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Every year the UK government publishes a delivery confidence rating for each of its major projects. We put every published year from 2013 to 2026 in one table and asked how often a project is really green.
One rated project-year in ten was green. Eight in ten sat somewhere in amber. If your portfolio dashboard is mostly green, it is either unusually healthy or unusually polite.
Monday move: next to every green on your report, write the one thing that would turn it amber.
Of 689 runs of amber ratings, 69% were still amber at the last published look. Amber is meant to be a warning. On most projects it became the weather.
Monday move: give every amber an exit date and an owner. If the date passes, the color changes.
Of 109 green-looking project-years we could follow for two years, 1 in 12 had dropped to amber/red or red. Green on the outside. Red on the inside.
Monday move: ask what evidence the green is based on, and how old that evidence is.
The PDF and CSV are not ready yet. Join the list and they come to you first, as soon as they are. Source data: UK Government Major Projects Portfolio, gov.uk. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Our analysis is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
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Watermelon Status (2026). The Watermelon Index: first cut. https://watermelonstatus.com/the-index/
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