A Systems-Based Approach to the
Identification of User/Infrastructure
Interdependencies as a Precursor to
Identifying Opportunities to Improve
Infrastructure Project Value/Cost Ratios
The bulk of the investment needed for infrastructure renewal in the United Kingdom will have to come from private
sector investors, who will require attractive value/cost ratios. Government recognises infrastructure interdependencies
can help deliver these, but returns remain uncertain. New business models are required to overcome this problem,
which take account of enterprise-centred infrastructure interdependencies (interdependencies between social and
economic enterprises and the infrastructures they use). The complex and closely coupled nature of enterprise and
infrastructure systems can stand in the way of identifying these interdependencies; however, model-based systems
engineering techniques offer a framework for dealing with this complexity. This paper describes research that the
iBUILD project is doing to develop a methodology for modelling the interdependencies between infrastructure and
the enterprises that use it, as a precursor to identifying opportunities to improve infrastructure project value/cost
ratios. The methodology involves: identifying the suite of policy, strategy and operational documents relating to the
enterprise-of-interest; eliciting system data from the documents and integrating it to create an enterprise system
model; and, generating N2 diagrams from the model to identify the interdependencies