Planning to get it right

VolkerStevin’s Quality Ripple programme is moving forward via tools learned from the business-wide rollout of GIRI training, HSEQS & IM director Duncan Aspin told GIRI’s members meeting, before handing over to head of planning Martin Roby, who explained how a focus on planning is helping VolkerStevin improve overall delivery.

Quality Ripple

The Quality Ripple programme has been through four stages, said Duncan. The first was deciding on the name for the initiative, which was modelled after VolkerStevin’s success Safety Ripple programme. Both are based on the same three key principles: a positive, inclusive and future-focused approach. “This way you get discretionary effort from people, you encourage ownership and accountability, and you look at solutions rather than dwelling on the problem.”

The business adopted the strapline “right from the start” for the programme. “We had feedback suggesting that a lot of errors we saw on our projects were initiated by things that happened well before the project started, in the work-winning or design stages, and this is supported by GIRI’s research. So it was important for us to recognise that everything we did from a quality point of view looked at every part of our business.”

VolkerStevin then took Quality Ripple on the road in a series of workshops to understand what it needed to focus on by garnering feedback from across the business. A number of areas were prioritised for improvement and action plans were put in place – for example, developing a one-day onboarding session for new starters – to ensure the insights were acted on. 

Behaviour change

“Our next step was the culture piece,” said Duncan. “We developed a business culture called ‘the VolkerStevin Way’ with six core principles, one of which was the commitment to getting it right from the start. This goes through every element of the business rather than just focusing on when work starts on site.”

The programme is now at the stage of utilising the tools and techniques of GIRI training to drive it forward. VolkerStevin is in the process of rolling out GIRI training throughout the business, including becoming accredited to deliver the courses in-house. “We started by engaging senior leaders through the leadership training, and we are now beginning the take the tools and approaches onto sites and into our work-winning functions.”

Planning to get it right

GIRI training aims to target the root causes of error, and the number one root cause identified by GIRI research is inadequate planning, so this is an area of focus for VolkerStevin, said Martin Roby, head of planning. Martin used the analogy of Sat Nav to highlight the importance of not just planning but sticking to the plan. “We know that if we follow the route the Sat Nav recommends that we will end up where we’re going within the specified timeframe, so why do we have that tendency to think we know better and deviate from the route?”

If you apply this analogy to a project and the route map is the programme, said Martin, changing that programme not only creates greater potential for error and delays, but it also impacts quality, safety, and generates stress for everyone involved.

Martin explained that VolkerStevin has made planning to get it right a key focus. “Within VolkerStevin, we have our contract-level programme, which is the project lifecycle from concept to completion, and within that we have a three-month lookahead. This is where we identify all the interfaces and stakeholders and ensure we are on the right path and are filtering out potential errors and challenges. This is then communicated down through our short-term planning, which is our three-month lookahead. This determines our day-to-day tasks and ensures everyone knows what they need to do today, and tomorrow. And really it is about the interface of all that data and ensuring we are tying it back into the one plan for delivery, because everyone has their own deliverables within that plan.”

Mastering short-term planning is key to improving achievement all the way through the process, Martin added. “As an industry, we achieve around 65% of our contract-level programme in any given month. If we got to 75% in a week, we’re still losing one day in five of planned works. That’s not because we stop, it’s because of all the other things we are doing in that time that aren’t planned. So that short-term planning is a real focus for us to improve delivery, and it’s all about linking it back to getting it right from the start.”

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