The Context

1995 to 2005‍

In the five-year capital expenditure programme 1990-1995, Dwr Cymru Welsh Water (DCWW) followed a traditional route for procurement with competitive tendering based on detail designs. The relationship with suppliers was claim-orientated, the budget overran by 100M pounds, and they missed the deadlines set by the regulator.  This was typical of capital expenditure programmes prior to 1990.

1995-2000

In the next five-year capital expenditure programme 1995-2000, they were required to make 15% efficiency savings by the regulator OFWAT, and the budget was reduced to 850M pounds.  They adopted project partnering, using JCP as their partnering facilitators, with a focus on relationship building and target cost contracts with pain/gain arrangements. They outperformed the budget by 10%(760M pounds) and outperformed the regulatory requirements.

2000-2005

OFWAT requested a further 16%improvement for the 2000-2005 capital expenditure budget, and Welsh Water took partnering as the next step and formed 4 strategic alliances, with 10 partner organisations to achieve this.

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The Intervention

Initially, JCP worked with the 5 separate regional delivery teams to establish a collaborative culture change within each.   As the benefits started to become apparent, JCP was asked to work across the 5 teams to develop a pan-alliance culture change and common understanding.   Over the course of the 5-year AMP3 period,JCP engaged with over 1,500 professional staff from the main, supply chain, and design partners in collaborative working awareness and collaborative skills development workshops.

JCP also established structure and processes to establish joint collaborative improvement and best practice teams.

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The Impact

• Critical mass achieved! People understood the business benefits that could accrue from successful collaborative working and how to deploy the behaviours to achieve those benefits - and they wanted it to work.
• A climate of continuous improvement and innovation flourished
• Cross functional and organisation improvement teams (Task and FinishTeams) were established.  Cost saving business benefits included:
  • Standardised designs (with build ability input from contractors and their supply chains) adopted by all design houses
  • Streamlining and minimising of reporting requirements
  • Harmonising of different organisations’ IT needs
  • A common commissioning and handover process
• Best practice teams established to share corporate knowledge and best practice. Examples were:
  • A cross-organisation H&S team formed which worked actively to promote and achieve outstanding H&S performance
  • A cross-organisational team procuring on behalf of all parties
  • A conservation team

The cost of Capital delivery was slashed by 60% over this 10-year period.