The Interview | Steve Moore, Environment Agency
Clients hold the key to greater infrastructure sector collaboration
By Sotiris Kanaris
We [the infrastructure sector] have to change and the good news is we are changing, but probably too slowly.” This is the view of Environment Agency director of operations for major projects and programme delivery Steve Moore. He is referring to the need for greater collaboration between clients and delivery partners.
Moore identifies a positive shift in collaboration when he compares current projects to those of the 1980s, when he joined the sector.
STEVE MOORE
At that time the industry was “very much about command and control and the client was always right”, he says.
Over the past four decades, Moore has been involved in various projects around the country, having worked for Tarmac’s construction arm – which became part of Carillion in 1999 – for 20 years before joining the Environment Agency in 2001. In his current role he leads the team responsible for delivering the government body’s flood and coastal defence projects and is managing the relationship with its delivery partners.
Although change is happening, Moore finds that historical working practices are still driving the client/contractor relationship.
He explains that there is “far too much focus on driving down cost” and that there is little effort to understand the goals and ambitions of project team members.
“ We need to create a working environment where delivery partners are able to speak up, be critical friends, share ideas and concerns
“Why are we surprised when we just get what we ask for, coupled with a long list of compensation events and disputes?” he asks.
Moore says collaboration is important because “clients do not always know what they need” and that they often try to reinvent the wheel when it comes to tackling issues on projects.
“To address this, we need to create a working environment where delivery partners, such as contractors and consultants, are able to speak up, be critical friends, share ideas and concerns and, importantly, work on a common purpose,” says Moore.
He points to the fact that it is clients that hold the key to greater collaboration.
For such an environment to be developed, Moore emphasises the need for clients to build trust with their delivery partners and the supply chain.
This can be done through regular communication where “nothing is off the table”.
He adds that having frameworks that span several years like those developed by the Environment Agency has helped build long-term relationships, leading to more collaborative behaviours.
The Environment Agency’s £2.6bn flood and coastal defence capital investment programme, which ran from 2015 to 2021, had a target to protect 300,000 homes but exceeded the aim by 14,000 homes. Moore says this achievement would not have been possible without collaboration between all parties.
Moore says that collaboration was key to protecting 14,000 more homes from flood risk than planned for the 2015 to 2021 capital investment programme
The programme was not an immediate success though. He says that two years into the programme, the Environment Agency realised that work was falling behind and invited the directors of the delivery partners to collectively discuss a solution. The result was a new delivery model with the creation of project delivery units.
“We started to bring together delivery partners and allocate them work, enabling them to get on with the delivery” Moore explains.
The benefits of this new approach influenced the way the Environment Agency designed its £5.2bn capital investment programme for the period between 2021 and 2027. This aims to protect 336,000 properties.
Moore says: “[Under the current framework] we have split the country up in six parts and through the procurement process allocated all the work in each area to one contractor and one designer. And the challenge for them is to work together with our team to find the best way of delivering that.”
When the Environment Agency procured this framework in 2019, it opted to use NEC4, a contract form which promotes collaboration.
But he warns that the form of contract is not a silver bullet. “I’ve seen people use NEC4 in a way that doesn’t feel collaborative at all.
“Let’s remember contracts are tools to help you reach the outcome that you’re after. They are not there to constrain, challenge and micromanage. I don’t think it’s about the contracts, it’s about the attitude of the people and the environments they create,” he says.
Moore says that in recent years there has been more collaboration between the Environment Agency and its delivery partners than before and that this has enabled it to better adapt to changing needs and opportunities.
“Yet it requires huge effort, relentless leadership and a genuine one-team mindset. Even now our delivery partners, in my opinion, show too much respect to the client that is maybe underpinned by a desire to obtain work well into the future,” he adds.
Moore says clients should also work together more to trigger innovation. He is the co-chair of the Infrastructure Industry Innovation Partnership (i3P), a community of client and supply chain organisations which has made a commitment to deliver collaborative innovation.
Moore finds that fostering greater collaboration between clients is challenging because “they will see that delivering their own work in their own way is easier than collaborating”.
He says this is evidenced by great ideas and innovations which benefited one client not being picked up by others. There is a need for client forums to share these ideas and think of ways to implement them together at a larger scale, he says.
“That’s why I think i3P is unique in that space,” he adds.
“It’s about delivery, not just about idea generation.”
He says that collaboration between infrastructure clients could also help the infrastructure sector create a strong future workforce as no individual client can fix the skills shortage issue.
“We should stop competing, driving up rates and try to find ways where we have stability in our workforce and strategic plans to grow the people and skills of the future. It sounds ambitious but we have a responsibility to give it a go,” says Moore.
He adds that climate, financial, skills and delivery challenges cannot be solved by any individual company.
“Yet we still hunker down in our bunkers and persist to try to solve all these problems by ourselves. For me, collaboration is the only way we will ever solve them,” he concludes.