Collaboration in project performance.

Acorn support clients to create and embed a genuinely collaborative culture that delivers a unified vision and aligned process for the lifetime of a project team or framework agreement. A fully integrated team is better placed to deliver consistently to agreed targets, resolve problems, and make efficiency and cost-saving innovations.

Companies stand to benefit commercially where an ability to genuinely pull together on core values and key processes deliver a measurable increase in the team’s ability to meet performance targets, and demonstrating proven competence can bring commercial advantage to bids and tenders.

The process involves working from the ‘top down’ from board level to supervisors, to engage those parties who have the greatest influence with the intent and strategy, and requires the on-going support and challenge of senior managers during the delivery of the project.

A diagnostic tool to assist companies in implementing effective collaboration, Acorn’s questionnaire is built on more than two decade’s experience and identifies nine key collaborative behaviours that we know result in accelerated project performance.

The collaboration questionnaire measures those factors within a project team at a given point in time and is used alongside other data to inform the team’s progress.

The questionnaire can be used during any stage in the project lifecycle, and can be repeated at key points throughout the lifetime of the project, providing quantifiable data on key requirements much talked about but usually left unmeasured.

The data is used to generate actions and resolutions, driving the project towards higher performance.

Joint Ventures: Multiple companies with diverse cultures and processes are required to quickly come together to deliver effectively on the same piece of work, be it at bid-winning stage or project delivery. True collaboration avoids the tendency to adopt the dominant culture’s processes, which were not designed to meet the needs of the collective group.

Traditional ‘Contractor’ Relationships: Many main contractors now want to create framework agreements with suppliers, and work in a manner that is collaborative rather than adversarial, to iron out inefficiencies and solve problems to meet performance targets and deliver cost savings.

In-house Project Teams: These teams can benefit where collaboration between functions will resolve inefficiencies and frustrations in the project delivery, increasing the likelihood of successfully delivering KPIs.