Turner & Townsend has launched a business unit dedicated to project controls. The functions of estimating and cost monitoring hitherto carried out by multiple departments will be consolidated into a single operation, project controls.

The new department is expected to turn over £4m a year, accounting for 5% of the firm’s overall turnover. It comprises 50 staff, which will increase to 100 over three years, with bases in London, Manchester and Leeds.

Ashley Prail, T&T director and head of the new unit, said: “The government is demanding greater transparency in the decision making process and there is widespread pressure to improve corporate governance, so it seemed appropriate to give project controls a department in their own right.”

The department has already been put to work on projects for a number of clients, including British Aerospace, British Airways, British Nuclear Group, London Underground, Metropolitan Police and Virgin Atlantic.

Project controls will offer a range of services, ranging from estimating and cost monitoring for clients outsourcing the entire project control process, to project controls advice to cost control professionals and to professionals already employed within Turner & Townsend. Operating within T&T’s project management division, the department will aim to continue to improve the predictability of project cost and schedule turn-out.

Prail said the service was most likely to be taken up by clients managing a portfolio of projects.

Source

QS News