Award ‘first’ for Costain and Tarmac

Companies first in construction sector to win prestigious national collaboration award

COSTAIN and Tarmac are celebrating after winning a prestigious national award recognizing the success of their long-term partnership in building best-practice collaboration across the supply chain.

The companies scooped the Supply Chain award at the 2017 Institute for Collaborative Working Annual Collaboration Awards at a ceremony held at the House of Lords.

The awards celebrate the importance of collaborative working for UK industry and it was the first time that this category has been won by companies in the construction sector.

The judges singled out the tangible results that the partnership – which began in 2014 – has delivered in terms of environmental, cost and organizational benefits, along with the precedent it has set for collaboration in future cross-business working relationships and projects.

David Taylor, group commercial director at Costain, said: ‘This award is testament to the hard work that has gone into developing this successful partnership. It’s a great achievement that we should rightly be proud of.

‘This partnership with Tarmac is delivering real benefits for customers, and we are continually exploring ways to improve the model that we’ve jointly created. Both businesses have board-level commitment to replicating our current successes on other joint-project bids.’

Jeremy Greenwood, managing director of national commercial and construction solutions at Tarmac, added: ‘We are delighted to receive this national recognition of the success of our partnership with Costain in terms of the benefits it brings for customers.

‘Our new approach to collaboration has enabled us to set new benchmarks for sustainable highways construction on projects, while also delivering a cost saving of 11% of total package value. We’ve also established a new data-capture process to help us learn and adapt our approach for further joint projects.

‘The successes we have achieved together underline the importance of early engagement with supply partners, to unlock innovation and deliver significant benefits for both our customers and the industry as a whole.’

Dave Hawkins, operations director at the Institute for Collaborative Working, commented: ‘It’s extremely encouraging to see collaboration going beyond client and the main contractor to increasingly involve the whole supply chain, so Tarmac and Costain’s achievements here make them very worthy winners.’

Both companies initially began their partnership when they worked on the new Heysham to M6 link road. The project began in 2014, and their collaborative approach was subsequently formalized through the creation of a Global Collaborative Working Relationship.

Among the partnership’s prime objectives are to capture best-practice examples, develop operational toolkits, implement efficient techniques, introduce modern technologies and innovation, and instil collaborative behaviours across all levels within each organization.

The partners have built on the successes of Heysham by taking learnings from the scheme to subsequent projects, including London Bridge station and the A160/A180 Port of Immingham, where significant cost and carbon savings were achieved through early engagement, innovation and detailed planning.