Use Case
Development Consent Orders
Every Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project in England and Wales needs a Development Consent Order. The process is logical and well-defined, yet it routinely defeats projects that lack the discipline to manage their deliverables and validate submissions internally first. Project:OS carries a DCO from application to determination without losing the thread.
Project boundaries
The consented (or proposed) red-line boundary of every project in the
corpus, drawn from the examination geospatial submissions and coloured by
infrastructure sector. Hover a boundary for the project and case
reference.
DCO Document Graph
Every UK Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project document, downloaded, standardised into a 54-category taxonomy and modelled as a knowledge graph across projects, organisations, document types and examination stages.
Documents
154,723
nodes with url, title, date
Projects
179
of 268
Organisations
17,108
submitters & applicants
Document types
54
standardised taxonomy
Classified
89.8%
high confidence
Filtered view: 83 projects are excluded, having been decided or withdrawn before 2018, holding fewer than five documents, or being minimal legacy records (Tilbury2, A19/A184 Testos Junction, Silvertown Tunnel, Millbrook Power). Excluded projects account for 2,083 of 154,723 documents. Time axes start at May 2018, the earliest application in the filtered set.
Every application SIZED BY DOCUMENT COUNT
Each dot is one DCO application, positioned by submission date and document count (log scale) and coloured by sector. Applications with fewer than 100 documents are not shown. Hover a dot for details.
Time to decision APPLICATION → DECISION, BY SECTOR
Each dot is a decided project; the diamond marks the sector median.
Standardised document types THE CLASSIFICATION RESULT
107,000 unique free-text labels → 54 categories via LLM classification.
TOP 16 OF 54 DOCUMENT TYPES154,723 docs
CLASSIFICATION CONFIDENCE
138,877 documents classified at high confidence, using gemini-2.5-flash-lite via OpenRouter.
DOCUMENTS BY APPLICATION SECTOR
Documents by region ENGLISH REGIONS & WALES
Document volume by region. The East of England has the highest volume, driven by offshore wind, solar and Sizewell C. London has the lowest.
Network intelligence CROSS-PROJECT QUERIES
MOST SIMILAR PROJECTSshared organisations
| Project pair | Shared |
|---|---|
| East Anglia ONE North ↔ East Anglia TWO offshore wind | 528 |
| West Burton Solar ↔ Cottam Solar solar belt | 104 |
| Gate Burton Energy Park ↔ Cottam Solar | 99 |
| Norfolk Vanguard ↔ Norfolk Boreas | 77 |
| Sizewell C ↔ East Anglia TWO | 76 |
ORG PAIRS WORKING TOGETHERshared projects
| Organisation pair | Projects |
|---|---|
| Natural England & Environment Agency core trio | 120 |
| Historic England & Natural England | 110 |
| Historic England & Environment Agency | 109 |
| Natural England & Planning Inspectorate | 64 |
| Environment Agency & Planning Inspectorate | 62 |
Programme-wide players DEGREE CENTRALITY
ORGS IN THE MOST PROJECTS
| Organisation | Projects |
|---|---|
| Natural England | 134 |
| Environment Agency | 123 |
| Historic England | 116 |
| The Planning Inspectorate | 98 |
| National Highways | 68 |
BIGGEST PROJECTS BY VOLUME
| Project | Docs |
|---|---|
| Lower Thames Crossing | 7,863 |
| The Sizewell C Project | 4,423 |
| East Anglia TWO Offshore Windfarm | 3,782 |
| East Anglia ONE North Windfarm | 3,758 |
| Outer Dowsing Offshore Wind | 3,486 |
Examination lifecycle CORPUS COMPOSITION BY STAGE
| Stage | Documents | Dominant document types |
|---|---|---|
| Examination | 94,302 | Environmental Statement · Plans · ExQ responses |
| Developer's application | 31,233 | Environmental Statement · Plans · Consultation Report |
| Decision | 12,013 | SoS Consultation · Post-Decision · Decision Letter |
| Pre-examination | 9,913 | Additional Submission · Procedural Deadline · Plans |
| Post-decision | 2,228 | Non-Material Change · Correction Order · DCO |
| Pre-application | 2,081 | Scoping Report · s46 Notification · Environmental Statement |
Timelines
Every dated DCO document on a timeline. Filter by sector or drill into a single project.
Cumulative documents RUNNING TOTAL
Running total of every dated document in the filtered register.
Submission activity MONTHLY · FILTERABLE
Monthly volume by calendar HEATMAP
Monthly document volume by year and calendar month. Submissions cluster around examination deadlines.
Programme pipeline APPLICATION → DECISION
Each bar is a project's journey from application to decision. The 6-month statutory examination window is the darker segment.
Examination activity profile ALIGNED ON EXAMINATION START
Projects aligned on the month their examination opened, then averaged. Activity is low before the examination, peaks during the six-month window, and falls away after the close. The spike five to six months before opening is the application submission.
Document volume vs decision time DECIDED PROJECTS
Ready to Make Best Practice Executable?
Book a discovery call to see how Synaform and Project:OS can make governance and delivery work for your programme.