Heard on BBC this morning that South Koreas President has said that at his meeting next month with his North Korean opposite number he hopes to sign an agreement to construct a rail link between the two states which will start before the end of the year. No GRIP stage 1, GRIP stage 2, .... GRIP stage n there then, they just get on and FDI.
For large / strategic national projects in the UK too, isn't there some muddying of the GRIP waters? Have the electrification of the GWR main line and HS2 been/going through the full GRIP process - especially at the early stages - for example?
Why? You're not suggesting either of those projects happened far quicker than you could otherwise believe, are you? Especially when you remember the G stands for "guide", so the same purposes can be met by someone else's process, and initial customer approval is meant to happen at the end of GRIP 3 (which may thus need to be repeated) but further approvals can be insisted on as well.