business excellence at halcrow

Business Excellence in Halcrow

Sellafield November 2009

Contents

• Background to Consulting in Halcrow

• Our BEM journey

• Building blocks

• What went well & what didn’t?

Business structure

Latin AmericaEurope & Central

Asia

Middle East

North America

Asia Pacific

Regions

Main board

United Kingdom

Consulting

Property

Transport

Water

Business groups

India

The company is organised into seven domestic regions focused on five principal business groups

Maritime

Consulting business model

Staff

Capital

Resources/

Supply chain

Satisfied

staff

Profit

Customer

value

Client

Relationship

management

Better

Bidding

Project

managementBEM

Knowledge

managementTraining

Business processes

INPUTS OUTPUTSBUSINESS PROCESSES

PROJECTS

Planning and Economics Consulting Services

Evolution du portefeuille des risques

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

10/0

1/200

3

10/0

3/200

3

23/0

4/200

3

27/0

6/200

3

26/0

8/200

3

25/1

0/200

3

19/1

2/200

3

26/0

2/200

4

20/0

4/200

4

30/0

6/200

4

20/0

8/200

4

28/1

0/200

4

14/1

2/200

4

17/0

2/200

5

28/0

4/200

5

21/0

6/200

5

Nb

de

risq

ues

A évaluer

Acceptables

Inacceptables

LPC

The places we work

Slide 201-09-03

Headquartered in the UK, Halcrow has a total of 61 permanent offices - 29 in Britain and further 32 elsewhere in the world. The company is currently undertaking

commissions in over 70 different countries

Our BEM Journey…..

• Used the BEM since 2001

• Considered external assessment Group-wide in 2003 but too large and complex a task

• Halcrow Group focuses on facilitating individual elements of the BEM processes (SRD, staff survey, IIP, HGBS, etc)

• Consulting began to use BEM in 2004 to improve our performance and influence the way CBG and Halcrow Group does business

• Internal assessments in Consulting in 2005 & 2006

• External assessment in 2007 – scores >400

• External assessment in 2008 – WINNER!

• Advised clients such as Alstom; Go-ahead Group; Keolis; DfT Rail

The Starting Point: Engaged people

...oh no...not another *******

initiative!

Why bother?

Let’s go through the motions to

keep management

happy!

New fangled spin for common

sense

What’s wrong with how

we’ve always done things?

Engagement 1: Link BEM to our vision

SPIRIT

• Successful – world class in the eyes of our clients and our people

• Profitable – 8% to 10% return on net earnings

• Integrated – global planning and advisory business

• Respected – brand defined by added value

• Inclusive – a diverse and empowered workforce playing an active role in their local communities

• Talented – highly skilled, motivated people valued by our clients

Engagement 2: link to business outcomes

• Clients starting to use BEM• Also, other prestigious organisations• Tender documents sometimes structured

around BEM• Need to align with clients

Engagement 3: present the evidence

Business excellence winners and control groupAverage % change in performance measures

0%20%40%60%80%

100%120%140%

Stock

pric

e

Opera

ting

incom

e

Sales

Retur

n on

sales

No Em

ploye

es

Total a

sset

s

Award winners

Control Group

>Twice as

good!

>Twice as

good!

The Basic Building Blocks: Results

• Staff survey

• Client survey

• Three years’ of key performance data

More elaborate building blocks: Process

• Clarity on key processes

• A process framework into which other processes are integrated

• An approach to CSR

• ‘Corporate ‘DNA’ covering values, vision, etc

Essential Evidence

• A strategy

• …that you have followed

• ….ideally with some demonstrable success

• Benchmarking: you against competitors/others

• Partnerships with have been built and have delivered something

• 3 years of data

Transport for London - Overall client satisfaction results

0.00

10.00

20.00

30.00

40.00

50.00

60.00

70.00

80.00

90.00

100.00

2004 2005 2006 2008

EG: UK 2008 client survey results summary

Ahead of best competitor in 9 of 10 factors

Making it all hang together: RADAR

There’s the theory (Approach)

You have actually implemented it (Deployment)

And you have evidence to back this up (Results)

You have assessed whether it is working (Assessment)

You have reviewed the results and made changes where necessary (Review)

LESS LIKELY TO HAVE

MORE LIKELY TO HAVE

What went right

• Senior team engaged at early stage

• Core message: ‘do this because our clients expect it’…helped

• Client survey and staff survey in place well in advance (since 2002)

• We communicated regularly with staff through training, presentations and newsletters

• We engaged with clients and have built up a new service line

What did not go so well?

• We did not really understand how or why our processes operated until quite late in the journey

• We never got to grips with CSR (Society Results)

• We would have benefited from better engagement with internal stakeholders in our complex organisation

• Our targets were pretty random until late in the process

• Benchmarks against other organisations were poor

Where we learned and improved

• We now understand why process is important!

• We try to monitor and review more

• Our targets match our strategy much better

• We put a lot more effort into communicating a vision to our staff

• We now understand the difference between having an Approach and Deploying it!

• We still need an effective and useful CSR policy

What next?

• Use the BEM to manage the business

• Roll out in overseas locations

• Aim for 700 points in two years’ time!

• …And spread the word about the benefits of business excellence!