Sector: Manufacturing

By Jonathan Norman
February 25th 2020

What can our Members Learn from Other Sectors? Highlight Report

During our Annual Conference, Dame Inga Beale in her keynote speech reflected on how her moments of inspiration and innovation often came from interactions with people outside of her immediate circle of work, typically from a different industry sector. Whilst there isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ approach, there is certainly merit in exploring what makes other industry sectors successful and how the lessons learnt could be applied to the major projects industry. For example, why is it that productivity growth in manufacturing is so far ahead of other industry sectors and what can we learn from them? Similarly, why does the automotive sector invest so much in research, development and innovation compared to other sectors and what can we learn from them? The objective of this event is to take a step back from the world of major projects that is very familiar to most of us, in order to explore and learn what other industries have done to overcome their challenges and ultimately develop and deliver their projects successfully. This half-day seminar will be a series of talks from non-member organisations from a wide range of industry sectors including, but not limited to, manufacturing, automotive, art, aerospace and technology. Our members will have the opportunity to learn from first-hand experiences and success stories shared by leading experts from different fields.

By Jonathan Norman
February 25th 2020

What can our Members Learn from Other Sectors? Full Report

During our Annual Conference, Dame Inga Beale in her keynote speech reflected on how her moments of inspiration and innovation often came from interactions with people outside of her immediate circle of work, typically from a different industry sector. Whilst there isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ approach, there is certainly merit in exploring what makes other industry sectors successful and how the lessons learnt could be applied to the major projects industry. For example, why is it that productivity growth in manufacturing is so far ahead of other industry sectors and what can we learn from them? Similarly, why does the automotive sector invest so much in research, development and innovation compared to other sectors and what can we learn from them? The objective of this event is to take a step back from the world of major projects that is very familiar to most of us, in order to explore and learn what other industries have done to overcome their challenges and ultimately develop and deliver their projects successfully. This half-day seminar will be a series of talks from non-member organisations from a wide range of industry sectors including, but not limited to, manufacturing, automotive, art, aerospace and technology. Our members will have the opportunity to learn from first-hand experiences and success stories shared by leading experts from different fields.

By Jonathan Norman
July 10th 2018

Knowledge Management Full Report

Whilst we aspire to deliver more and faster the reality, within major projects is that the speed of complexity and change is now outpacing our ability to learn from what’s happening. Initiatives such as the Olympics 2012 and Crossrail Learning Legacies are wonderful resources that allow us to learn from the past, but we need to develop new skills and new processes to learn from the present and from each other. Knowledge and Learning in Major Projects builds on the work of the Major Projects Knowledge Hub to explore three aspects of learning: Explicit Learning – the structures, processes and systems that enable us to capture and disseminate what we know about the engineering and technical aspects of major projects delivery. Tacit Learning – the social structures, behaviours and technology that help us to share what we believe, feel or know intuitively about managing large teams and large emerging projects and Social Learning – the experience of learning in the moment from interacting with, listening to and watching how those around us approach everyday tasks and more complex challenges. Learning from mistakes, from success and from innovation is one the unrealised areas of project performance as we remain fated to reinvent the wheel, repeat and relive our painful experiences with each new project. At this event we will hear the experience from some of our leading project organizations; draw on advice from pioneers in the use of social and collaborative tools within the enterprise; and experience the power of collaborating and knowledge sharing in a large-scale peer assist session. All designed to help us break this cycle of non-learning.

By Jonathan Norman
July 10th 2018

Knowledge Management Highlight Report

Whilst we aspire to deliver more and faster the reality, within major projects is that the speed of complexity and change is now outpacing our ability to learn from what’s happening. Initiatives such as the Olympics 2012 and Crossrail Learning Legacies are wonderful resources that allow us to learn from the past, but we need to develop new skills and new processes to learn from the present and from each other. Knowledge and Learning in Major Projects builds on the work of the Major Projects Knowledge Hub to explore three aspects of learning: Explicit Learning – the structures, processes and systems that enable us to capture and disseminate what we know about the engineering and technical aspects of major projects delivery. Tacit Learning – the social structures, behaviours and technology that help us to share what we believe, feel or know intuitively about managing large teams and large emerging projects and Social Learning – the experience of learning in the moment from interacting with, listening to and watching how those around us approach everyday tasks and more complex challenges. Learning from mistakes, from success and from innovation is one the unrealised areas of project performance as we remain fated to reinvent the wheel, repeat and relive our painful experiences with each new project. At this event we will hear the experience from some of our leading project organizations; draw on advice from pioneers in the use of social and collaborative tools within the enterprise; and experience the power of collaborating and knowledge sharing in a large-scale peer assist session. All designed to help us break this cycle of non-learning.

