What’s it like to be a consultant that’s part of a contractor?

Major contractors need to have in-house design capacity according to new ICE president Sir John Armitt. Spot on, says Amey's consultancy MD Dave Spencer. there are gains to be had and only a little initial pain.

Dave Spencer
10 November 2015

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One of the core elements of effective collaboration within civil engineering is a strong relationship between design and construction – something that Amey addressed nearly a decade ago with the strategic acquisition of Owen Williams. This  created a complete end-to-end infrastructure offering and opening up further opportunities for innovation and efficiency.

'It is a hard business to build, but if the challenges are faced head on with a mind-set of change, then from our experience, game changing improvements to our industry are most definitely achievable." 

Size and complexity of projects is driving the need for integration, but other factors are also causing design and construction to be increasingly united within a single process.  In particular:

1. Growing concerns about cost management and the drive to reduce wastage, duplication and to reduce the time required to move from concept to operation;
2. Increasing awareness of the benefits of whole life value and the role design has to play in driving long-term value through the entire life cycle.
3. Safety management and a recognition that design has a key role to play in reducing risk during construction and operation.

The civil engineering profession has become ever further committed to collaboration and all that it entails, as we move to deliver even more complex and challenging contracts.  We only have to review the UK’s major projects over the last few years to recognise the necessity, benefits and success of our collaborative activities: Terminal 5; London 2012; Crossrail; CTRL; etc.

Amey has been at the forefront of the integration of design and construction over the past few years.  During this time, we have gone through a huge cultural and organisational change to drive a better business model, creating a business that values consultancy and engineering skills alongside operational skills.  

This has at times been a painful and challenging journey (in common with most projects involving cultural change) but one that we are confident to recommend because the organisation created is then able to integrate design, construction and delivery into a single process, minimising interfaces and maximising value.  

We have seen first-hand the benefits of integrating design and build to maximise construction efficiency, create greater opportunities for adopting more best practice from manufacturing (for example off site fabrication), increase responsiveness to end users, maximise whole-life value, and encourage greater collaboration with other industries like mechanical, electrical, technology, customer contact and financial.

Consultancy acquisitions have been used to develop a differentiated capability for Amey and its parent Ferrovial. This is built from engineering but is now based on a whole life asset management proposition, being able to better optimise the value of asset portfolios.

"This has at times been a painful and challenging journey (in common with most projects involving cultural change) but one that we are confident to recommend because the organisation created is then able to integrate design, construction and delivery into a single process, minimising interfaces and maximising value." 

Whilst still being able to provide stand-alone design services, we have created a business model that promotes knowledge sharing and enables all parts of the business to gain access to expertise.  As a result, we have been able to target major contracts and genuinely present a differentiated offer in all our sectors.  Only then have we gone overseas and only where we are able to use our differentiated product in markets we understand.

We have done the hard miles on the cultural journey and overcome the challenges of having professional services and operational teams in the same business. .

We work together on projects for the same customers and co-located our teams with common objectives. We are able to challenge each other openly and breakdown the real and perceived barriers to improvement. 

The benefits have been significant and well worth the time and effort.  We are able to optimise whole-life value through this more integrated delivery; we are able to reduce costs, through fewer interfaces and deliver more innovative solutions and incorporate safety into the earliest stages of a project’s design.

It is a hard business to build, but if the challenges are faced head on with a mind-set of change, then from our experience, game changing improvements to our industry are most definitely achievable.