The Sainsbury's Case
Partnering in Construction
JCP has been at the forefront of helping organisations to work collaboratively for some 15 years. Here we give a look back at work we did some 10 years ago with Sainsbury PLC.
In April 1994 Sainsbury's became involved in an intense price war with other Supermarkets. The financial return was too low and the Main Board wanted the costs of stores to be reduced significantly. Sainsbury's strategy for maintaining its share prices had been to increase the size of the sales area each year, but it had no existing planning approvals and no land bank. The decision was therefore made to extend the size of existing stores. Collaborative working was seen as a way to reduce costs - but also to improve relationships with suppliers at a time when services were becoming increasingly outsourced.
In January 1996 JCP carried out Sainsbury's first partnering workshop on the Savacentre project in Leeds . The main aim of this project was to reduce costs - time was not of primary importance. The majority of the packages were negotiated and value engineering was used extensively. This resulted in a saving of £750, 000. The team who worked on the project felt that the first Partnering workshop contributed towards the success of the project, in that it brought everyone together early on and encouraged them to be totally open with each other. This instilled trust developed at the workshop was enhanced by the store success.
JCP then began helping Sainsbury to use partnering workshops on all projects and provide training for its own staff in developing the appropriate partnering attitudes. Workshops were held with Project Managers and Senior Managers. This process was very successful in bringing internal people on board.
The Bottom Line
Over a period of years working with Sainsbury's construction teams for stores the results were impressive. Sainsbury's reduced costs on mainstream stores by 35% and reduced typical construction timeframes from 42 weeks to 15. Quality levels were also improved. In 1996 the company estimated it was 70% of the way to delivering zero defects at handover; by 1998 this was up to 80%.
