Water and Effluent Treatment Magazine
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/593880
8 ALLIANCES 2016 " On paper, ourselves, Barhale and Kier all bring a similar approach. We were selected on the basis of the culture of the organisations and that was very much part of the assessment process and behavioural workshops, and executive interviews. All sought to underpin what we put on paper − meeting the people who were going to do the work, and being assessed in time-pressured environments. Fundamentally, we're all in it to pro- vide similar skills underpinned by cul- ture, innovation, customer focus etc. We've gone for a geographical fit rather than a functional. It was a joint decision across the four partners. It's basically a third, a third, a third on turn- over but geographically there's a bigger footprint, say, in the Norfolk, Suffolk and Lincolnshire area than Essex, which is the smallest footprint but a more urban. We're all equal share in terms of pain game mechanisms with some of the incentives. We're trying to link our KPI perfor- mance to the ODIs, which is ultimately what AWS is monitored by. We've got a business plan, high-level budgets broken down into various types of activity, vari- ous assets, some reactive work, some plans, nominated schemes and the target costs / budgets for the work. A £5,000 budget to replace a particular asset becomes a target we work to. If we out- perform it, great – AWS retains some of that money and reinvests it in other schemes, and we get some extra gain that we share across the three partners. I was very keen right from the first board meeting that we should all share equally the pain and the gain. We all shook hands on it straight away. What has surprised me a bit, is the balance between being productive and expeditious in terms of delivering work but with cost control and prioritisation. That's a really polite way of saying the government's process is really clunky. That's not unusual to AWS. I've found it with other water utilities I work with. I can see why they need to have good control because if you've just got a billion pounds to spend you can't afford to spend it all in the first two years but equally because of that really rigorous process, it becomes quite a drawn out process to get schemes through. Having said that, we can't have rela- tively junior people making decisions on work when there's a bigger priority 50 miles up the road. It needs that over- arching kind of control but it feels some- times a bit slow. It's about balancing the priorities of the business as a whole with the need to be efficient. Unfortunately, they're quite diametrically opposed. We could do four jobs at the same time and we're doing them one at a time because of the gov- ernment's process. We've got the 'White Book' which is a detailed plan of how we are going to maximise efficiency throughout the IOS. That's quite unique to IOS. I haven't seen it anywhere else as such. What's interest- ing is that the White Book was actually developed at pre-preferred bidder stage and was submitted to the AWS board before they signed contracts on the basis that if we don't feel we're going to get the gains out of this alliance then maybe we need to have another think about how we award it. That was quite innovative in that the board wanted to see what these people were committing to. We had about two months to develop this. That put a nice bit of tension into us − we got to sign up to the work we said we were going to do." NAME Andy Flowerday JOB TITLE Managing director COMPANY Barhale " From my perspective and Barhale we've had the benefit of working with Anglian Water through AMP2, 3 and 4. We've gone from partnering to alliancing, which is a fundamental shi›. We've had the bene- fit of already being involved through the @One Alliance, so we've got something particular to bring to IOS alliance. Each one of us has got something to bring that's unique and special. From a Barhale perspective, what we can bring to the party is a good under- standing of what alliancing means, what the benefits are and, in particular, the barriers that you have to get over in terms of trip hazards and pitfalls. It's good hav- ing that experience because if you've done it all before it's a bit easier and you can sign up to a concept. In terms of our role in the team we've already got that experience. Equally, the Kier MG team has been doing this type of IOS work for the last five years, so they've done something that we haven't done. They bring the knowledge and experi- ence for that, and Morrison is the new player and can bring a lot of new ideas from elsewhere. Then there's building relationships − that comes down to the people and the individuals. Anglian Water has done a good job in selecting teams that can work together. They're trying to put a team of companies [together] that are, to some degree, of aligned thinking and at the same time bring something different. If we were all the same it wouldn't quite work. We all bring slightly different skillsets. NAME Adam Gosnold JOB TITLE Health & safety COMPANY Morrison Utility Services "It's about balancing the priorities of the business as a whole with the need to be efficient" Adam Gosnold, Morrison US