Collaborative working

The council's approach to collaborative working was based upon the opportunity to adopt systems that would provide greater quality to each project. The benefits we sought are from a list, not all are applied to each project, we simply seek to maximise the benefits most appropriate to the work being undertaken. Experience to date has provided us with a ‘top twenty' list of potential benefits, learnt and developed through the collaborative working with our partners; these include:  

• Motivated construction partners, keen to work in a long term arrangement  
• Significantly improved health and safety  
• Ability to engage construction partners, early on in a project and obtain a contribution to the design and value process  
• Ability to start work on site quickly (shorter lead in periods before work commences on site)  
• Better quality of construction  
• Improved opportunity for completion on time and within budget due to more effective risk management  
• Consistency of design/constructor teams on multiple projects and an ability to apply learning from one project to the next  
• Construction partners prepared to  invest and participate in community activity and events  
• Greater certainty of work - Ability to work with the construction partner on training and recruiting local people and local supply chains  
• Ability to share cost savings  
• Open book working provides a real understanding and transparency of cost and risk  
• Fewer disputes  
• Ability to work through problems and find solutions, providing an understanding of restrictions or issues and concerns impacting on delivery in the construction business and for the project  
• Use of standard pre-agreed multi project contracts to reduce time and costs  
• Ability to work jointly and to be innovative  
• Quicker completion of final accounts to provide more reliable financial forecasts  
• Greater flexibility to meet expenditure targets

This page was last updated on 9 November 2009