By Jonathan Norman
February 23rd 2016

Productivity: working smarter not harder Full Report

Productivity is one of the most significant components of successful project delivery and is fundamental to National competitiveness. Achieving expected or improved levels of productivity in our industry sectors relies upon the strength and availability of skilled and motivated labour, word class processes and techniques, supply chain efficiency, innovation, and the sharing of best practice. Our challenge is to understand the factors that are impacting productivity and to find solutions that result in sustainable improvement.

But what is productivity, and why is it so important?

Productivity is the measure of the effectiveness of productive effort of a labour and capital, and is measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input. At a National level productivity is a key metric for Governments to assess trends in employment rates, salary levels and economic GDP output. At the level of projects delivery, productivity metrics identify the utilisation and efficiency of value-generating resources; where low productivity here could imply an inefficient deployment of workers and/or an over-resourced project.

This full-day workshop will offer an insight into how organisations from across Government, businesses, infrastructure clients and their supply chains are performing on productivity and how they plan to improve resource productivity across major projects. This will include hearing about how leading organisations have successfully improved their project productivity by utilising smarter resource planning techniques and harnessing technology.

This event will also be bringing together speakers from different angles on the productivity debate, including a look at the macro economic factors, a client’s view on stimulating greater productivity in projects and a view of how supply chains are meeting these challenges.

The key topics that will be discussed are as follows:
• Macro-economic productivity factors, and a look at how Government plan to tackle the UK’s poor productivity metrics
• Planning early to achieve the same outcomes by working smarter not harder
• Real-life examples to understand the barriers to productivity improvement
• A structured debate around how technology can be harnessed to enable improved productivity
• Case studies of productivity improvement from Jaguar Land Rover
• An international perspective of overcoming project productivity challenges

By Jonathan Norman
February 23rd 2016

Productivity: working smarter not harder Highlight Report

Productivity is one of the most significant components of successful project delivery and is fundamental to National competitiveness. Achieving expected or improved levels of productivity in our industry sectors relies upon the strength and availability of skilled and motivated labour, word class processes and techniques, supply chain efficiency, innovation, and the sharing of best practice. Our challenge is to understand the factors that are impacting productivity and to find solutions that result in sustainable improvement.

But what is productivity, and why is it so important?

Productivity is the measure of the effectiveness of productive effort of a labour and capital, and is measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input. At a National level productivity is a key metric for Governments to assess trends in employment rates, salary levels and economic GDP output. At the level of projects delivery, productivity metrics identify the utilisation and efficiency of value-generating resources; where low productivity here could imply an inefficient deployment of workers and/or an over-resourced project.

This full-day workshop will offer an insight into how organisations from across Government, businesses, infrastructure clients and their supply chains are performing on productivity and how they plan to improve resource productivity across major projects. This will include hearing about how leading organisations have successfully improved their project productivity by utilising smarter resource planning techniques and harnessing technology.

This event will also be bringing together speakers from different angles on the productivity debate, including a look at the macro economic factors, a client’s view on stimulating greater productivity in projects and a view of how supply chains are meeting these challenges.

The key topics that will be discussed are as follows:
• Macro-economic productivity factors, and a look at how Government plan to tackle the UK’s poor productivity metrics
• Planning early to achieve the same outcomes by working smarter not harder
• Real-life examples to understand the barriers to productivity improvement
• A structured debate around how technology can be harnessed to enable improved productivity
• Case studies of productivity improvement from Jaguar Land Rover
• An international perspective of overcoming project productivity challenges

By Jonathan Norman
February 23rd 2016

Productivity: working smarter not harder Short Report

Productivity is one of the most significant components of successful project delivery and is fundamental to National competitiveness. Achieving expected or improved levels of productivity in our industry sectors relies upon the strength and availability of skilled and motivated labour, word class processes and techniques, supply chain efficiency, innovation, and the sharing of best practice. Our challenge is to understand the factors that are impacting productivity and to find solutions that result in sustainable improvement.

