Rebuilding *Ukraine* | Bryden Wood podcast \\Martin Wood and Jaimie Johnston MBE
The latest damage needs assessment puts Ukraine's reconstruction requirement at $524 billion over the next ten years. That figure alone is staggering. But the scale of the financial challenge is compounded by a reality that makes it structurally different from almost any reconstruction effort in history: a significantly diminished labour pool, as millions of people have left the country.
Starting from scratch:
In this episode of the Bryden Wood Podcast, Directors Martin Wood and Jaimie Johnston MBE examine what it would mean to approach that challenge not reactively – replacing what was destroyed in the way it existed before – but by design. The distinction matters enormously, and it sits at the heart of their discussion.
The episode follows Bryden Wood's contribution to 'Building Bridges for Ukraine', (Martin Wood's contribution appears on pages 52–54) a white paper published by the Institute for Global Prosperity at UCL in June 2025, with a foreword by Ukraine's First Deputy Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko and UK Minister Gareth Thomas MP. Martin Wood's contribution to that paper provides the intellectual basis for much of what follows.
Reconstruction by necessity versus reconstruction by design
The repairs happening inside Ukraine right now are, of necessity, reactive. Power infrastructure is being attacked as a deliberate strategy, and communities are keeping themselves functioning through urgent, improvised fixes. That is reconstruction by necessity.
What Jaimie and Martin are concerned with is what comes next: reconstruction by design. When, and both are clear that they hope it is soon, the conditions exist to plan rather than simply repair, what choices should Ukraine make? And critically, how can the investment that will flow into the country deliver the best possible value to Ukrainians themselves?
Martin's framing in the white paper is precise on this point: the motives of parties involved in Ukraine's reconstruction will be an amalgam of benevolence and national or commercial self-interest. There will be intense and often imbalanced pressures to develop new and existing industries for the benefit of external parties. Resilient masterplanning is the counter to that pressure – and it has to begin now, before the conditions for physical reconstruction are fully in place.
A hub-and-spoke model for energy and industry
Martin's argument on energy goes well beyond simply replacing what was destroyed. In some areas of Ukraine, particularly in the east, the damage has been so comprehensive that the question is not how to repair existing infrastructure but whether to rebuild it at all in the same configuration. That is an unusual position to be in – and, Martin argues, potentially an advantageous one.
The opportunity, as set out in the white paper, is to plan the clustering of mutually beneficial technologies and infrastructure around energy sources, a hub-and-spoke network principle in which primary initiating technologies, such as power production or biomass gasification, are surrounded by complementary industries. The more foresight this masterplan has, the greater the cascading benefit.
Ukraine has existing nuclear expertise, uranium deposits, and the intellectual property to develop third- and fourth-generation modular nuclear fission – including SMR technologies – as a foundation of clean, dispatchable power. Layered on top of that, Ukraine has significant land suitable for biofuel production, relevant because electrical power alone cannot solve all decarbonisation challenges, particularly for high-density fuels such as aviation. Ukraine has, as Martin puts it, a unique opportunity to 'back many horses' in the global race for a decarbonised economy – and to do so with the advantages of starting fresh rather than retrofitting an inherited system.
The case for industrialised construction
Jaimie's contribution focuses on the built environment: hospitals, schools, housing, and the civic infrastructure a recovering population needs. His argument is direct. If Ukraine attempts to rebuild using conventional construction methods – bespoke design, project-by-project procurement, low standardisation – it will be a very long road. With a reduced workforce and an urgent need to house and serve a population trying to get back on its feet, conventional productivity levels are simply inadequate.
The alternative is a construction platform system: standardised components at the right granularity, manufactured rather than built on site, assembled using DfMA principles that require fewer people and deliver faster results. The white paper is careful to address the standard objection head-on: historical examples of construction standardisation – Soviet-era housing blocks, postwar Homes for Heroes in the UK – failed not because standardisation is inherently limiting, but because standardisation was applied at too coarse a level, producing buildings that were similar but marginally different in ways that defeated efficiency without delivering variety.
The correct approach is to standardise at the component level – to develop a kit of parts from which an enormous range of configurations can be assembled. The result is not uniformity; it is genuine design flexibility built on an efficient manufacturing foundation. As the white paper notes, most residential concrete-frame buildings already defeat attempts at standardisation by incorporating extremely similar but marginally different structural spans. Ukraine has the opportunity to break that pattern by designing with platform rules embedded into digital tools from the outset.
There is also a significant body of existing thinking that could be transferred directly. The UK Government's Transforming Infrastructure Performance: Roadmap to 2030 represents years of developed methodology – all of it, as Jaimie notes, openly available and immediately applicable to a country starting from a clean slate. The friction that prevents adoption in established markets: procurement frameworks, existing supply chains, and embedded risk aversion, does not apply in the same way when you are building from scratch by necessity.
Digital tools as the connective tissue
Ukraine was, before the war, a significant digital technology nation – something that both Jaimie and Martin return to. That capability is directly relevant to reconstruction, and the white paper places digital foresight as the third pillar of Bryden Wood's integrated approach.
Digital twins – developed in parallel with physical assets from the earliest masterplanning stage – provide the techno-economic modelling needed to ensure that reconstruction initiatives result in a technological economy greater than the sum of its parts. They also provide ongoing feedback through commissioning and into operation, giving reconstruction planners a level of foresight and control that was simply not available in previous postwar efforts.
Digital tools applied from the outset – to configure components, simulate outcomes, optimise sequencing, and manage procurement – give Ukraine the opportunity to do what no postwar reconstruction has quite managed: to think harder before acting, and to act more effectively as a result.
Coordination as the enabling condition
The broader point Martin makes is about coordination: the goodwill and intellectual contribution of many organisations needs a focal point to be useful. The Institute for Global Prosperity is acting as one such point in the UK. The next step, both suggest, is a pan-European or global equivalent – so that when Ukraine is in a position to act, everything it needs is documented, accessible, and ready.
Martin Wood is the co-founder of Bryden Wood, and Jaimie Johnston MBE is Director and Head of Global Systems at Bryden Wood.
