In our model we are also a non-appropriated entity. We operate on a fee-for-service model. We adjust our resources depending on the amount of programming we're asked to deliver. Under our corporate plan, we do project for five years out. It's not just a year-to-year adjustment but is based on the projections and the type of services we're being asked to hire, because we employ engineers, technologists, environmental scientists, a few architects, and other professions like that, and a lot of project management people. We hire resources based on the services that we're projecting to deliver.
The adjustment you referred to was a result of a downturn from what was a record high level of spending by us a couple of years ago of over $1 billion a year over two years on roughly 2,000 infrastructure projects annually, which we delivered for National Defence and our other client partners. That came down about 25% to 30%, and at the same time we were driving ever-increasing efficiencies and effectiveness in our service delivery. We had committed under the deficit reduction action plan, DRAP, requirements to bring our costs of service delivery down more than 10%. We in fact achieved a 20% reduction in costs of service delivery and did a lot of benchmarking against private sector alternatives and so on. We changed our approach to focus on higher risk, higher value activities with more manpower, which is a cost for us and the client partners, and then less focus on the lower-risk items, for example.
We transformed our whole delivery model from a prescriptive to a risk-based approach to how we focused our services. That reduction in cost to delivery meant that we could use fewer personnel in our delivery.
But just to tell you, in ending—