Housing Forum Partnering Toolkit Introduction
Summary of the Benefits
Partnering delivers two crucial outcomes to housing clients – better value for money and dramatic improvements in customer satisfaction levels – whilst delivering Decent Homes targets. It does this through a whole team approach to the project and its management. Partnering breaks down the old ways of working – risk dumping, buying cheap jobs and facing claims later, disputes and blame resulting in poor quality dwellings – and helps everyone focus on the mutually agreed project outcomes.
Clients can reasonably expect to:
- Cut programme times by up to 30%
- make savings of up to xxxx on overall investment costs by using long term partnering arrangements
- achieve dramatic and continuing improvement in areas of resident involvement, choice and satisfaction
- benefit from the early involvement of stakeholders, suppliers and customers in the processes of shaping and delivering local services.
The wider range of benefits partnering can also deliver are:
- Improved cost and programme planning and management
- Improved risk assessment and management
- Joint processes for problem resolution
- More focused delivery
- Better construction quality – fewer defects
- Improved job satisfaction, with opportunities for learning and development
- Improved profits for contractors and suppliers resulting in business sustainability
- Better health and safety outcomes
- A wide range of wider community benefits
Partnering is not easy. It is not a soft option because it means doing things differently, and it is always a challenge to learn new ways of working. But it does deliver better results for all those involved; and when you get involved it becomes a great way of working. It really is all about teamwork. The whole project becomes the goal, and not just your bit or my bit. In addition, if the team stays together from project to project, it is the perfect framework for continuous improvement. You will be very satisfied with almost everything you do in partnering and wonder why it wasn’t invented earlier!
