The West Midlands Growth Plan 2025 is the most detailed and credible regional strategy in a decade, a £17.4 billion growth blueprint built on data, pragmatism, and belief in place-based delivery. It models a region that can finally close its £5-per-hour productivity gap and turn polycentric geography into economic strength. Yet it still risks the same fate as its predecessors: ambition without execution. My critique goes beyond the press releases, exposing funding silos, institutional churn, and the absence of practitioner leadership, and proposes a hard-edged, engineer’s roadmap for delivery. Cyber must be treated as infrastructure; innovation must be systemic, not decorative; and governance must have teeth. The call is simple: stop admiring the plan and start engineering the outcome. Continuity, accountability, and practitioner leadership; the rest is noise.