Jul 8, 2026 | Events, Roundtables
Conflict is inevitable on complex projects, but escalation is not. As major infrastructure programmes become increasingly complex, the industry’s ability to manage relationships is becoming just as important as its technical capability. Hosted by ResoLex in partnership with the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) and the Conflict Avoidance Coalition (CAC), Turning Tension into Trust brought together industry leaders Edward Moore, ResoLex, Sue Barrett, Houses of Parliament Restoration and Renewal Programme and Veronica Flint-Williams, Environment Agency to explore how projects can create the conditions for healthy challenge, identify behavioural risks early and create the conditions for productive challenge before issues become disputes.
The discussion reinforced a clear message: collaboration is not a soft option. It requires structure, openness, commercial discipline and the courage to have difficult conversations early. When done well, conflict avoidance can protect relationships, reduce cost and delay, and help teams remain focused on delivery rather than dispute.
Collaboration is not a soft option. It requires the most rigorous conversations.
Creating conditions for healthy challenge
One of the strongest themes throughout the discussion was the importance of creating a project environment that allows space for challenge and healthy tension from the outset. Tension is inevitable in project environments with so much complexity and uncertainty, but by establishing clear communication channels, defined escalation routes and psychologically safe environments from day one, organisations can harness it to drive challenge, innovation and better decisions. When those conditions are absent, issues are more likely to go unspoken, relationships come under strain and tension can quickly develop into destructive conflict.
To get healthy tension and challenge, it needs explicit permission.
Edward Moore illustrated this through the analogy of a farming community preparing for harvest. Crops are ready, cattle need moving, and success depends entirely on timing and communication. If everyone understands the plan, both objectives can be achieved. If communication breaks down, the crop is destroyed and everyone ends up firefighting. The comparison reflected the importance of establishing communication channels before pressure builds, rather than relying on them once problems have already emerged.
The client sets the tone
A strong theme throughout the event was that clients should be shaping the relationship from day one. Transparency about constraints, active listening when suppliers raise concerns, and the willingness to face problems early-on creates the conditions for trust.
The role of leaders was also highlighted, encouraging leaders to do more than simply permit challenge – they should actively model it by asking difficult questions, thanking people for raising concerns and demonstrating that constructive challenge is valued rather than merely tolerated.
Behavioural risks appear long before conflict
One of the panel’s key observations was that behavioural risks often emerge long before contractual disputes. Differences in perception, misunderstandings and unspoken concerns are often the first indicators that relationships are beginning to deteriorate.
The conversation reinforced that trusted relationships are built on rigorous honesty. Creating regular opportunities for open, honest feedback helps teams identify the early signs of conflict before issues become entrenched around commercial pressures, roles or ego. Practical mechanisms such as Conflict Avoidance Panels, project resets and tiered escalation processes provide structured opportunities to surface concerns, test assumptions and resolve differences before they become formal disputes.
What we end up seeing is the seed of conflict.
Prevention is an investment
The panel challenged the perception that conflict avoidance represents an unnecessary overhead or, worse, an admission that a project is expected to fail. Organisations can be reluctant to invest in prevention because they believe success is measured by never needing formal intervention in the first place. This creates a stigma around conflict avoidance, where investing in mechanisms to resolve issues early can be wrongly perceived as planning for failure, rather than planning for successful delivery.
Early intervention is almost always less costly than adjudication or litigation. More importantly, it keeps teams focused on delivery rather than becoming absorbed in dispute resolution.
Spending a little on a predictable outcome is a much better investment.
Key takeaways
- Plan communication and escalation routes before pressure builds.
- Invest early in prevention to protect delivery focus, reduce cost and avoid the distraction of formal disputes.
- Give challenge explicit permission and model it through leadership behaviour.
- Clients set the tone by being transparent about constraints and listening when suppliers raise difficult issues.
- Behavioural risk often first appears as a divergence in perceptions, making safe feedback loops essential.
- Treat conflict avoidance mechanisms as good project governance, not evidence of failure.
