Enterprise delivery represents one of the most significant changes to infrastructure delivery in a generation. By aligning asset owners, designers, contractors and suppliers around shared outcomes rather than individual contracts, enterprise models have the potential to improve performance, reduce waste and accelerate innovation.
As the electrification and plant partner in the UK’s first enterprise delivery programme for railway renewals, Octavius understands what it takes to help create and sustain a successful enterprise delivery entity. The right organisational culture and behaviours are as essential to success as technical and programme management expertise.
Prioritise the enterprise
Enterprise delivery requires partners’ teams to subsume their own corporate identity in order to contribute effectively to the enterprise. The extent to which this happens differs, but the ability to comfortably co-exist as both a member of the enterprise and partner organisation is absolute. It is necessary to contribute to the partner organisation while also meeting the needs of the enterprise, to a degree serving two masters.
In the enterprise the partners’ and capable owner’s rewards are bound together in a commercial agreement based upon the success of the enterprise, not the individual partners. So there needs to be accommodation for situations when the best course of action for the enterprise, is not the best course of action for an individual partner. Integration has to be designed into decision-making, planning, risk management and commercial behaviours from the beginning.
Leadership is probably the most important element of a successful enterprise. Leaders have a critical role in modelling enterprise behaviours. If senior teams continue to prioritise organisational interests over enterprise outcomes, the wider workforce will follow. Successful enterprises are characterised by leaders who demonstrate openness, trust and a willingness to solve problems collectively.
The capacity to work collaboratively is core. In practice this includes the ability and willingness to:
- Trust partners to lead in areas where they have the strongest expertise, even if this means adopting processes or solutions different from your own
- Recognise other partners may have better ways of doing things
- Share your own best practice with others
- Set ego aside and ask for help if needed
- Flex, change, and adapt to new ways of working
- Know when to leave your corporate identity at the door, and assume the enterprise identity
- Work together to deliver the best outcome for the enterprise, which may not always align with your company’s needs
Moving to an enterprise delivery model is not like throwing a switch. These attributes will develop and evolve over time. Significant and sustained investment in cultural change management is necessary to embed new behaviours.
No longer adversaries
The infrastructure sector’s current attitudes to collaborative working are not homogenous. Even outside of the enterprise delivery environment there are many examples of contracting mechanisms that encourage collaborative working. Adversarial behaviours, however, remain common.
To succeed in an enterprise delivery environment, adversarial behaviours need to be unlearnt. This applies equally to the partners that comprise the enterprise delivery entity, and the supply chain companies working for them.
Long established attitudes need to be challenged. Customers, the Capable Owner, should avoid perceiving suppliers and partners as trying to game the system for financial advantage, the supply chain should avoid scepticism about the level of long-term commitment from customers. All parties need to contribute to the creation of clear accountability through collaboration, rather than a contractual blame culture. Such changes will be experienced by management teams but are unlikely to result in a significantly different working experience for front-line teams.
Allow good time
Patience and realism are also crucial attributes for organisations involved in infrastructure enterprise delivery. All partners are likely to be among the best in their respective fields. But this does not automatically equate to a high performing enterprise from the get-go. Achieving optimal performance takes time. As most infrastructure programmes are long-term undertakings, a long gestation period for the fully fledged enterprise need not be seen as an immediate risk.
Digital Transformation is one of the key pillars of the Project 13 model for enterprise delivery, and an area in which patience is necessary. Progressing the adoption of common digital tools can be among the biggest challenges to the creation of a high performing enterprise. It is probable that all enterprise partners use different digital tools and platforms. As a result, it will take time to establish the common ground that enables partners to achieve the level of digital commonality that facilitates enterprise level reporting and communication. It needs to be understood that the initial lack of a common architecture can make data sharing, transfer and security a brake on the speed at which the enterprise develops.
Differing levels of familiarity with existing physical assets and infrastructure can also affect the speed at which an enterprise can reach its full potential, and create differentials in partners’ progress towards achieving the enterprise’s goals. Partners with an established presence, who are already working on an asset base, will have an advantage – in terms of speed of enterprise development – over partners working on those assets for the first time.
Need for bravery
Having the bravery and appetite to try something new and progressive is a prerequisite for organisations undertaking enterprise delivery. A key element of the necessary bravery is nurturing psychological safety. Successful enterprises create environments where people can raise concerns, challenge assumptions and admit mistakes without fear of blame. This psychological safety accelerates learning and improves decision quality. Enterprise attributes which help foster psychological safety include open-book transparency, no-blame reviews, encouraging challenge and dissent, and clear ownership without blame.
Rewards of enterprise
Achieving successful infrastructure enterprise delivery is not easy. The approach is untested in many areas of UK infrastructure creation, renewal and maintenance. So there is no blueprint to follow and not a great deal of precedent to turn to. The test of an enterprise culture is not whether partners collaborate in principle, but whether that collaboration improves outcomes: safer delivery, better programme certainty, less duplication, lower waste and a more resilient asset for the owner and end user.
Enterprise delivery defined
Enterprise delivery is a programme or project delivery model that seeks to remove traditional segmented customer, consultant, contractor relationships and reform those parties into a single collaborative enterprise to deliver the asset owner’s – or Capable Owner’s – outcomes.
Under the Project 13 banner the Infrastructure Client Group has developed an enterprise delivery framework championed by the Institution of Civil Engineers and National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority – among others. Project 13 is founded upon five pillars: Capable owner, governance, organisation, integration and digital transformation.
The traditional model can be a barrier to efficient delivery, innovation and the sharing of best practice. Enterprise delivery brings stakeholders together, establishing long-term relationships that encourage the sharing of knowledge, best practice, and experience. Collectively the enterprise’s constituent companies are better able to innovate, saving time, cost and waste. The aim is to create trusted business-to-business relationships focused on win:win outcomes.
Here are more Infrastructure Enterprise Delivery resources you might find valuable:
Talk to us
Contact us at transformative@octavius.co.uk if you want to know more about the ways Octavius is enabling infrastructure enterprise delivery