Technical process improvement through a systems based approach

This paper focuses on a novel process maturity framework developed during the targeted improvement to the Integrated Design Review and Assurance (IDR&A) Process, by the Skanska Costain STRABAG (SCS) Joint Venture, for the delivery of HS2’s Main Works Civil Contract Southern (the Project).

The Project has written processes and procedures for each discipline, with over 40 key technical procedures covering topics such as Design Management, Engineering Management and Quality Management.

The project operates within HS2’s Technical Lifecycle Stages, such as Design, Construction and Handover, with all technical and environmental aspects of the Works passing through this lifecycle.

The Lifecycle Stages weave together the activities from each technical process, which, if poorly integrated, will lead to inefficiencies. In the case of IDR&A Process, these delays were vocalised to be in region of £1M per day for unplanned overruns that prolonged the start of Construction.

Adopting an Agile approach[1], and combining experience and good practice from other industries, the team developed a novel process improvement methodology to address the need for efficient procedures to reduce programme delays. The first iteration of this initiative removed 32 days from the IDR&A process. If that is repeated across all Detailed Design work packages it provides potential savings of 4200 days.

This piece of work analysed the end-to-end process, from the perspective of the Lifecycle, to bring together activities from each single discipline process and will cover the methods and tools used to analyse the IDR&A process, focusing on our novel Multi-Dimensional Maturity Framework. Engagement with practitioners was critical to this activity and provided value across all technical process analyses. The analysis of the task maturity through a custom designed framework enabled the project to implement simple changes to processes, technology, and behaviours, subsequently opening the door to bigger tool and process enhancements.