- Use resets, panels and tiered processes before issues become formal disputes.
The audience discussion reinforced the practical challenges of applying these principles in live projects. Topics ranged from managing uncertainty transparently and responding to change, to creating collaborative cultures where clients are still on their own maturity journey, and giving people the confidence to have difficult conversations early.
While every project is different, the panel agreed that trust is built through openness, clear expectations and the confidence to address difficult conversations early.
The evening concluded with a challenge from Richard Bayfield, Chair of the Conflict Avoidance Coalition: “What’s the one thing you’d encourage people to do differently tomorrow morning to turn tension into trust?”
While the answers varied, one message stood out: contracts provide the framework, but people determine the outcome. Trust is built through early conversations, disciplined collaboration and leaders who create the confidence for others to challenge constructively.
Tension will always exist on complex projects. The opportunity lies in creating environments where it leads to better decisions rather than destructive conflict. By addressing issues early and fostering collaboration, organisations can strengthen relationships, improve delivery and build greater confidence in the infrastructure sector.
Nov 19, 2025 | Events, Roundtables
As the demands on leaders in major projects and programmes continue to grow, so too does the pressure on their personal capacity. How can leaders sustain performance, maintain resilience, and create the conditions for their teams to succeed in increasingly complex environments?
At our recent November roundtable, Annastiina Hintsa, CEO of Hintsa Performance, joined us for a thought-provoking conversation about what high performance looks like, both on and off the track. Drawing on lessons from Formula 1, working with large organisations, and years of research into human wellbeing, she explored how the world’s best sustain excellence under intense pressure and what leaders can take from it.
Building on the themes from the MPA’s No More Heroes report, which highlights the leadership gap linked to burnout and low productivity, our roundtable explored practical ways to help leaders thrive. The evening was full of energy, discussion, and plenty of moments of “this really can apply to me”.
Sustaining High Performance
In Formula 1, milliseconds decide championships, yet performance is not only about engineering or pushing harder. As Annastiina explained, success at the pinnacle of motorsport is about managing paradoxes: profit and purpose, efficiency and innovation, stability and change, wellbeing and performance. The ability to hold these tensions is a hallmark of senior leaders too.
Hintsa Performance works from a simple belief: when people live better, they perform better. It is a philosophy that has shaped the routines of more than 3,000 executives and over 90 percent of Formula 1 race winners in the past decade. Lewis Hamilton reflected, “We’ll always be in each other’s lives”, a reminder that true performance coaching goes far beyond results.
The methodology behind Hintsa’s work focuses on your Core (inner motivation) and creating a Sustainable Performance Cycle that is personal to each individual, whether an F1 driver, Olympic athlete or business leader.
Their session opened with three fundamental questions:
- Do you know who you are?
- Do you know what you want?
- Are you in control of your life?
It echoed a question often put to young drivers by Dr Aki Hintsa: Do you want to be in the drivers seat of your life or the passenger seat?
Annastiina shared several practical frameworks that leaders and teams can use to maintain performance over the long term:
- Periodisation: Understanding your daily, weekly, and annual performance rhythm. Knowing when to push, when to make time to recover, and when to renew.
- Optimal Pressure: Identifying your stretch zone and recognising when healthy challenge begins to tip into strain.
- Recovery: Planning small recovery moments across your day, week, and year to protect wellbeing and fuel growth.
- Preparation: Creating capacity before peak periods so you can perform when it matters most.
- Team: Remembering that even the best driver cannot win without a world-class pit crew and support team.
One of the key messages was that resilience is a skill that can be learned. Balancing the comfort zone with the stretch zone underpins the optimal area for performance.
There was also a helpful distinction between healthy and unhealthy stress. Stress itself is not the enemy – we need it to perform, but problems arise when stress becomes chronic. Knowing your early warning signs and planning moments of recovery is vital.
