Opinion

Winning with business efficiency

Colas picked up two Highways England ASC contract awards this week as part of A-one+. If technical ability and quality were key to the success so were the company's business efficiency improvements argues Deborah King. 

Deborah King

Over the last decade Colas has been on a journey to improve all our business processes so we cut out waste, deliver more with the same resource and keep hold of our staff who are so key to continued better performance.

The route we have taken is to use the European Foundation for Quality Management Excellence Model and within that we opted for external assessment under the Recognised for Excellence (R4E) scheme.

"The numbers speak for themselves. Over the last ten years the scores for Colas in all the EFQM measures of performance have risen dramatically.  People results are up 300%, customer results 260% and leadership 170% for instance. At the same time turnover has gone up 89%, operating profit 112% and employee satisfaction 36%."

At the end of September Colas retained its five star R4E certificate for an impressive third time – with our best ever final score of over 600.

This continues to be excellent news for Colas as we are one of the very few in our industry to have this external recognition and of the 585 R4E participants in the last year, Colas was one of only 10 to score over 600!

Colas has been assessed against the model since 2005, and our assessment scores have improved year on year – as have our business performance results!

The whole point is to use the model to make your business a better business and enable your organisation to gain competitive advantage. It gives a business external recognition and it is something more and more people are using when bidding – certainly our bid teams are increasingly requesting information about our scores and how they compare.

The numbers speak for themselves. Over the last ten years the scores for Colas in all the EFQM measures of performance have risen dramatically.  People results are up 300%, customer results 260% and leadership 170% for instance. At the same time turnover has gone up 89%, operating profit 112% and employee satisfaction 36%. Even during the recession the business continued to grow, something that the company in large part puts down to R4E and the EFQM Excellence Model.

Going for Recognised for Excellence is a big undertaking. But there are huge benefits for clients from us having it. Because we improve, we become more efficient and that means we can be more competitive. Our strategy is to grow the business without adding additional cost and resources and this scheme helps us do that.

The EFQM model sits alongside the Japanese developed Six Sigma and American Baldridge Model for business excellence.

The model is a business management framework of best practice,   giving a holistic view of an organisation  and provides a basic structure for the management systems. It helps us benchmark against and share best practice with other organisations including our parent company Bouygues and other Colas group companies and underpins our efforts to win work.

Our business improvement programme – known as Make it Happen - involves 15 dedicated teams that each focus on a business priority. Crucially each team is sponsored by one of the Colas directors.

When we set off down the EFQM route it began with a self assessment using the BQF tools, something everyone can do. Colas then decided to go for the external assessment to drive business improvement by identifying gaps against best practice. First step in preparation was to take what a department or even what individuals were doing well – such as inductions for instance – and rollout that best practice around the business. Next was to work with BQF and use its network to find out about and apply external best practice to the gaps.

Key is making sure everyone in the company understands the strategy and the ambition. It is something the assessors check for too when making their assessments.

That process has continued for the decade and the company now is unrecognisable compared to what it was in 2005.

Working through R4E provided an external challenge to our way of working and it particularly had an impact on our whole approach to managing customer relationships. Our customer engagement strategy is now much more comprehensive and we are more strategic about the ways we gain and use customer feedback and perception information.

It doesn’t work if you try to ‘tell’ someone to believe in the model. It is a much more powerful argument if you identify opportunities through the assessment process and then demonstrate the various successes and benefits. By measuring results in terms of productivity, time saved, bottom line money or motivated and happy people you can demonstrate the outcomes of good practice.

The advice I would give anyone considering adopting the EFQM Excellence Model would be to:

  • Plan for the long term and start at the top with strong leadership commitment to measurable improvement.  The language of management focuses on money, time or resources saved, so describe improvements in these terms and also the very important opportunity to ‘get it right first time’ for customers.
  • Appoint a dedicated business improvement manager rather than simply adding the task to an existing manager’s duties.
  • Make sure all your strategy and business plans are measurable and carry out regular self-assessments against the EFQM Excellence model so you know where you are and where you want to get to next.
  • And finally, communicate – to raise awareness of the business benefits and of the people who are making them happen.

Everyone can take the first step and do an in house assessment. It doesn’t matter how quick and dirty it is, you can find your gaps and your quick wins and you will make a difference. Then you start the process of improvement.

Deborah King is Colas Business Improvement Manager.

deborah.king@colas.co.uk

If you would like to contact Jackie Whitelaw about this, or any other story, please email jackie.whitelaw@infrastructure-intelligence.com.