Tougher stance on Egan demo projects

Exclusive by James Atkinson

The Movement for Innovation is to get tough over demonstration projects that fail to meet the Egan objectives and throw them out, the M4I board has decided.

"There are none out yet, but we are conscious that not all projects are cutting edge. We will chuck out the dross," M4I executive director Ian Huntington told Contract Journal.

Huntington said: "We will get rid of projects with purely technical innovations by their suppliers. What we are looking for is the right culture. It's no good having technical innovations on a demonstration project if the contract is an adversarial one. Partnering is the starting point for future projects. Those who jumped onto the M4I demonstration project bandwagon for just marketing purposes will also go, though they will be given a chance to get their act together."

The M4I board has decided that it will maintain about 150 demonstration projects. The balance will be obtained by being more selective in accepting new projects and by delisting those projects that fail to comply with the M4I vision.

Reasons for delisting a project will include: regular non-attendance at cluster meetings; non-delivery to M4I of headline KPI data after project completion; incomplete KPI data; non-provision of data for compilation of case histories; and failure to pursue innovation.

Huntington added that the M4I board appreciated that project teams' first obligation was to their clients, but said M4I should be a close second. The move will be seen as adding some rigor to the demonstration projects and the M4I board is sharpening up the project qualification process by adding three obligations to the existing five. These are:

l Ownership of the Movement's vision, mission and core values.

l Acceptance by the project that they have to have an "integrated team" approach.

l Demonstration by the applicant that the organisation has a policy and implementation plan for putting into place some (or all) of the principles enshrined within Rethinking Construction and that they would encourage the other main organisations in the project team to set up their own in-house learning systems.

Clive Cain, director of technical standards at Defence Estates, said: "We have to test the robustness of any demonstration project. If people do not meet the criteria for demonstration projects that are measuring improvement and being able to provide a toolkit that people can replicate, then, as a M4I board member, I would raise a question mark as to whether they should be included as a demonstration project. The criterion has got to be is this going to make a difference to the industry?"

Mike Burt, head of procurement practice and development at the Office of Government Commerce, remarked: "In the first rush of enthusiasm, it was inevitable that we would get a whole range of projects aiming to be demonstration project. Inevitably some will fall by the wayside."