Annastiina explored the four elements of mental recovery: Control, Relaxation, Mastery, and Detachment. Building these into everyday routines can make a significant difference. While embedding recovery within projects and programmes may need a cultural shift, it often begins with the small things – what you do, and what you enable others to do.
One Change That Cascades
Each of us was encouraged to consider one meaningful change that could have the biggest ripple effect. Sustainable change starts with awareness and grows through small, consistent actions. The WOOP framework (Wish, Objective, Obstacle, Plan) offers a simple and practical way to turn good intentions into tangible progress.
Resilience is not a fixed trait. It is a rhythm, a balance between pressure and recovery, competition and cooperation, performance and wellbeing. The conversation left us with a shared realisation: resilience is not about enduring difficult environments, but about designing conditions where people and teams can thrive.
For further insight into how the world’s best balance wellbeing and performance, explore the latest Hintsa F1 Insights Report.
Oct 22, 2025 | Events, Roundtables
On the 9th of October, we were joined by Michele Dix (MPA, NISTA and former TfL), Julia Pyke (Sizewell C) and Richard Holm (ICW) for our latest ResoLex Roundtable, ‘Are We Selecting and Developing the Right Type of Leaders?’ Almost two years on from the MPA’s No More Heroes report, senior voices from across the major projects community came together to reflect on progress. The verdict was mixed: while the sector is showing signs of change, particularly around collaboration and diversity, there is still a long way to go to see more examples of good leadership cultures that are inclusive, adaptive and emotionally intelligent.
Despite the broad acceptance that the “hero” leader model is outdated, our speakers brought perspectives through different lenses – combining client leadership, industry body viewpoints and consulting experience. Michele reaffirmed the relevance of the “incomplete leader” concept, reminding the group that no one person embodies every quality. She pointed to “green shoots” of change, such as improving gender and ethnicity diversity, but more is needed to reflect the wider diversity of thought. She also emphasised that leaders should be assessed not only on what they deliver, but how they lead. Building on this, Richard introduced the idea of “character skills”, a concept originally explored by Alex Grant, arguing that so-called “soft skills” should be reframed and revalued as essential competencies for leadership. From a client perspective, Julia stressed the importance of leaders communicating vision clearly, hiring wisely, and empowering their teams to perform at their best – connecting the work of major projects with wider social value.
‘It was great to represent the Institute for Collaborative Working and see the alignment between the ‘MPA No More Heroes’ publication and the ICW Collaborative Leadership Insights paper. Whilst independently undertaken, the conclusions were aligned, placing an equivalent emphasis on management experience, as there is to emotional intelligence, and collaborative leadership skills.’
Richard Holm
‘It was very encouraging to hear consensus on the need to move away from hero leaders and the recognition of leaders needing to be “learn it all’s” as opposed to the “know it all’s” going forward – especially in an increasingly complex system-based environment.’
Michele Dix
Designed as an open, interactive discussion, participants shared their own experiences of where progress is being made and where barriers remain. The conversation unfolded across three key themes, each exploring how the industry can evolve from individual heroism to collective, sustainable leadership.
- Leadership in Major Programmes – Beyond the “Hero” Leader
Leadership in major programmes demands more than technical excellence. It requires ‘learn it all’s’, not just ‘know it all’s’ – emotional intelligence, systems thinking and the ability to orchestrate collaboration across complex environments. Participants called for leadership to be treated as a specialised discipline, supported by deliberate development and structured learning.
There was a strong call to grow talent from within through mentoring, coaching and safe spaces for stretch roles. Human qualities such as courage, empathy and vision were highlighted as essential, with agreement that great leaders not only deliver outcomes but also connect people to purpose. The takeaway: leadership should be seen as a craft, shifting the focus from short-term delivery to long-term capability building and ensuring there are good leaders across the project or programme, not just at the top.
- Capacity and Succession – Expanding and Diversifying the Leadership Pool
The discussion turned to why the leadership pool for major programmes remains so narrow. Consensus pointed to both quantity and readiness, but also to confidence in the industry of there being a committed pipeline of major projects to be involved in. Too few people are being developed, and those who are, often lack the support or experience to succeed. Over-reliance on familiar names, rigid professional silos and limited cross-sector mobility continue to stifle diversity and renewal.
