PROCUREMENT & SUPPLY CHAIN
Does
harles Darwin once said that those who learned to collaborate and improvise most
effectively have prevailed – and this quote is timely for the rail industry. Following Sir Roy McNulty’s Rail Value for Money Study and the Government’s Command Paper, ‘Reforming our Railways: Putting the Customer First’, the industry is working to reduce costs and deliver real improvements to passenger and freight services.
BS 11000 certifi cation
Atkins’ BS 11000 journey began in January 2011 after Network Rail announced that it was looking to deliver projects more collaboratively. Working in partnership was nothing new to Atkins’ rail business and we saw accreditation as a fantastic opportunity to be a frontrunner in the industry on an important topic.
It also provided an avenue to show how Atkins embraces best practice to develop good working relationships, improve profi ts and be more competitive. There was also an expectation that BS 11000 certifi cation would become a requirement of working with Network Rail in the future, so Atkins started to familiarise itself with the standard.
Having done our homework, Atkins decided to focus our certifi cation process on our rail engineering projects (REP) business. REP was delivering a railway resignalling and recontrol project that needed to be completed in just 12 months, when the usual time to complete this sort of scheme is around 18 months. The project, Northampton Silver, relied heavily on collaboration to meet this tight deadline, with Atkins and Network Rail co-located on site.
This meant that the team could tackle issues as they arose and drastically reduced ‘man-marking’. By working together, the project was commissioned with just three staff (one per eight hour shift over a 24-hour period), which is unprecedented for a major resignalling project. Northampton was used to collect evidence for Atkins’ BS 11000 certifi cation, along with the
52 | rail technology magazine Jun/Jul 13
collaboration work? C
It is recognised that collaboration will help companies deliver rail projects more effi ciently, but is this really the case? A year on from gaining BS 11000 certifi cation, Steve Higham, managing director of Rail Engineering Projects at Atkins, explains the real benefi ts collaborative working has brought to the business.
Stourbridge to Hartlebury resignalling project, which, now complete, has also received high praise from the project team and route asset manager.
After meeting the requirements of the BS 11000 certifi cation process, in May 2012, Atkins was awarded its certifi cate at a special ceremony at the House of Lords. So just over a year on from receiving accreditation, has Atkins benefi tted?
Benefi ts: life after accreditation
The strength of Atkins’ BS 11000 certifi cation is evident, having been awarded a contract to deliver the £250m Stafford Area Improvements Programme (SAIP) in a ‘pure alliance’ with Network Rail, VolkerRail and Laing O’Rourke.
The project is a radically different employer/ contractor relationship in the UK rail industry; not only is Network Rail a client, it is also part of the delivery team.
Based around a unifi ed agreement where all parties share the benefi ts and the risks, this is a clear move away from the more traditional ‘hub and spoke’ style of contracting towards a completely integrated ‘one team’ structure. It is possible that Atkins would not have won this
important work without certifi cation.
Unlike other projects, the bidding process for SAIP was done in two phases.
From April to June 2012, Atkins, Laing O’Rourke and VolkerRail worked in true collaborative style to develop how they would deliver the project as an alliance with Network Rail.
During this fi rst phase they produced a charter which outlined the principles and values that all team members will follow to successfully complete the scheme.
For the second phase of the bid, all four companies moved into one offi ce so they could hit the ground running, should they have won the contract. At this time they set up a joint management team and one operating system to drive effi ciencies.
They also spent time looking at each other’s processes to work out which ones they would use to deliver work effectively.
Working collaboratively for nine months before the project was even awarded has meant that SAIP is well and truly out in front.
Below: Northampton Silver was one of the projects that Atkins used to collect evidence for its BS 11000 certifi cation.
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