructure projects are proposed and developed, revealing different market structures and models to bridge the global infrastructure gap.
  • Managing economic and financial risks – an understanding of the connections throughout the project life-cycle, from demand forecast, through business cases, until the implications to the financial performance of the organisations delivering major infrastructure projects.
  • Structuring governance and assurance – explores the relationship between risk management, governance, and assurance processes across organisational and institutional boundaries.
  • Designing client organisations and corporate strategies – explores the functions within the boundaries of the client organisation, and prepares the argument for the necessity of thinking about the inter-organisational perspective, considering the interfaces with the supply chain.
  • Procuring and integrating the supply chain – principles of supply chain management, procurement and operations building upon production logics of vertical integration and outsourcing, which inform the decomposability of the asset into internal and external parts.
  • Building, developing and leading teams – leadership approaches to address the different culture and values at organisational and individual levels. It introduces the power dynamics of organisations and the role of leaders in shaping the strategy of the intra- and inter-organisational forms.
  • Controlling information and systems – explores the challenges of information flows and the extraction of actionable business intelligence to manage human resources and organisational functions.
  • Managing stakeholders and creating value – the principles of stakeholder management, theoretically framing the dynamics between internal and external players in complex and uncertain organisations. It presents strategies for the process of creation and co-creation of value to address the requirements of different stakeholders.

The programme ends with a dissertation. It is an academically rigorous piece of research and students can choose any topic they want as long as it is relevant to Major Infrastructure Delivery and can be supervised by a staff member from the Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction. The dissertation works as a management consultancy project, building upon the latest academic thinking to provide a piece of management advice to an organisation (e.g. public, private, non-profit).The dissertation demonstrates learning in problem formulation and the application of research methods to the investigation of specific research questions. Students are encouraged to formulate their own research proposal drawing upon theoretical or practical problems.
 

Please note that the list of modules given here is indicative. This information is published a long time in advance of enrolment and module content and availability are subject to change. Modules that are in use for the current academic year are linked for further information. Where no link is present, further information is not yet available.

Students undertake modules to the value of 180 credits. Upon successful completion of 180 credits, you will be awarded an MBA in Major Infrastructure Delivery.

Accessibility

Details of the accessibility of UCL buildings can be obtained from AccessAble accessable.co.uk. Further information can also be obtained from the UCL Student Support and Wellbeing team.

Online - Open day

Graduate Open Events: Major Infrastructure Delivery MBA

Whether your ambition is to design better buildings, plan better cities, build sustainable communities or help meet the challenge of climate change, The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment could be a big step towards it. Find out more about our courses through a range of taster lectures, Q&As and info sessions.

Fees and funding

Fees for this course

UK students International students
Fee description Part-time
Tuition fees (2024/25) £22,200
Tuition fees (2024/25) £22,200

The published fee is for Year 1 only. Year 2 fees are subject to an inflationary increase of up to 5%.

The tuition fees shown are for the year indicated above. Fees for subsequent years may increase or otherwise vary. Where the programme is offered on a flexible/modular basis, fees are charged pro-rata to the appropriate full-time Master's fee taken in an academic session. Further information on fee status, fee increases and the fee schedule can be viewed on the UCL Students website: ucl.ac.uk/students/fees.

Additional costs

Student will need to fund travel and accommodation for the in-person study periods. There are not expected to be any additional costs for London site visits.

If you are concerned by potential additional costs for books, equipment, etc. on this programme, please get in touch with us by emailing your administrator, suzanne.hogan@ucl.ac.uk

For more information on additional costs for prospective students please go to our estimated cost of essential expenditure at Accommodation and living costs.

Funding your studies

For a comprehensive list of the funding opportunities available at UCL, including funding relevant to your nationality, please visit the Scholarships and Funding website.

UCL East London Scholarship

Deadline: 20 June 2024
Value: Tuition fees plus £15,700 stipend ()
Criteria Based on financial need
Eligibility: UK

Next steps

There is an application processing fee for this programme of £90 for online applications and £115 for paper applications. Further information can be found at Application fees.

When we assess your application we would like to learn:

  • why you want to study Major Infrastructure Delivery at graduate level
  • why you want to study Major Infrastructure Delivery at UCL
  • what particularly attracts you to the chosen programme
  • how your academic and professional background meets the demands of this challenging programme
  • where you would like to go professionally with your degree.

Together with essential academic requirements, the personal statement is your opportunity to illustrate whether your reasons for applying to this programme match what the programme will deliver.

Can you tell us about what led you to consider the MBA in Major Infrastructure Delivery as a programme of study? Tell us about an experience that influenced your intellectual and professional development. What experience and values do you think you can bring to the MBA in Major Infrastructure Delivery? What are your expectations from studying on the MBA in Major Infrastructure Delivery, and how will they help your future career development? (600 words).

Please note that you may submit applications for a maximum of two graduate programmes (or one application for the Law LLM) in any application cycle.

Choose your programme

Please read the Application Guidance before proceeding with your application.

Year of entry: 2024-2025

UCL is regulated by the Office for Students.