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As Businesses, We Don’t Get to Decide What Good Value Looks Like

In a series of articles, CEO Andy Steele will be looking at how the current crisis will affect the way we do business, and whether it will foster new thinking and new ways of working to help the construction industry address its deep rooted challenges on productivity and value.

In all businesses, not just construction, there’s a tendency to spend too much time looking inwards. This is partly down to human nature. We assign more importance to the things that capture our attention. Inside any business there are more than enough things to occupy our thoughts and monopolise our attention.

The problem is that by looking inwards we will never discover the thing we need to know most of all: what our customers see as ‘good value.’ We then won’t know what might encourage them to make purchase decisions on any other basis than price. Tempting as it is to assume that we know what value looks like, and that we can define it sitting around our own boardroom tables, eventually we have to test that hypothesis in the harsh light of the procurement process.

Whatever analysis and strategy tools we use to position our business there’s a simple and fundamental truth that was summed up perfectly (as ever) by Peter Drucker: “The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer.”

Success can only be built on delivering projects in ways that represent value through their eyes.

We spend a lot of time with our customers so that we can understand the things they value. We can then shape our business and ways of working to consistently deliver against those objectives.

Based on our discussions, here’s what we believe value looks like:

  • Understanding that our customers don’t live in a perfect world. They have problems and challenges like the rest of us and they are looking for partners who understand the bigger picture beyond the individual project being procured.
  • Being able to tune project delivery to meet wider corporate and social needs.
  • Construction projects are still plagued by cost and timing overruns and contractual disputes over what is, or isn’t, a change in requirements. This wastes time, money and energy.
  • Problem solving. The unexpected happens on almost every project. Customers want to know that we can take these events in our stride and keep projects on track.
  • This is the essence of any effective partnership.
  • Showing that we care about reliability, whole life costs and what happens long after we’ve left the site.

These are the definitions of value that we continuously strive to deliver against, which is the best way for us to create and keep our growing customer base.

Our Customer & Quality Focus

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