The CoST initiative aims to enhance the transparency and accountability of procuring entities (PEs) and construction companies for the cost and quality of public sector construction projects. It will do this by disclosing to the public ‘Material Project Information’ (MPI) at all stages of the construction project lifecycle, from the initial identification of the project to the final completion.
A set of core baseline indicators (relating to bidding statistics, public availability of MPI, project duration and cost changes) has been developed to record current transparency practice and measure the impact of the CoST initiative in the longer term, in a manner that may also allow cross country comparisons to be made. In order to provide a point of reference against which changes to the indicators can be recorded over time a baseline study is required in each CoST pilot country. This is the baseline study report for the UK CoST initiative.

Five main objectives were set for UK Baseline Study and each has been achieved:
1: To identify Material project Information required to be released into the public domain
2: Assess which items of Material Project Information are currently resleased into the public domain on sample projects
3: Assess the barriers to the release of Material Project Information
4: Provide a point of reference for core indicators that are expected to change over time
5: Provide information on other on-going intiatives and how these relate to CoST

The CoST Baseline Study research has been undertaken by the University of Salford on behalf of the UK CoST Multi-Stakeholder Group (MSG). The authors are grateful to the following members of the MSG for their support of the baseline study and in particular their work in securing access to Procuring Entities and guidance throughout the research and reporting processes.The primary authors and researchers were Michael Dickinson, Dr Adekunle Oyegoke and Prof Peter McDermott.