Breaking Down Boundaries Means Better Outcomes for Infrastructure Projects
The Boundaryless Organisation is a term coined by Jack Welch, former CEO of GE. Seeing how departmental boundaries and siloed thinking were delaying decisions and holding back growth in his organisation he set out to break them down.
GE became one of the most successful businesses in US corporate history as a result. Despite this proven success, departmental thinking and silos have a stubborn persistence in many organisations. They are still common in the infrastructure sector.
Large infrastructure contractors tend to have their rail teams, their road teams and their bridge teams. But how capable are they of working together and pooling their expertise to deliver better solutions to their customers? Your own experience will determine the answer to that question.
To the travelling public it must often look like these cross functional activities are rarely, if ever, integrated.
Why Do Silos Persist?
Pooling expertise to deliver better project outcomes seems like the natural thing to do. So what gets in the way? It can’t be technology. We have all the tools we need to plan, communicate and work together effectively. Which means it has to be culture.
In the right kind of culture everyone recognises that the needs of the project and of the customer come first. Goals and targets are aligned with customer business objectives and end user needs, rather than departmental priorities.
Our One Team Wessex framework is a great example of how multi-functional and multi-disciplinary teams make a real difference to outcomes. And throughout our infrastructure business we routinely use the expertise of our rail teams to expedite highways projects that cross or adjoin rail lines. Often, as with the Leigh Road Bridge on Slough Trading Estate, it is the combined rail, road and bridge expertise that brings about a successful outcome for all stakeholders. At Twickenham, our specialist teams from Construction and Rail are collaborating to deliver a new mixed-use development over the live operational main line railway.
Maybe it’s our size, or maybe it really is just our culture, but cross-departmental sharing of expertise is the natural way to work within Osborne. Greater efficiency and better outcomes for our customers prove the value of the approach in project after project.
