The social and economic role of infrastructure in modern societies is well understood (Stevens et al., 2006), yet its acquisition has typically been fraught. An important theme of Peter Morris’ work over the last 30 years (e.g. Morris, 2013; Morris and Hough, 1987) is the management of the infrastructure projects through which such assets are acquired by both the public and private sectors. The aim of this paper is to build on the original work of Morris and Hough (1987), and particularly their finding on the importance of a “strong owner” for high performance on major infrastructure projects, by developing a framework for understanding owner project capability. This will be done through an abductive literature review complemented by pilot research with four national transport infrastructure owners. The development of such a framework is particularly timely because a recent research has identified the so-called “infrastructure gap” (World Economic Forum, 2012) which is the gap between the current investment in infrastructure, and the investment required to support properly economic growth; a gap which is widened by the severe dilapidation of many existing public sector infrastructure assets (Kessides, 2004). At the same time, there is growing political clamour for using infrastructure investment to stimulate growth, particularly in the ailing economies of Europe, but also in countries such as China, and such investment, if properly done, can be self-financing under current macroeconomic conditions (IMF, 2014). Our starting point is the seminal work of Morris and Hough (1987) on major projects and the role thereon of “strong owners”. Next, we introduce our theoretical perspective on owner project capabilities for major infrastructure projects developed from recent work in strategy on “dynamic capabilities” (Helfat et al., 2007) and discuss our research method. The core of the paper is devoted to the development of the proposed framework, focusing on transportation infrastructure as an important sub-class of economic infrastructure. In the discussion, we will suggest that the main lines of argument also apply to social and business infrastructure and to information infrastructure. We aim thereby to contribute to theory and practice in the management of projects in two ways. First, we provide an extended review of the literature on the management of major infrastructure projects since the publication of Morris and Hough (1987) complemented by empirical research with transport infrastructure agencies. Second, we provide an analytic framework that views research from the perspective of the economic infrastructure owner in order to provide the basis for further research and practice on owner project capabilities.