Firms fail to capitalise on partnering expertise

Contractors are failing to embrace the full principles of partnering because they are not learning from those who work successfully as a team.
That is the view of human resource expert Gillian Wright, who spoke at Connaught's partnering conference Taking Stock, Moving Forward earlier this month.
Wright, a senior consultant at training and skills development company Traico, said: "People are one of the most important parts of a partnering-type contract.
"Although we find contractors are working on successful partnering contracts, when the programme is finished we discover that some teams behind the impressive delivery of a project are broken up," Wright said.
"This means that all the knowledge is lost and successful members of a team begin to feel alienated when they start work on a new contract with new people in new teams. This is when productivity drops."
Wright said that many organisations rely too much on the wrong type of measurement when they look at the successes of a team.
"There is too much emphasis on measuring tools such as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)," Wright said.
"These are only helpful in part as they address the project as a whole. What KPIs fail to do is to look at the learning gained from working as a team on a contract. It's all very well having the experience but you need to learn the lessons."
Wright called for contractors and clients such as local authorities to look holistically at team working and partnering rather than just becoming project focused.
"With local authorities, for example, we see the segregation of projects such as education or highways rather than looking holistically at the business at large," Wright said.
"Lots of people are guilty of this and I have yet to meet an organisation that takes the right approach."
According to Wright, companies need to try harder to explain all goals and targets across the whole workforce when it comes to picking out other requirements for team working in partnering contracts.
"In one example I spoke with several subcontractors on a high-profile contract in the capital," she said.
"I asked the workers what their goals and targets were. They said they didn't know and were told by managers they didn't need to know. This is a poor use of partnering as without these workers the project would never have been completed."