| The FM
Company – Developing common goals
The Challenge
A large construction and facilities management (FM) company was tendering
for a major government contract. A small, but key, requirement of that
contract was the ability to deal safely with asbestos, a skill the company
lacked in-house and needed to contract out.
Historically, the FM company’s relationship
with small, niche contractors had been fraught. The perception of the
FM company was that the contractors were unreliable and deliberately underestimated
the cost of the contract to win the work, only to boost earnings through
‘extra works’; from contractors’ points of view, the
FM company seemed to change the specification of the contract without
consultation and were forever finding reasons for non-payment.
Due to the nature of the contract, the FM company wanted to move to a
partnership style of working where both parties shared the risk and reward.
The Solution
Employed by the FM company, Perfect Circle designed and facilitated a
day-long session aimed at developing the relationship with the preferred
supplier. The agenda for the day consisted of:
- A short team building session
- A structured brainstorm around the requirements of the tender using
an ‘ishikawa’ or fishbone structure
- Using the outcomes of that session, an analysis by the group of what
parts of the tender were solely the FM company’s responsibility,
what were solely the supplier’s responsibility and what were shared
- From this exercise, developing a shared understanding of how each
company needed to work with each other, together with a structured action-plan.
Although employed by the FM company, Perfect Circle
was able, indeed had to, play an impartial role, guiding discussion and
ensuring debate was full and frank.
The Outcome
From the session, both parties had a far better understanding of each
other’s needs and what was required to make the relationship work.
They were able to work towards common ends and together develop SLAs,
along with the associated KPIs, that shared the risk and reward. A true
partnership began to develop.
While the new partnership failed to secure the original
contract, the whole process increased understanding and the majority of
subsequent contracts, for which the partners have bid, have been won.
If you would like more information on how facilitation
might help you or your organisation, please contact us on: 0117
915 4552, or click
here to email us now.
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