FM Conway - Going the Extra Mile

Chapter 7 Building for the Future

My job was to focus on the future, and my first task was to make sure that the company was fully prepared for a big tender that was coming up very soon.

M y own job, however, was no longer to get involved in these day-to-day issues, no matter how urgent and exciting they might be. My job was to focus on the future, and my first task was to make sure that the company was fully prepared for a big tender that was coming up very soon. The London Highways Alliance Contract (LoHAC) was a joint initiative between Transport for London (TfL) and the London Boroughs, which was designed to improve the reliability and cost-effectiveness of highway services across London. By introducing common specification contracts, and insisting on high levels of collaboration between the contractors, LoHAC hoped to make large savings on their contractors’ bills. LoHAC divided London into four regions, and the contracts would be awarded later in the year. We were bidding for the Northwest Region, but there were three issues that we had to sort out if we were to have any chance of winning the contract. The first issue was a ‘soft’ issue, but quite

a tricky one: it involved the way we were perceived by TfL. We had just completed a project for them, Route 8 of the Cycle Superhighway, the stretch that goes from

Wandsworth to Westminster. Although we had done all the work ourselves (and done it well), we had been engaged as a sub-contractor to Carillion. At the end of the

project, it was clear that Carillion’s involvement had been unnecessary and had added little value. We knew this, and so did some of the people in TfL. Dana Skelley, the Director of Roads for TfL, had been frustrated by the unnecessary extra layer of management, and of cost. The reason that Carillion had been involved was down to TfL’s procurement people,

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