Collaborate to Innovate
‘Leaner and cleaner’ has become the mantra of our leaders. While our 2021 survey also identified these themes, the focus of our participants is growing. As efficiency and the natural environment become increasingly central to infrastructure projects, collaboration will be even more important in driving the innovation to deliver.
Moving Beyond Words
Leaders believe it is fundamental to engrain sustainability into decision-making: words alone are not enough to drive necessary progress. They are increasingly seeking approaches that put sustainability front and centre.
In practical terms, this means taking a more interventionalist approach to supply chains by engaging with the second and third tiers rather than just the first. Shortening supply lines gives clients ‘ground level’ influence over factors such as sustainability. It also inspires smaller suppliers to innovate.
Leaders are challenging their teams to optimise designs to minimise embodied carbon, reduce waste and promote reuse. The opportunities here are enormous: The European Commission estimates that construction and demolition waste accounts for a third of all waste generated in the EU.1 There is a strong financial imperative too: research by the Get It Right Initiative estimates that the UK’s construction industry could save between £10-25bn each year just by eliminating error.2
Leaders are also changing how performance is managed. Decarbonisation, biodiversity, productivity and waste increasingly sit alongside cost, schedule and safety in performance reporting, although much work needs to be done to determine how these should be measured.
Over the last 20 years, safety has rightly become a core value of projects and organisations. There is no question that ESG and sustainability should go on the same journey in far less time.”
AMBROSE MCGUIRE
EUROPE MANAGING DIRECTOR FOR PROGRAMME MANAGEMENT AECOM
The real challenge is to bring carbon up so that it sits alongside costs, schedule, and safety as a pillar. If you do that, you will make balanced decisions.
BEN WHEELDON
PROGRAMME DIRECTOR HS2 EUSTON STATION REDEVELOPMENT Mace
Collaborating Across Boundaries
Breaking down innovation siloes is an area of increasing focus for our leaders.
UK infrastructure is known for world-leading innovation that solves the most complex of problems. However, it is often confined within the boundaries of individual projects. While knowledge sharing does take place, our leaders acknowledge that more innovation across projects and sectors would better harness the collective investment power of UK infrastructure projects.
There is recognition that all clients are grappling with the same fundamental set of challenges and that pooling resources – both talent and capital – is logical. The mechanics of how this might work in practice are less obvious, particularly given the somewhat siloed nature of projects, particularly in the public sector, and fragmentation of their supply chains.
Most projects start from scratch and build systems and processes from the ground up. This needs to change. As a sector, we should be collaborating much more to apply learning from what has gone well and to positively share what has worked less well."
SARAH JOHNSON
STRATEGIC ADVISER Major Programmes
Making Procurement Work
Breaking down innovation siloes is an area of increasing focus for our leaders.
UK infrastructure is known for world-leading innovation that solves the most complex of problems. However, it is often confined within the boundaries of individual projects. While knowledge sharing does take place, our leaders acknowledge that more innovation across projects and sectors would better harness the collective investment power of UK infrastructure projects.
There is recognition that all clients are grappling with the same fundamental set of challenges and that pooling resources – both talent and capital – is logical. The mechanics of how this might work in practice are less obvious, particularly given the somewhat siloed nature of projects, particularly in the public sector, and fragmentation of their supply chains.
You can use government procurement rules as an excuse for lack of creativity, but it’s not always the rules themselves, it’s how we execute them.”
MATT PALMER
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Lower Thames Crossing – National Highways
If you don’t rigidly prescribe requirements, you might discover a better way of delivering the same outcome with an approach that you just didn’t know about.”
DAVID SOUTHALL CBE
NON-EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & BOARD CHAIR
We need to move to an approach that is less about how you get there and more about the outcomes we want.
CLIVE BERRINGTON
GROUP COMMERCIAL & PROCUREMENT DIRECTOR Network Rail
Decisions, Decisions, Delayed Decisions