But what is productivity, and why is it so important?

Productivity is the measure of the effectiveness of productive effort of a labour and capital, and is measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input. At a National level productivity is a key metric for Governments to assess trends in employment rates, salary levels and economic GDP output. At the level of projects delivery, productivity metrics identify the utilisation and efficiency of value-generating resources; where low productivity here could imply an inefficient deployment of workers and/or an over-resourced project.

This full-day workshop will offer an insight into how organisations from across Government, businesses, infrastructure clients and their supply chains are performing on productivity and how they plan to improve resource productivity across major projects. This will include hearing about how leading organisations have successfully improved their project productivity by utilising smarter resource planning techniques and harnessing technology.

This event will also be bringing together speakers from different angles on the productivity debate, including a look at the macro economic factors, a client’s view on stimulating greater productivity in projects and a view of how supply chains are meeting these challenges.

The key topics that will be discussed are as follows:
• Macro-economic productivity factors, and a look at how Government plan to tackle the UK’s poor productivity metrics
• Planning early to achieve the same outcomes by working smarter not harder
• Real-life examples to understand the barriers to productivity improvement
• A structured debate around how technology can be harnessed to enable improved productivity
• Case studies of productivity improvement from Jaguar Land Rover
• An international perspective of overcoming project productivity challenges

By Jonathan Norman
September 23rd 2015

33rd Annual Conference: Major Projects – Opportunities for a New Government Short Report

The aim of the Major Projects Annual Conference this year is to help us to formulate some advice to the incoming Government. Draft letter to Government – see below:

Dear New Government,

Congratulations on your recent electoral success. No doubt you will be using the next few months to focus on what is important and to prioritise in advance of the next spending review.

The major projects that you have in your portfolio – including Crossrail, HS2, Universal Credit, the Maritime Portfolio, the Borders portfolio (Home Office) and Digital Britain (Broadband) along with many others that are being delivered within Departments will make up a significant proportion of your spending commitment for the life of this Parliament, if not the next.

We believe that we, the Major Projects Community, can help you to realise the benefits that these projects aim to achieve in a cost effective manner through the identification of savings and investment opportunities. Our annual conference, held on 24th September, deliberated how we can help you to tackle four key issues:

 Improving productivity
 Reducing costs
 Improving agility
 Incorporating innovation
 Building a sustainable workforce

Our recommendations to you are…..

If you want to contribute to the development of the recommendations to Government and to help formulate our thinking as to how best to support Government in the delivery of their huge portfolio of programmes and projects, then register your interest to attend our Annual Conference by sending an email to: events@majorprojects.org

Topic: Major Projects – Opportunities for a New Government

Date: Day 1: 23 September (18:45 hrs drinks reception) Day 2: 24th September 2015 (8:30 – 16:30 hrs)

Venue: The Royal Berkshire Hotel, Ascot, Berkshire, SL5 0PP

We are pleased to announce that we have already confirmed John Kingman, Second Permanent Secretary, Ian Jones, Chief of Operations, Royal Mail, Raphael Scheps, CEO, Converge, Maggie Buggie, Global Head of Digital Sales and Marketing, Cap Gemini, MIchael Macfarlane, Head of Programme for River Class Batch 2, BAE Systems, James Barry Head of Customer Business, Rolls-Royce, Dr David Marsh, Director, DIGA (MoD) and five panelists: Neil Couling CBE, Director General, Universal Credit Programme, Dr Michele Dix CBE, MD Crossrail 2,Dr Peter Hansford, Government Construction Adviser, Anna Stewart, CE, Laing O’Rourke as contributors at this conference.

Guest Speaker, Wednesday evening 23rd September 2015: Sir Danny Alexander, (Former Chief Secretary to the Treasury 2010–2015)

By Jonathan Norman
September 23rd 2015

33rd Annual Conference: Major Projects – Opportunities for a New Government Highlight Report

The aim of the Major Projects Annual Conference this year is to help us to formulate some advice to the incoming Government. Draft letter to Government – see below:

Dear New Government,

Congratulations on your recent electoral success. No doubt you will be using the next few months to focus on what is important and to prioritise in advance of the next spending review.

The major projects that you have in your portfolio – including Crossrail, HS2, Universal Credit, the Maritime Portfolio, the Borders portfolio (Home Office) and Digital Britain (Broadband) along with many others that are being delivered within Departments will make up a significant proportion of your spending commitment for the life of this Parliament, if not the next.