Participants also recognised a disconnect between training and practice. Leadership programmes exist, but the learning rarely embeds once people return to delivery-driven roles. Burnout, lack of progression and a “too busy to develop” mindset were identified as major risks to capability and retention.
To break the cycle, the group urged a move away from “hero” models towards shared leadership teams, recognising and rewarding leadership behaviours at all levels, not just at the top. Building a connected system that values leadership as a collective, long-term capability was seen as essential for resilience.
- Future Skills and Behaviours – Leading with EQ in an AI World
Looking ahead, participants explored what the next generation of leadership should look like. The message was clear: leadership development must start early, not at university but in schools and early career experiences. Education still teaches outdated command-and-control models, leaving future leaders technically skilled but emotionally underprepared. Closer collaboration between industry and education was seen as vital to redefining what effective leadership looks like, combining real-world experience with academic learning.
Bridging the gap between academia and industry was seen as critical. Participants called for more collaboration, with practitioners teaching in universities and academics engaging with live projects. Diversity of thought, empathy and adaptability were identified as future core competencies, especially as AI automates technical work.
The conversation also touched on the future of work. Younger professionals want autonomy, flexibility and meaning rather than hierarchy. Organisations that fail to offer purpose-led environments risk losing talent to more progressive sectors. As one delegate put it, “we can’t keep measuring people by outdated frameworks and expect modern leadership to thrive.”
Shifting from Heroic to Systemic Leadership
Across all three themes, the message was consistent: sustainable leadership in major programmes requires cultural and systemic reform. This will mean creating safe spaces for growth, structures for mentoring and mobility, and metrics that reward empathy, collaboration and trust.
Without these shifts, the Hero leader challenge will persist, with a small group of exhausted leaders carrying the weight of complex programmes while a generation of potential successors look elsewhere.
This roundtable marked just the beginning. In an upcoming playbook, we will explore the data gathered during the session alongside wider industry research and insights from related events. Together, these will examine how major projects can move beyond the hero leader model and build a more sustainable leadership ecosystem.
Stay tuned as we share more on what it takes to select, grow and sustain the right type of leaders for the future of major programmes.
Oct 29, 2024 | Events, Roundtables
On Tuesday 8th October, we hosted a roundtable discussion based on the Team of Teams (ToT) ethos, more commonly known from General Stanley McChrystal’s book Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World. Published in 2015, the book refers to the concept ‘Team of Teams’, which aims to embed collaborative working across organisations through a web of interconnected teams, based on McChrystal’s experience as commander of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command.
The purpose of the workshop was to explore the benefits of a Team of Teams approach within a commercial setting and some of the real lived experiences and challenges in managing its roll-out.
We were delighted to welcome two guest speakers:
- Simon Higgens MBE, Business Development Director at STORY Contracting and former Royal Engineer with the British Army
- Scott Murray, Performance and Integration Director at SCS Railways, delivering HS2 London Tunnels
Edward Moore, our Chief Executive, opened the session, providing background into our work and then into the book and its goals: principally around embedding an ethos of collaboration in organisations.
In addition, we shared a Slido poll to gauge the room’s experiences of cultural change in their projects and organisations before delving into the main content, this was later used as a comparison.
Simon opened with an example of his time in the military where he was given command and the goal of achieving a specific objective: Building a positive relationship with an ally.
He had freedom in the nature of the solution but a limited timeframe to design and implement his plan. Simon discussed how in his role he utilised a Team of Teams approach as a natural course of action to achieve results, despite at that point being unaware of the philosophy. He related the six key themes that underpinned his approach:
- Complex over complicated
When Simon first joined the military, it was focused on a hierarchical mindset: telling people what to do and how to do it. This meant that although tasks were complicated, there were clear plans. Over the years, growing complexity and asymmetrical warfare necessitated a shift to an output-based mindset: Focusing on embracing the complexity of a problem and how to achieve results with an adaptable approach over a fixed structure. This required a cultural change to collaboration being the norm – as it is the only way to achieve common aims.
