Enhancing construction efficiency through collaborative supply chain management
Developing long-term mutually successful relationships with supply chain partners is the key to delivering cutting edge, transformative, and large, complex projects.
Our robust supply chain management strategy means we only work with organisations which share the same commitments to quality and sustainability, and mirror our culture, values and behaviours.
Major Projects’ Pre-construction Director Mike Bilko writes about the significance of supply chain relationships, how early engagement is essential, and how collaboration needs to go well beyond its traditional definition…
Without our supply chain partners, Wates can’t build anything. That may sound like an overblown statement, but it isn’t, it’s the truth. The suppliers who bring their expertise and specialist services to our projects are critical to delivering on time, on budget, realising innovation and optimising sustainability for our clients.
When we talk to any of our supply chain partners, they all echo the same sentiment – the sooner they can get involved in the design and build process, the better the outcome. It’s fundamental to success and yet we are still evolving as an industry when it comes to early engagement and collaboration.
The Design for Manufacturing Assembly (DfMA) and MMC models require constructors to fix designs much earlier in the process. Traditional ways of working – calling in supply chain specialists at Stage 4 or beyond – lead to inefficiencies that only serve to extend timelines, both in pre-con and the build itself. Engaging earlier saves time, leads to better design and building performance, and delivers stronger cost certainty. So, it’s a necessity and we have to develop our relationships with this in mind, ideally starting at bid stage.
Building a culture of trust
Trust is the cornerstone of building successful relationships with partners. The construction industry has historically been an environment where businesses are being driven by their own agendas and objectives, rather than project goals as a whole. This is a wildly outdated view and counterproductive. When top-down cost pressures come into play, as they regularly do, quality can be compromised, defects increase, and this increases costs long-term. Nobody wins, and this is not a new challenge. The Latham Report in 1994, The Egan Report in 1998 and The Hackitt Report in 2018 have all criticised the fragmented nature of the UK construction industry, and while these reports have done much to drive efficiency improvements, it remains a persistent problem.
We will only move forward by creating a ‘one team’ ethos with our suppliers, and Wates is making positive strides that we believe are bucking traditional trends. Our approach to selecting our supply chain partners extolls the benefits of early engagement, builds trust and constantly bangs the drum for working collaboratively.
We are maximising early supply chain input by leveraging the use of SES Engineering Services and our offsite manufacturing facility, Prism. Having our solutions engineers work closely with us on a daily basis fosters the development of innovative and cost-effective solutions right from the start. This collaborative approach is particularly evident at AESC UK, where we’ve established a pop-up Prism facility using local labour to produce offsite modules. This strategy not only reduces onsite risk and increases efficiency but also enables us to swiftly adapt to the complex demands of a gigafactory.
Challenging the traditional definition of collaboration
Collaboration is perhaps one of the most overused words in the construction industry. Traditionally we talk about collaboration as short-term relationships around a project or a key element of its construction, or to problem solve. We need to go beyond the confines of this definition.
The level of collaboration we strive for is broader, more forward thinking; proactive rather than reactive. We look to partner with suppliers who have the expertise, skill set and drive to innovate and come up with creative solutions that differentiate us from the competition from the word go. We team with supply chain partners who are experts in their respective fields and treat them as such. We look to them to show us what value, innovation and creativity look like; the most successful projects will be measured on how well these elements combine.
We’ve seen some brilliant examples of early engagement and collaboration in recent projects. For example, at AESC UK in Sunderland, where we are currently building a large gigafactory, our offsite manufacturer Prism worked seamlessly with leading steel manufacturer Severfield to integrate the secondary steel within a large portal frame to save 1,000 onsite operative hours, significantly reducing health and safety risk and improving programme certainty. In Tottenham, a need to bring the completion date forward for a 30+ storey residential tower, to meet the Government’s Right to Buy deadline, saw us work with Staticus to design and manufacture a bespoke building maintenance unit that moved from floor plate to floor plate, saving 9% on the programme and reducing delivery risk. These are innovative solutions that showcase just what can be achieved when the spirit of trust and a one team approach are at their best.
In the end, it’s all about people
So how does Wates select its supply chain partners? We implement rigorous procedures to ensure our supply chain is financially stable, technically capable and has the required resources to deliver the project. Our starting point is always to ensure any potential supplier’s credentials are exemplary; it is then the people that influence the final decision-making. Are the people leading the business and the project the right team? Relationships are built on professional foundations and flourish best when people gel together.
We look for partners who share the same values, cultural ethos and perhaps most importantly, behaviours. It sounds simple, but the best working relationships are all about the people you work alongside – when you can establish a rapport, you can build that ‘one team’ approach that is absolutely crucial to driving innovation and delivering best value for all stakeholders!
