Fusion reigns

Like many new ideas, Fusion - the collaborative working approach to construction developed by GlaxoSmithKline - was the result of an evolution rather than a revolution.

Over the years, Kevin Thomas, now the company's director of worldwide strategic planning, had become convinced that there was something basically wrong with the way the construction industry worked.

So the company developed the new approach which it has used in three projects - two in Ware, Hertfordshire, and one in Beckenham, Kent - resulting, it says, in savings of 18% of project costs and 40% of time, while at the same time meeting the needs of the business.

Thomas' early experiences of the construction industry were with the Property Services Agency, where he was involved with the US Air Force in the construction of everything from schools to cruise missiles sites, persuaded him that there must be a better way of operating than lowest cost tendering. Much of his time was spent in contractual negotiations rather than in more productive management of the project, such as in finding joint ways to cut costs.

"The trouble with lowest cost tendering is that it is only cheaper at the front of the project and gives you poor value at the end," he says.

When he moved to what was then Glaxo Research, he was able to put some of his ideas into practice. Thomas was involved in minor projects, such as smaller refurbishments, and this gave him the scope to experiment with new ideas. This began with two-stage tendering, where contractors were chosen from an appointed shortlist and selected according on a range of factors, not merely cost.

"I was able to be more pragmatic about what value meant rather than what cost meant," he recalls.



The impetus for putting these theories into practice on a large scale was Glaxo's merger with Wellcome. The new business wanted to invest in better research and development facilities and this led to a large-scale refurbishment of one of its buildings at Ware.

"Up until then we had used our approach for £3m to £4m projects. We were now looking at a £20m lab refurbishment," Thomas says.

"We'd been developing partnering approaches for six to seven years and became convinced that there was benefit in getting people involved earlier and earlier in a project. So we basically took the rule book and ripped it up."

Rather than any tendering process, the then Glaxo Wellcome started selecting partners it felt most happy with. It had worked with most of these before but in one case it was simply impressed enough with a dialogue over many years about the contractor's abilities that it took the firm on. In fact the selection process became a participative one, where those who had already been chosen then had a say in who else came on board.

From the outset Thomas was determined to select a team which would succeed or fail as one. At its first full meeting Glaxo Wellcome outlined how it wanted the project delivered: smoothly, on time and within budget.

"We asked what everyone else's objectives were and found they were exactly the same for everybody. That was an earth-shattering thing to realise for people who had spent their lives in conflict," he says.

The accounting for the project was open book and the partners were paid for work as they went along. The team was physically brought together, with those from different disciplines placed next to each other when they worked on particular parts of the project.

"Halfway through the project we realised something really good was going on and that we had to tell people about it," Thomas says.

But there was no label to describe it. 'Partnering' was rejected because it had existing connotations, while others such as 'new construction' did not convey enough of what Thomas felt was taking place. Then 'Fusion' came to him, as an analogy with nuclear reactions.

"Two elements quite distinctive come together and fuse into something completely different - and you get massive energy out of it," he explains.

Glaxo Wellcome decided to make Fusion public for a number of reasons, rather than keeping it to itself as a competitive measure - Thomas says that the company competes in terms of pharmaceuticals and not in construction.

The most important reason was that Fusion gave a practical indication to potential business partners as to what they should try to provide.

"As a client contracting out we are inundated with people who want to work for us. Fusion meant we could start telling people what we were looking for in our contractors," Thomas says.

Another was that telling others about something beneficial fitted in with the company's corporate values which, as a drugs company, involve helping other people.

The Fusion process starts with the creation of an overall concept by internal staff and architects, which is discussed with the business to see which elements need to be given preference within the money available - Thomas likens it to a domestic budget where people might have to reduce expenditure in one area, such as holidays, in order to increase it in another, to buy a car, for instance.



Once the team has been created, a timetable of what needs to be designed at which point is drawn up. Rather than specify every element, such as skirting boards and doors, decisions about some items are left until nearer to the time they are needed in order to remain as flexible as possible.

Since decisions about the design are agreed jointly by the affected parties it means that the majority of potential difficulties are ironed out before the construction process takes place. And if difficulties do arise during the project, they are solved jointly.

Thomas says that a typical example would be if it was discovered that a ducting system was going to run into a beam. In a traditional contract the team putting in the duct work would continue until a decision about what to do had been made, which would have to be taken very quickly in order to minimise costs. Either the building would have to be modified to avoid the problem or the ducts would have to be removed and its design rethought. In all this there would be the chance that the people putting in the ducting would not do their best job, if they suspected that it was going to be removed.

"With our approach, as soon as the guy comes in and says 'We've got a problem', we would say stop. We would then give him something else to do or pay him for standing, which is cheaper than paying him to put something in and then take it out again. In Fusion we are making huge savings in abortive costs alone," Thomas says.



Such a radical approach to construction projects requires a major change in attitude by those involved, but Thomas says that the vast majority of people have been able to make the switch. There have been isolated instances of people who are unable to change from a confrontational to a collaborative approach and they have been asked to leave the projects. But a greater problem has been people working for GlaxoSmithKline's partners having tasted what Fusion is like then returning to a traditional way of working.

All of those involved in the Fusion projects have been included in workshops about what is being achieved and Thomas says that attempts to use people's skills have led to good individual performances. "It is amazing what people will deliver if they feel valued," he says.

Manual workers have not been left out of the equation and have responded well to the workshops they have attended. "People in lots of environments just want to get off the job when it is finished. In other projects there is vandalism of materials, but we've never encountered anything like that," he says.

Thomas believes that for the Fusion approach to be successful, it is up to the client to create the environment where people can work in co-operation, as it is a difficult thing for a contractor to impose on a project. And it is impossible to try to manage the process, as he believes some clients do, at arms length.

Now that Glaxo Wellcome has become GlaxoSmithKline following the merger with SmithKline Beecham at the end of last year, further changes to the company's worldwide facilities are likely. Thomas is not sure whether Fusion will survive in its current form but its principles almost certainly will do in some way, perhaps in a new pilot.

He believes that the efforts being made by the construction industry towards collaborative working, whether by individual companies, industry bodies or the government, are starting to approach a critical mass. Appropriately for someone in the drugs industry, he likens it to growing a bacterial culture in a petri dish: once seeds are planted some die while others grow and eventually take over the entire dish.

"I'm very optimistic. Everywhere there is a large desire for things to be different," he says.