- Unifying purpose
Every person involved in a project should be aware of what the ultimate goal is, understand why they are involved, and how their part relates to that purpose.
This enables teams and individuals to be empowered to make decisions that relate to their area, as they have a common and clear understanding of the ultimate goal.
- Effective delegation
Leaders need to step back and let teams ‘get on with it’. Teams should be built based on expertise, and therefore the team members are the ones who will know their work area and how best to approach tasks to deliver them successfully. Leaders need to be capable of driving strategy and longer-term thinking, managing high-level risks and scanning for upcoming issues.
Trust and communication are imperative for project success, and this must be modelled from the top.
- Adaptable over efficient
Every organisation needs to plan for change – it will happen regardless. Contingencies, mitigations and courses of action need to be thought through carefully as plans will inevitably change as a project progresses.
In addition, this adaptable approach should, again, be embedded as an active mindset in teams: people should be empowered to adapt and change things in the areas they have responsibility over, to serve the project goal.
- Leadership
Teams need to be allowed to grow, make mistakes and learn from them. A focus on ‘superhero leaders’ results in nobody else being taught how to lead, make decisions or develop to take on a responsibility. A spectrum of leadership skills is required, with a focus on understanding your team, their capabilities and skillsets.
Simon talked through how the military focuses on developing individuals’ skills for the next rank they’re aiming for, rather than putting underdeveloped people into roles they’re not yet ready for and hoping they succeed.
Throughout his talk, Simon stressed that the military, while sharing a lot of overlaps with commercial delivery, has a separate focus so not everything applicable in one area will be relevant to the other.
The project that he talked through in the session was ultimately successful, through a focus on the above themes enabling three key outcomes:
- Teams and individuals were allowed to lead in their areas: if they needed assistance, it was there, but he, as the overall leader, didn’t interfere in their specific areas.
- Building the environment for specialists to operate, taking away political interference and enabling them to focus on delivering.
- Leaders could focus on the long-term, strategic view over and above the minutiae of each task, trusting the team to deliver while they ensured objectives would be met.
Following on from Simon, Scott then talked through embedding Team of Teams in a contractual environment. Scott’s focus was on Team of Teams as a set of leadership behaviours that underpin how things are done. Scott imparted that moving to a Team of Teams approach is not a traditional organisational transformation, where boxes are moved around on an organisational chart, but instead represents a cultural change in how people within the organisation are expected to operate.
It also requires a shift in how people think: in implementing Team of Teams in a project organisation, Scott found that many discussions would turn to peoples’ concerns with their specific areas: If one of their SMEs was needed to support a different or more critical area of the business, how would that be budgeted? Would they get reimbursed for the time lost in their area of the project? There was a significant challenge in trying to embed a holistic, ‘best for project’ view over ‘best for me’.
Scott identified a number of key takeaways in implementing Team of Teams:
- Leadership needs to be bought in
Building a Team of Teams environment relies upon trusting people to deliver. This means that leaders need to get used to specifying outcomes over a list of tasks, which can be uncomfortable to those that like to maintain control.
Leaders need to support the embedding of new ways of working and not interfere. Importantly, they need to be focused on long-term thinking. Effective behavioural change across an organisation will not be done within 3 months, but more in the order of 2 years or more.
However, those two years will pass regardless: it is up to leaders whether at the end of it they have an effective, functioning environment or are still facing the same challenges.
- Bad behaviour needs to be dealt with immediately
This must happen from top to bottom. Leaders role model the behaviours that others will follow, so they must visibly demonstrate calling out and challenging behaviours that do not match the agreed or intended ways of working.
The environment you create to deliver your project is an important foundation for delivery. It underpins and supports every other part of the project. It should therefore be high on the agenda and consistently reinforced.
