deliver?’ you are going to get more out of that relationship. It’s also about having an eye on the longer-term.
NP: Relationships are very important. You need to build up a relationship to understand where your client is coming from, how commercial they are and what level of advice they need.
What makes a partnership work?
IS: It’s very important to be able to pick up the phone or call in and see the top person. That is where a relationship is special and it is a big deal.
DB: If you are in a partnership and have that person-to-person basis, there are ways to resolve things that don’t always, or don’t need to be written down. You can work together and work things through.
MG: There is something about the presence of leadership, seeing the leadership and feeling the culture through the organisation.
DS: I feel like a good partnership is when you know what your client or the recipient is going to say. You know what the decision is going to be.
TW: We meet regularly with senior people at EG Group. We sit round having a coffee and we discuss good things, bad things, but we get things sorted, and we sort it there and then. There’s never anything that becomes a problem between us because we’re all there trying to come to the same end really, aren’t we?
When things get
strained it is about being frank and having the ability
to pick up the phone and say, ‘We’ve got a problem here’
AK: Underlying that is a speed in which projects get progressed, a success in which those projects are delivered and a profitability for the parties involved. We don’t sit around and talk about the same old, same old.
Those meetings are successful because we’ve got successful projects that sit behind them and that are ongoing and there are future projects that are ahead of us and so without all that, those relationship wouldn’t be so strong.
That track record is one of the fundamental building blocks of good partnership and it allows you to get through more testing times.
So, yes, it’s track record and yes, the personalities. Being able to link into leadership is important but that hides the building blocks and the foundations of what makes that partnership.
TCB: It’s trust and having the high-level meetings and also the meetings the next level down. It is getting used to personalities, knowing what that person’s about to say, and it boils down to negotiation and some compromise sometimes as well.
IS: But you’ve still got to deliver the service at the end of the day and you’re still only as good
Matthew Guest
as your last job. That’s where relationships help when things do turn a little bit sour. You have that opportunity to talk early and turn them around.
SJ: An interesting thing for local authorities is to always look at new models of delivery. We embarked on our first joint venture company to deliver a very challenging stall site, and this was very much a trusting, leap of faith.
It was real problem site for the borough, lots of antisocial behaviour and all political parties united in trying to take this site forward and no developer would touch it.
We had discussions with Barnfield who wanted to ensure the council would be with them if they embarked on the project and that’s when we decided to invest in a new joint venture company with them. Five years later it is probably one of the most successful projects we have delivered together.
It is an example of where two partners can bring their skills. With Barnfield’s knowledge and experience in delivering challenging sites, the local authority was able to use its powers around registered/unregistered land through highways procedures. We used both our skillsets to deliver.
TW: Our model has become more collaborative without a doubt. Three or four years ago
Simon Jones
we teamed up with property developer and construction PLC Henry Boot. You may ask why they would want to team up with someone as small as us. The reason was we were going up against each other bidding for sites, so we decided to team up in Lancashire and bid on things together and it has been very successful.
TCB: We all have different expertise strands, it’s very important that we’re feeding Barnfield Construction and Barnfield Developments. So, it is important that I have the relationship with Henry Boot Developments. They have a bigger team than us and they bring a different expertise.
What can you do to fix partnerships when things get strained?
MC: When things get strained it is about being frank and having the ability to pick up the phone and saying, ‘We’ve got a problem here and between us we need to work through the issues and come up with solutions’. That may mean being inventive where there are challenges.
It is very easy for people to bury their heads in the sand and suddenly a minor problem or several minor problems become major problems, which sometimes can be insurmountable.
Continued on page 48
LANCASHIREBUSINESSVIEW.CO.UK Nicola Phelps Alex Kenwright
Tim Webber
Deborah Smith
47
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