Working it out

Delegates at Workshop 2004 tackled the thorny issue of exactly how to implement partnering head on. Keynote speaker Kevin Thomas has recently established Visionality, a consultancy specialising in partnering and integrated working.

Thomas remembered the reaction he received when he questionned the wisdom of old procurement techniques: "I used to ask 'why are we working this way? It doesn't work!' I was told that it was the traditional process, tried and tested and everybody did it that way."

Thomas added that it took him fifteen years to rise to a place in the organisation where he could introduced more integrated methods of working.

He recalled the frustration of being faced with many in his organisation, and outside, who did not want to try new methods of procurement: "They would ask why they should change. Nobody seemed to think that there was anything wrong with the old way of doing things."

Speakers from Taylor Woodrow also spoke about their initial frustrations when trying to move to new procurement systems.

The building services sector is fragmented, and includes many small firms. Trying to identify potential partners was something of a challenge.

Charles Lever, head of building services at Taylor Woodrow, said that the selection process was about more than finding a striclty business match: "It was also about finding companies with the right culture, attitude and the ability to deliver. We were looking for partners with the desire to change the way they work."

The keys to success for Taylor Woodrow were open communications with the team; sharing best practice across all the businesses (ie not assuming that 'we do it best'); minimising resource duplication; and using KPI benchmarking to track progress.

Of these, communication is the key. "You must know and understand the barriers to partnering faced by everyone in your supply chain." In practical terms for TW, this has involved setting up a large annual conference for members of the supply chain; regular meetings at various management levels; newsletters and an intranet site.

The message of partnering is being driven down to site level, where problems can often arise if a 'corporate' message isn't clearly conveyed.

In the afternoon session, Anne King of BSRIA tackled the basics of managing change. Her emphasis was on dealing with construction's current state of flux, or 'white water life'. In managing change, organisations need to be aware that there is no single solution.

Delegates were asked to consider a number of indicators to locate where they are now, before attempting to move forward. These included the amount of time a business has to change the way it works – is the need pressing in the face of a potential project win; or is this a more long-term goal? Companies also need to consider their internal culture. Are their staff trained to deal with change? How much change have management and staff dealt with in the past? And, perhaps most importantly, is everyone aware of the need to make a change in the way the business works? For delegates, this was a day of hard thinking, and they went away armed with the tools for instigating new ideas in their organisation. The boxes below show a cross section of answers to questions set by Taylor Woodrow – with the aim of making everyone think about what they could get out of partnering.