We believe that we, the Major Projects Community, can help you to realise the benefits that these projects aim to achieve in a cost effective manner through the identification of savings and investment opportunities. Our annual conference, held on 24th September, deliberated how we can help you to tackle four key issues:

 Improving productivity
 Reducing costs
 Improving agility
 Incorporating innovation
 Building a sustainable workforce

Our recommendations to you are…..

If you want to contribute to the development of the recommendations to Government and to help formulate our thinking as to how best to support Government in the delivery of their huge portfolio of programmes and projects, then register your interest to attend our Annual Conference by sending an email to: events@majorprojects.org

Topic: Major Projects – Opportunities for a New Government

Date: Day 1: 23 September (18:45 hrs drinks reception) Day 2: 24th September 2015 (8:30 – 16:30 hrs)

Venue: The Royal Berkshire Hotel, Ascot, Berkshire, SL5 0PP

We are pleased to announce that we have already confirmed John Kingman, Second Permanent Secretary, Ian Jones, Chief of Operations, Royal Mail, Raphael Scheps, CEO, Converge, Maggie Buggie, Global Head of Digital Sales and Marketing, Cap Gemini, MIchael Macfarlane, Head of Programme for River Class Batch 2, BAE Systems, James Barry Head of Customer Business, Rolls-Royce, Dr David Marsh, Director, DIGA (MoD) and five panelists: Neil Couling CBE, Director General, Universal Credit Programme, Dr Michele Dix CBE, MD Crossrail 2,Dr Peter Hansford, Government Construction Adviser, Anna Stewart, CE, Laing O’Rourke as contributors at this conference.

Guest Speaker, Wednesday evening 23rd September 2015: Sir Danny Alexander, (Former Chief Secretary to the Treasury 2010–2015)

By Jonathan Norman
September 23rd 2015

33rd Annual Conference: Major Projects – Opportunities for a New Government Full Report

The aim of the Major Projects Annual Conference this year is to help us to formulate some advice to the incoming Government. Draft letter to Government – see below:

Dear New Government,

Congratulations on your recent electoral success. No doubt you will be using the next few months to focus on what is important and to prioritise in advance of the next spending review.

The major projects that you have in your portfolio – including Crossrail, HS2, Universal Credit, the Maritime Portfolio, the Borders portfolio (Home Office) and Digital Britain (Broadband) along with many others that are being delivered within Departments will make up a significant proportion of your spending commitment for the life of this Parliament, if not the next.

We believe that we, the Major Projects Community, can help you to realise the benefits that these projects aim to achieve in a cost effective manner through the identification of savings and investment opportunities. Our annual conference, held on 24th September, deliberated how we can help you to tackle four key issues:

 Improving productivity
 Reducing costs
 Improving agility
 Incorporating innovation
 Building a sustainable workforce

Our recommendations to you are…..

If you want to contribute to the development of the recommendations to Government and to help formulate our thinking as to how best to support Government in the delivery of their huge portfolio of programmes and projects, then register your interest to attend our Annual Conference by sending an email to: events@majorprojects.org

Topic: Major Projects – Opportunities for a New Government

Date: Day 1: 23 September (18:45 hrs drinks reception) Day 2: 24th September 2015 (8:30 – 16:30 hrs)

Venue: The Royal Berkshire Hotel, Ascot, Berkshire, SL5 0PP

We are pleased to announce that we have already confirmed John Kingman, Second Permanent Secretary, Ian Jones, Chief of Operations, Royal Mail, Raphael Scheps, CEO, Converge, Maggie Buggie, Global Head of Digital Sales and Marketing, Cap Gemini, MIchael Macfarlane, Head of Programme for River Class Batch 2, BAE Systems, James Barry Head of Customer Business, Rolls-Royce, Dr David Marsh, Director, DIGA (MoD) and five panelists: Neil Couling CBE, Director General, Universal Credit Programme, Dr Michele Dix CBE, MD Crossrail 2,Dr Peter Hansford, Government Construction Adviser, Anna Stewart, CE, Laing O’Rourke as contributors at this conference.

Guest Speaker, Wednesday evening 23rd September 2015: Sir Danny Alexander, (Former Chief Secretary to the Treasury 2010–2015)