We all know the feeling: the management works out a new strategy after exhaustive discussions and number-crunching, consultants have turned over every stone. The fancy slides are prepared, the management and staff gather (off-site if they are lucky) and the new strategic objectives and targets are unveiled. The camaraderie and the social afterwards is great craic.

And next day, everyone looks around and says: "That was great lads, but now what? Who's supposed to do all that stuff? I've got my day job to get on with." Change-management, ah sure, that's consultant-speak.

The easy part is to make up the strategy and the slides, the presentation and the team-building. The hard part is doing it, the tough grind of implementation. Three months ago, this state had the slides and the social for the most significant National Development Plan in our history. £40 billion worth (€50.8 billion) of plans were unveiled in Dublin Castle. It was only a plan. People don't go to work on plans. People don't drive cars and lorries on plans. People don't live in plans. They need transport, roads and houses. What if, after finding the £40 billion to do the job, after working out what needs to be done, after finding people to do it, after changing the planning laws, it still doesn't happen?

The biggest risk for the National Development Plan is implementation risk. If we concentrate solely on resources and planning issues, we will forget that the cause of most strategies failing is failure of implementation, not of resources.

How do we assess implementation risk at the outset of a plan? One clear way is to look at the track record of the system that we propose to use to implement it.

There is £6.3 billion planned for roads in the NDP. This is an unprecedented amount for the public system - National Roads Authority, Department of Environment, local authorities - to deploy in the short space of five years. Leave aside the money, though, and look at the promised product.

There are about 70 miles of motorway or motorway-grade roads in the Republic at present. The first, at Naas, was built in the mid-1980s. It may be unfair, given economic circumstances, but that represents the sum total of about five miles per year on average.

The National Development Plan would require the National Roads Authority to deliver at least 350 miles, by my rough estimate, of motorway or motorway grade roads in seven years. That would be 50 miles annually on average. Can the National Roads Authority do what's never been done before by anybody in Ireland? Some 70 miles per annum, on average.

But in the first year - now - there will not be 70 miles. Of 36 major road projects under the NDP, one - the Nenagh bypass - is scheduled by the Roads Authority for completion this year. Three in 2001, seven in each of 2002 and 2003, three in 2004, seven in 2005 and eight in 2006. Four of those in 2006 are on the N8 between Portlaoise and Cork, the main artery through the country. Given that quite a few roads projects were not completed in the last development plan, the risk is high for those scheduled for completion at the end of the present plan.

If a strategy isn't being delivered, management information should signal it very quickly. A good management then acts fast when the warning signs are bad. For public infrastructure, all the public will have to do is to look around to see if it's there or not. Warning signs should be available to public management much earlier.

Already our track record is bad at delivering insfrastructure quickly. Failure to deliver will cost us dearly in wasted hours in traffic, imbalanced development, house-price increases, lack of job mobility, and lack of replacements for factories that will close. Even if there is a great sense of national purpose in the public sector about delivering this massive new project, can we afford, being hard headed about the public interest, to wait and see if unprecedented feats of implementation are actually achieved? How many warning lights should be allowed to flash? Are the warning lights wired up at all?

So much is riding on getting infrastructure right. Surely implementation risk can be minimised by getting those with the best track record in the world to do the job for us.

This means private entities, national or international - it doesn't matter. We need the best in the business. It is that urgent. Whether private finance is used, the case for contracting out design, build and operation of a lot of infrastructure projects to private-sector specialists is already strong. Watch how strong it will be if there are empty spaces where motorways, railways and houses were once promised.

We actually can't afford the luxury of finding that out. Oliver O'Connor is editor of the monthly publication Finance. E-mail: ooconnor@indigo.ie