Sam Dumitriu

Sam Dumitriu trained to interrogate arguments before he started writing policy.

He studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at the University of Manchester, focusing particularly on political philosophy, before completing a Master of Research in Philosophy with distinction. The training was abstract, but the habits were practical: define exactly what you mean, test the assumptions underneath an argument and follow the evidence even when it leads somewhere inconvenient.

He took that approach into the Westminster policy world.

Dumitriu worked at Bright Blue and later became Head of Research at the Adam Smith Institute before serving as Research Director at The Entrepreneurs Network. Across those roles, his work ranged from taxation and entrepreneurship to technology, housing and science policy.

Today, he is Head of Policy at Britain Remade, where the question has become increasingly physical: why does Britain find it so difficult – and so expensive – to build?

His research has examined the cost of railways, trams, housing, energy infrastructure and other major projects, comparing Britain with countries that manage to deliver similar things faster or for less. Britain Remade’s analysis of 138 rail, tram and metro projects across 14 countries has since been cited in government work on reducing infrastructure costs and by the London Assembly.

More recently, Dumitriu co-authored Building More for Less, which argues that Britain’s problem is not simply how much it invests, but how much infrastructure it gets for the money – turning the discussion from spending totals towards the systems that determine whether projects actually get built.

He started out studying how arguments hold together.

Now he applies the same discipline to the systems that determine whether Britain can build at all.