Insights
An electric vehicle charging rollout looks like a hardware problem and is really a delivery problem. The chargers are the easy part. The hard part is acquiring sites, securing grid connections, coordinating civils and installation across hundreds of locations, and keeping the whole network running once it is live. PEF delivered the BP Pulse charging rollout at national scale, holding the main programme contract, so we have seen at first hand exactly where these programmes speed up and where they stall. This guide sets out how to deliver one.
By Christopher Fagan
A charging network is a programme with many moving parts that all have to line up in the right order. A site is no use without a grid connection. A grid connection is no use without the civils done. The civils are no use if the hardware is not on site. And none of it matters if the software, payments and support are not ready when the first driver plugs in. The difficulty is not any single task, it is orchestrating hundreds of them across many sites and many suppliers at once.
The most common cause of delay is grid connections, because teams treat them as a task rather than the critical path they really are. The second is a thin site pipeline that empties faster than it is refilled, leaving installation crews idle. The third is weak contractor management across many locations, where quality and pace drift because nobody is holding a consistent standard. The fourth is launching sites without the operations model to keep them running, so reliability falls just as volumes grow.
The lesson that carries through from a rollout at national scale is that speed comes from standardisation, not heroics. The programmes that move fastest turn each site into a repeatable process with a clear playbook, so the hundredth site is quicker and cleaner than the tenth. They start grid connections earlier than feels comfortable, they keep the site pipeline deliberately ahead of installation capacity, and they treat reliability as a launch requirement rather than an afterthought.
Treat grid connections as the critical path from day one. Build a site factory that standardises design, procurement and installation. Keep the pipeline ahead of the build. And stand up the operations model before you scale, not after. Do these four things and the rollout becomes a machine rather than a series of one off projects.
PEF held the main contract for the BP Pulse charging rollout and delivered it at national scale, so we bring genuine delivery experience rather than theory. If you are planning or accelerating a charging programme, our delivery excellence and digital transformation teams can help. Talk to us about your rollout.
The chargers are the easy part. The hard part is orchestrating hundreds of tasks across many sites and suppliers, where a site is no use without a grid connection, a connection is no use without the civils done, and none of it matters if the software and support are not ready.
Grid connections. They have long lead times and have to be started far earlier than most teams expect, which is why they should be treated as the critical path from day one rather than as just another task.
Speed comes from standardisation, not heroics. Turning each site into a repeatable process with a clear playbook, keeping the site pipeline ahead of installation, and standing up the operations model before you scale are what turn a rollout into a machine.
If any of this is live for you right now, the senior people who wrote it are the people you would work with.