The Construction Commitments
Client Leadership
North East - 21st May 2008
Big issue:
- Lack of leadership
- How to improve leadership?
Good ideas:
- Regular meetings
- Clear & concise instruction & direction from client at outset
- Partnership working and approach principles
East Midlands - 4th June 2008
Big issue:
- How do you improve communication and clarity?
Good ideas:
- Candour
- Honesty/trust
- Transparency
- All via Partnership Collaborative Working
Yorkshire and the Humber - 16th July 2008
Big issue:
- How do we empower strong leadership from our clients?
Good ideas:
- Clear brief from the client
- Good communication - discussions as they as they arise - less email - more telephone
- Educate client
- Full understanding of project and timescales
- Identification of priorities
- Identify budget and standards from the outset
- Partnership working
- Team days and integration
- Clear project management - who can give instructions
South East - 3rd September 2008
Big issue:
- Clear organisation vision, project specific brief and instructions from the outset - how do we create this?
Good ideas:
- Clear organisation vision - via departmental discussion leadership
- Buy in from whole team design panel
- Feedback + review 360
- Trained staff and good communications systems
- Quality control
- Checks
West Midlands - 1st October 2008
Big issue
- Limited ability to influence client! How to get clients to listen? - Specialist advice not always heeded.
Good ideas
- Let them speak first (i.e. listen first)
- Speak client's language; understand their sector/share belief in client aims
- Advice:
- Is the client right? Is their something you don't know?
- Believe in your own advice
- Evidence your advice
- Be commercial, exercise judgement; offer solutions
- Put it in writing
South West - 5th November 2008
Big issue:
- How do we learn from experiences to be better clients?
Good ideas:
- Hold management academies to provide 360 feedback/lessons learnt/project review
- Adapt Prince2 project management concepts
- Learn and remember your experiences
- Record/document experiences/lessons/post-review projects
- Ownership of "transformational change"
- Buy in by all parties - internal and external
North West - 4th December 2008
Big issue:
- How do we encourage our clients to look at best value rather than cost (as consultants)?
Good ideas:
- Involve the customer at the start to ensure you give the client what they want
- Understand and articulate the wider value from an approach - the client may well get more outputs/better performance by spending a little more up front.
East of England - 25th February 2009
Big issue:
- Lack of clarity - objectives and design
- Changing the goalposts
- Lack of knowledge
- Lack of ownership/inadequate buy-in (too much onus is placed on the contractor)
- Trust
- Collaboration missing
- How do you improve and achieve collaboration/client buy in?
Good ideas:
- Identification of team at the earliest stage
- Clearly identify roles and responsibilities and working parameters
- Clear client brief
- Working groups set up and regular meetings