- Test and reinforce communications
To truly build understanding, individuals and teams need to be engaged and reengaged regularly and consistently. It is dangerous to assume understanding from one or two presentations or workshops, you must work with people and test that they understand why the new way of working is the right approach.
The floor was then opened up for discussion. In the following conversations, some themes shone through:
How do we break the cycle of making the same kinds of mistakes that we see so commonly across projects and programmes?
- As humans, we have many biases that inform recruitment, including affinity bias, where we recruit in our image. This is an area where we need to break the cycle to be able to diversify our approaches to delivering the best outcome.
- The right behaviours are just as important as technical competence and should be strongly considered in the hiring process, particularly for leadership roles – but following on from above, this needs to be properly designed so that “the right behaviours” are not simply “someone who thinks the same way as I do”!
- We need to have a system in the industry of training, educating and developing people to lead effectively. Graduate/apprentice schemes with 6-month placements are a good start, but after those initial 2-3 years nobody is ever again provided with this cross-industry experience.
- Change needs to be accepted and embedded as a constant over ‘business as usual’. We intrinsically know this to be true and many of us can resonate from experience: what was new 20 years ago is old and stale now. We need to set ourselves up to deliver in a changing environment rather than plan for change as an additional activity.
Is there a ‘critical mass’ of people required in a project organisation to embed the Team of Teams approach?
Team of Teams is more about a way of working, culture and behaviours, so should be applicable in any environment, from a small team to a whole army. However, the bigger the organisation, the more difficult it will be to embed. Leaders must be engaged: if they aren’t, it will fail. Scott suggested that if a proposal to utilise a Team of Teams approach doesn’t have active support from at least two-thirds of the leadership team, it may be better to scale back, focus on a smaller part of the organisation or project and make it work before attempting to go bigger.
The roundtable also highlighted some things that major projects and programmes in infrastructure can learn from other industries and areas, and the importance of considering behaviours and ways of working in project delivery.
A key theme that came out was the concept of “who is in your phone book?” – i.e., who do you contact when you need a problem resolved – and who do they contact? These are the people you want in your ‘team of teams’: the subject matter experts and problem solvers.
This needs to be tempered, however, by not just defaulting to the same people – this technique promotes using an existing network over either training new people or embracing diversity of thought.
The Slido poll also gave some positive results in that almost 75% of those present stated that their teams were enabled to make decisions and implement them, and the vast majority stating that they believed in long-term culture over short-term goals.
These are not new issues, extending back to the Latham Report in 1994 (and earlier!), however, the industry has historically struggled to come to terms with them. The collected experiences of the leaders and experienced professionals in the room show that perhaps there is a cultural change already underway that may support the long-term thinking and trusted, delegated decision-making that the industry needs to harness.
The roundtable posed some great insights into Team of Teams from the perspective of our speakers and guests, with great discussion had. We’d like to thank everyone who attended and encourage you to keep an eye out for next year’s programme of events. View our event calendar here.
Aug 21, 2024 | Events, Roundtables
On Tuesday 9th July, ResoLex hosted a roundtable discussion featuring Concordis International; a peacebuilding charity that uses dialogue to support the development of sustainable relationships among communities involved in or affected by armed conflict. The event was led by Peter Marsden, Chief Executive of Concordis International, and Edward Moore, Chief Executive of ResoLex and Chairman of Concordis International. The event allowed industry professionals to explore the complexities of building resilient and sustainable relationships in challenging environments. By drawing on lessons from the third sector, particularly in conflict negotiation, the session aimed to equip participants with strategies to enhance collaboration and resilience in the major projects industry.
The roundtable began with a thought-provoking question; if we can manage conflict and develop collaborative relationships between armed groups, then why do we struggle on major projects?
