One Community

We recognise that in order to fulfil the fundamental principles of our contract, a fully embedded innovative and integrated supply chain is required, working together with ourselves and our stakeholders in a long term relationship.

We are proud to be One Community.

Our community comprises six main supply chain partners - Jackson Civil Engineering, Osborne, Tarmac, Skanska and R&W Civil Engineering, alongside our strategic supply chain partner, Connect Plus Services - all working in partnership with Connect Plus. Together with the wider supply chain, we come together to collectively develop and share like-minded values, behaviours and initiatives.

The way we work

As a community, we work with a clear purpose and vision. The way we work is constantly evolving, enabling us to build a community that works together to deliver greater value to all.

Our approach has challenged the traditional industry barriers and normal adversarial behaviours, enabling innovation, joint risk

management and proactive leadership involvement.

This culture has been acknowledged as industry best practice and is certified to ISO44001 (collaborative business relationship management systems).

Our community vision

Our community vision is to create a long-term, sustainable, supportive and innovative community culture.

We aim to do that by driving a whole-life approach to the maintenance and enhancement of the M25 asset, while continuously improving the service we offer.

We promote a culture that embraces and seeks out change and integration at all levels, one that puts customer and stakeholder relationships at the heart of what we do.

Our leadership

We recognise that our innovative one community culture needs to be actively led and embedded by a dedicated leadership community - this is the role of the collaborative transformational steering group (CTSG).

Our community leadership qualities are set out here, in our competency framework. They are continually measured and monitored, and will continue to be so throughout the framework agreement and beyond.

Managing community relationships

The success of our community relies on strong relationships and an integrated supply chain, working with us to deliver our contract while supporting the long term interests of each other.

We encourage everyone to be positively interdependent across all operations, cultivating attitudes and behaviours that are aligned to the long-term interests of all, such as, thinking 'programme level, not project level'. We must also encourage others to think about the implications that individual actions and projects can have on the whole community.

We actively promote a strong, evolving and high performing environment in which to work, one that is based on the values and behaviours of an 'intelligent client' approach. This includes:

  • Strategic performance management
  • Broad supply chain integration
  • Transparent joint risk and opportunity management
  • Being forward-thinking
  • Acting innovatively and being open to new ideas
  • An overall proactive and agile approach to working styles and management
  • Constantly challenging the status quo to learn, improve and create value for all

Delivering value through innovation

As a community, we recognise the important role that innovation plays in helping to deliver value across the whole-life cost of the contract. In light of this, we've established a strong and effective innovation programme, led by a dedicated steering group.

One of the aims of the group is to explore developments in asset management techniques, not only in the UK but across the world.

It is by being open to new, innovative and longer-lasting materials and techniques that we will deliver value to our customers, community, Highways England and the wider industry.

 

Innovation is woven through everything we do; whether it is an intelligent procurement strategy to deliver more innovative products from a particular supplier, or a new method of detecting defects in concrete. It could be developing a method for replacing bearings without putting our workers at risk, or recycling our own planings into a new surface material.

The steering group will also implement and promote research and development across the wider community, exploring the efficiency of our maintenance techniques and how we can reduce the safety and environmental impact across the network.

 

 

Health, safety & wellbeing

Our community works together to embed positive health, safety and wellbeing behaviours. When developing solutions, we consider their whole-life maintenance, defining how each will be safely maintained throughout its life.

We aim to lead the way by constantly learning from each other and sharing information - simplifying our processes to ensure our community operates in a safe environment without risk.

 

 

Commercial

Working together as one community encourages commercial transparency and dispute avoidance. We work collaboratively to deliver intelligent procurement and proactively manage risk and opportunity.

We challenge the conventional way of working, improving our performance and commercial assurance.

Performance

Together we own, develop and deliver projects across the network - on time and to schedule.

As one team, we work strategically, ensuring more integrated and efficient programming, together with effective and proactive stakeholder management. This results in transparent, timely and accurate performance management.

Environment

Sharing best practice across the community supports our holistic approach to the environment, with emphasis on the ‘whole-life’ of the project, not just immediate, short-term actions.

We work to enhance habitats, prevent pollution and optimise the use of natural resources. Benchmarking our performance helps drive improvement and helps protect the M25 environment.

Quality

By sharing best practice throughout our community, we'll achieve continuous improvement and technical excellence.

Continuous improvement is at the heart of what we do - through predicting, measuring and improving outcomes, as well as learning from each other. We drive technical excellence by challenging existing solutions and incorporating successful international and cross-industry practices into the way we work on the M25, and sharing this best practice with our community and the industry.

Transparency and trust

For any community relations to be a success, transparency and trust are essential. As a community we agree to always:

  • Operate fairly and transparently
  • Manage programme, project and relationship risk
  • Communicate clearly and at the appropriate time
  • Develop and share forward programme information
  • Administer the contracts effectively
  • Provide early warnings of change and work effectively and proactively within the Connect Plus Gateway Process
  • Provide accurate and timely reporting