Collaboration at Crossrail
Summary
The Crossrail programme consists of individuals from multiple organisations. At Crossrail’s peak, over 10,000 people worked on the project across more than 40 construction sites with a supply chain that stretched over UK and Europe. This in itself presented challenges, with all individual organisations needing to come together to operate as one team. Effective team alignment and collaboration has been critical to developing high-performing and effective teams to secure programme delivery.
This paper is a study on collaboration, based on the insights of interviewees who were involved with the Crossrail programme clients, contractors, consultants and organisational development (OD) practitioners. The paper identifies and discusses five core themes which are critical to the development of a successful collaboration; culture; trust; leadership; aligned goals; organisational effectiveness; commercial and contracts.
The paper also identifies other themes which impact collaboration including: complexity; pride; conflict; strategic enablers; resilience. The paper also provides an OD practitioner perspective on the characteristics of collaborative individuals.
The paper concludes that the key collaboration challenge is about how effectively individuals and organisations adapt to change and how people are equipped to deal with the impact of change.
This study would of interest to individuals who seek to establish a collaborative culture within an organisation such as senior leadership team; consultants; and organisational development practitioners.