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Welsh Water

Capital Programme Partnering and Alliancing

Our first meeting with Welsh Water took place in the spring of 1995. We had been recommended by Professor John Bennett of Reading University who had been a key member of the Latham team and Reading Construction Forum. We very quickly became involved, helping them with the selection of new Partners for Cardiff and Newport, advising on the development process and running the first Partnering workshops in Brighton in September of that year. We remained with them throughout the AMP2 work concluding with the final reviews and the Institute of Civil Engineers award for Cardiff.

Extending Your Vision and Helping to Make It Reality

With AMP 2, their vision was to move from the adversarial contractual relationships of AMP1 to ‘Project Partnering’. The Partnering they envisaged was fundamentally around the main contractors in separate projects. We tried, from the outset, to stretch their vision by encouraging them towards some Cardiff-Newport ‘alliancing’ in the form of sharing lessons learned and joint purchasing. We also tried to encourage them to draw in more of the supply chain, which succeeded with the M&E contractors.

When they did move towards Strategic alliancing for AMP3, we started to talk to them about a ‘Virtual Company’ approach. At the start of AMP3, the Capital Alliance looked like a series of Project Partnerships under the umbrella of a Strategic Alliancing team. Over three years this has moved to Regionally Integrated Teams with an Alliance programme and pain/gain mechanism. In addition, our aim of trying to join up the Alliances is now coming to fruition with a wider membership of the Strategic team and representation from other alliances on other teams as well as some sharing of best practice.

The How

How did we try to help? Our approach throughout AMP2 & 3 has been based on an integrated mix of consultancy, facilitation, coaching and education. The first principle we applied was to ensure that they never felt alone on this journey and thus we make ourselves available whenever they need to talk. The second principle that we followed was to ensure that everyone in the Alliance developed the same understanding of what a cooperative relationship should be.

With that understanding in place, we then helped to ensure a common vision, a common set of goals and a common set of values and behaviours that supported the new culture and new way of working. The emphasis, as in all our work, was to move from the adversarial to a truly cooperative culture based on openness, honesty and trust; one where the focus moved to understanding each other’s needs and committing to helping achieving them.

It meant destroying the blame culture and replacing it with one where people not only were not frightened to speak up, but demanded to do so in a new supportive environment devoid of fear. That process helped to develop the right relationship, which in turn helped the Partners to focus on getting the job right. The next steps simply flowed along two parallel paths, building and sustaining the relationships and developing the people, processes and structure.

In Summary

We have helped to:

Change the culture to a much more cooperative one, built on the successful development of relationships, both business and personal

Develop the Alliance into much more of an Alliance with; The Alliance Development Team; The Task and Finish Teams; The Joint Business Teams

The Regionally Integrated Teams; The Alliance Programme; Develop the Behavioural Skills; Develop and deploy the EFQM BEM; Improve Meetings with the Effective Meetings Course and Facilitation; Coach Individuals

Support Teams; Carry out team and inter team building and development; Run Problem Solving Workshops; Develop Supply Chain Thinking; Facilitate and guide the Strategic Team; And we have monitored the success of our performance through continuous feedback and reviews, both with our own team and with our Partners.

The Results

It would be presumptuous of us to tell you about the amazing results that have been achieved in terms of cost, quality and time.

Conclusion

Three years after launching, the capital Alliance is one to which we feel both proud and privileged to belong. There is much to be achieved by 2005, but with a solid foundation of success, the commitment of the whole team and a real willingness that is almost tangible, we can say that "we are on our way."