Peter opened by describing his work directly alongside those involved in, or affected by, armed conflict and how he helps to find collaborative, workable solutions that address the root cause. Similarly, in the major projects industry, there is an understanding of the need to develop collaborative working environments, yet we can often struggle to understand how to establish them. Providing an example, Peter shared his firsthand experience of meeting with a leader of an armed group. The leader arrived with 100 armed and angry individuals, creating an intense atmosphere, where Peter quickly needed to establish an escape route. Through the story, he came to the realisation that he was not in control, and emphasised the importance of meeting on the leader’s terms and relinquishing some of his power to establish trust and develop a relationship with the group.
Peter asked two people to join him for a demonstration. The two participants stood back-to-back and were given a scenario: denounce your partner and go free, stay loyal and receive one year in prison, but if both denounced, they got a five-year sentence. One participant denounced, while the other remained loyal, illustrating the complexities of trust and betrayal. The demonstration highlighted the impact of communication and on decision-making, as participants can learn from past experiences, understand each other’s behaviours, and build trust over time, creating expectations between the individuals involved.
Peter highlighted that each war comprises of a million decisions, influenced by incentives, constraints, opportunities, and threats. The goal is to convince people to adopt a long-term view of their relationships and move away from the instant gratification mindset prevalent in many projects. By understanding and influencing incentives, and addressing constraints, we can guide behaviours towards more collaborative and sustainable outcomes.
Peter’s stories underscored the importance of four key themes:
- Trust-Building: Meeting on others’ terms and understanding their perspectives are essential in creating trust and not creating power struggles.
- Communication and Repeated Transactions: Effective communication and repeated transactions can shift dynamics from adversarial to cooperative.
- Decision-Making in Conflict: Every conflict involves numerous decisions, each influenced by various factors. Understanding these can help create positive incentives and discourage negative behaviours.
- Long-Term View: Adopting and encouraging a long-term view is crucial for fostering trust and cooperation. The ability to communicate and anticipate future interactions can alter dynamics, promoting collaboration over conflict.
Relating Peter’s key themes to the major projects industry, Edward highlighted four key connections:
- Timeframe Orientation: Emphasis was placed on understanding how timeframes influence operations and relationship development. Unrealistic timelines often lead to negative behaviours and culture. Setting up projects and programmes with realistic timeframes is essential for success.
- Dispute Escalation Mechanisms: Effective systems allow for differences to be resolved in a positive manner before escalating into conflict. Upfront agreements and structured planning help navigate complex environments and prevent disputes.
- Horizon Scanning: Quick recognition of issues through horizon scanning and a ‘sense-and-react’ model of action is vital for proactive problem-solving.
- Collaborative Environment: Creating the right environment, where people feel safe and empowered, is crucial for effective collaboration.
Regardless of the industry, there were some key takeaways to enhance collaboration and resilience:
- Creating Systems and Processes: Establishing systems and processes that enable a good culture and safe environment for key conversations enhances collaboration. Additionally, creating systems for dealing with conflicts, such as dispute resolution mechanisms, is essential. Trust in these systems and the people involved is crucial.
- Trust and Culture: Building trust and a positive culture within projects and programme can change the perspective from short-term to long-term, altering incentives accordingly.
- Safe Environment: Creating a safe environment for key conversations and proactive planning is essential for long-term success.
The development of strategies to enhance collaboration and resilience should consider some key questions, such as:
- To what extent can the people we are working with take a long view rather than a short-term view?
- How can we ensure effective communication to alter dynamics positively?
- What mechanisms can we implement to foresee and address potential issues without falling into optimism bias?
The roundtable highlighted the relevance of game theory and the Prisoners’ Dilemma in the major projects industry, emphasising the need for a long-term perspective, effective communication, and systematic relationship management. The event highlighted the importance of trust, structured planning, and proactive issue identification in achieving sustainable outcomes, as well as creating a safe environment for key conversations and changing incentives to significantly enhance collaboration and resilience in complex environments. By integrating these lessons, industry professionals can build resilient, collaborative relationships and navigate complex environments more effectively.
View our event calendar for information on upcoming roundtables and other events.
