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Is Collaboration seen as a Hard Road to Travel?

“Last year, Highways England shared its plans to deliver the government’s largest roads investment in a generation. Their aim – to help provide a safer and quicker network for millions of people and businesses.
Highways England stated that it wanted an aligned supply chain which shared its long-term goal to build capability and deliver a significant increase in roads investment. This is all underpinned by Highways England’s commitments to safety, customer service and delivery.

No-one said collaboration was easy- it takes sustained commitment from all parties, trust and the ability to have some really challenging conversations.

Collaboration creates happy end users and this has to filter down. Feedback helps create more positive relationships with all stakeholders as well as the end users. Taking a collaborative approach provides a platform for both supply chain partners and customers to deliver the highest standards and continually improve working practices.  That way, we are all working together to achieve the best possible results.

The best working relationships are the ones where our supply chain partners take time to listen to customers needs and frustrations – and vice versa. This approach will help partnerships to innovate and deliver all projects successfully and sustainably and efficiently.

Most successful projects in today’s world rely on collaboration between all parties on a project. We are seeing that increasingly, our customers are pushing for this and for this to happen right at the conception stage of projects. They are also looking for collaboration to last long- i.e. well beyond the completion of projects. For this to work it has to be effective collaboration, not just lip service.

The one team approach where collaboration can shine is the right first time approach, which means that all the contributions and skills of supply chain deliver best value for money and optimise output.”

Mike Todd is the Lead Business Development Manager for Infrastructure at Osborne.

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