# RAG status

> A red, amber or green signal used to summarise project health, always best paired with a reason and next step.

## What it means

Red, Amber and Green ratings in status reporting, with the British public-sector usage as the worked reference: GOV.UK, Infrastructure and Projects Authority Annual Report 2023-24 (verified), whose Delivery Confidence Assessment is “an assessment of the likelihood of a project delivering its objectives to time and cost”, with exact Green, Amber and Red definitions, and the earlier move from five ratings to three. Good practice without inventing numbers: a reason and a next step behind every colour, agreed definitions in your team, and never colour alone (accessibility).

## A practical example

Amber is not just a colour: “supplier slipped four days; confirm the revised delivery by Tuesday” tells readers why and what happens next.

## Put it into practice

- Name the concrete situation before applying the label. RAG status is useful only when it changes a choice, boundary or next action.
- Make the state visible: write the owner, time, source or stopping condition down instead of relying on memory.
- Review what happened. Keep the part that reduced ambiguity and change the part that added ceremony without helping the work.

## How it relates to Plexii

: use a Card or a Field single select on the project desk, and a read-only live view for stakeholders (/help/widget-field, /help/share-live-web-view). Link /tools/status-report-builder and /templates/status-report.

## Sources

- [UK Infrastructure and Projects Authority annual report 2023–24](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/infrastructure-and-projects-authority-annual-report-2023-24)