This report is an interim publication for a Historic England-funded project to identify and map ongoing and planned infrastructure projects associated with climate change adaptation and mitigation, and to explore the archaeological workforce requirements needed to support their delivery. While the immediate focus is archaeology, the project addresses a broader challenge faced across the heritage sector: the difficulty of identifying future demand in a systematic and evidence-based way. 

The report therefore has two purposes. Firstly, it sets out an approach for identifying climate change-related infrastructure projects that are likely to generate future demand for archaeological services. Secondly, and more importantly, it presents a practical methodology for constructing forward-looking pipelines of work from multiple, fragmented data sources.

The methodology combines national infrastructure datasets, planning information, sector-specific databases and place-based intelligence to create a more comprehensive view of future activity than any single source can provide. Although developed in the context of archaeology and climate-related infrastructure, the approach is intentionally designed to be transferable. The same principles could be applied to other heritage specialisms, geographies or policy themes where there is a need to understand future workloads, anticipate skills needs and support strategic workforce planning. 

A central finding of the work is that no single dataset provides a complete picture of future development activity. Information relating to current and planned projects is distributed across a wide range of national, regional and local sources. The methodology described in this report therefore adopts a layered approach, bringing these different sources together to create a more coherent and actionable picture of future demand.