Apr 26, 2024 | Events, Roundtables
On the 23rd of April, we welcomed Roseanne Serrelli, Partner at Sharpe Pritchard for a discussion on how contracts can be used to help embed collaborative behaviours on complex projects.
The session was opened by our Chief Executive, Edward Moore, who gave the attendees an overview of the evening and an introduction to the topic.
Ros began her presentation by explaining that the terms used in these ‘collaborative contracts’, e.g. alliances, enterprises, partnerships – have no specific legal definition. Any individual party involved with the contract is likely to interpret these terms differently. The key when looking to develop a contract which supports a collaborative endeavour is to focus on attention on the purpose of the relationship, rather than the term used. This approach has the benefit of shifting the focus away from risk transfer and instead puts the focus on risk avoidance and resolution.
The level of collaboration built into a contract can therefore be bespoke based upon the need, rather than starting with a pre-populated document. Options exist along on a spectrum from a light-touch arrangement to full alliances with shared legal risk, reward and finances. When developing a contract, it is worth thinking of the options as a menu from which the appropriate provisions can be selected based upon what the client intends to achieve.
Ros talked through several examples of different collaboration systems in existence, some of which have been discussed at previous ResoLex roundtables:
- Project 13 – not a contract itself, but an ecosystem and ethos for delivery that focuses on achieving outcomes rather than on the inputs.
- NEC Alliance – a single contract to which all are parties, including the client. This often works better on an ongoing programme with repeatable work, where the goal is to incentivise shared responsibility. This is more difficult on single projects where there may be more single points of failure that cannot be shared easily between participants.
- X12 – An option within NEC contracts that seeks to support multi-party collaboration, including containing a common set of objectives for all parties.
- FAC1 – An overarching framework that sits above individual contracts and contains items that need to be supported by those contracts, such as early warning systems.
Regardless of the form of the contract, there were some key takeaways about what is needed to ensure collaboration can be effectively supported:
- A defined governance structure with clear roles and accountabilities (often in a RACI matrix) – make it straightforward for people to understand who is doing what in the contract environment (and be clear that accountability is not the same as liability!)
- A clear decision-making process – the process may evolve over the lifetime of a project or differ in different parts of a programme, but it needs to be set out clearly and communicated to everyone involved.
- Set up Core Groups and Boards – these do not need to be over-engineered. They should have clearly defined objectives and discussion/decision points.
These structures provide a foundation for a successful collaboration. Having a contract that does not enable the environment you want will undermine your project from the start, though equally, having the perfect contract is meaningless if people do not engage in the right ways of working.
The contract underpins the practical side of collaboration; namely regarding people and their behaviours. When setting up for success, the behaviour of the joint team will be a key factor in how the benefits of these structures and processes are maximised in the project or programme environment.
The development of appropriate ways of working should consider some key questions, including but not limited to:
- Will the arrangement require co-location or jointly employed resources?
- What is the communications strategy? Will there be joint messaging from all parties? Will there be common branding and a ‘united front’ when facing the public?
- What are the processes for change or bringing in new people?
- What is the process for sub-contracting? Does the client need to approve any additions?
- How is the project insulated from outside noise (e.g. political pressures) to enable the team to focus on delivering the outcome?
- What do you do when things go wrong? It cannot be assumed, even with the perfect contract and the best people for the job, that there will never be an issue or point of contention between the parties. Provisions should be included in the agreement to enable parties to exit as necessary. Though counterintuitive, Ros shared that her experience is that providing clarity about the exit process provides comfort to the parties and in fact, often encourages parties to stay in contract and work through the challenges.
The session closed with a stimulating discussion on what needs to be done to try to build more collaborative environments in projects and programmes and how contracts can facilitate that, recognising that they are usually the starting point for the relationship. Points were raised in the room on the importance of ‘selling’ the benefits of this approach, particularly to clients when setting up a project and to politicians who may be overseeing major schemes. The conversation was a good reminder of the need to take the time to clearly define the required outputs and outcomes of a scheme before diving in, in order to set up the contract and environment that best facilitates these outcomes.
