24 | 4TH - 10TH MAY 2018 | UTILITY WEEK

Operations & Assets

Utility Week Awards winner case study

Supply Chain Excellence Award

Award winner: Anglian Water• Title of project/initiative:

the @one Alliance• Anglian Water turnover: £1.2 billion• Number of directly­employed staff at

Anglian Water: 4,000

Entry criteria:• Quality of entry – clear, evidence­

based.• Clear goals set for the project that were

met or exceeded.• Evidence of collaboration with the

supply chain.• Measurable benefits for the business,

both directly in relation to this partner­ship and more broadly.

• Evidence of ongoing learnings for the business and its supply chain.

The Utility Week Awards are held in asso­ciation with CGI and Capgemini.

The 2018 Utility Week Awards will be opening soon. Sponsorship opportunities are available – contact Utility Week busi­ness development manager Ben Ham­mond on benhammond@fav­house.com or 01342 332116 for more information.

All for one and one for allAnglian Water’s @one alliance won the Supply Chain Excellence Award at 2017’s Utility Week Awards. In this case study, we look at qualities of the initiative that made it an award winner.

The Anglian Water @one alliance is a collaborative organisation of consult­ants, contractors and extended supply

chain partners working together to deliver more than half of Anglian Water’s capital investment programme.

By the end of the sixth asset manage­ment plan period (AMP6), in March 2020, the @one alliance will have delivered around 800 schemes worth £1.2 billion. These schemes cover designing and building water treatment and water recycling centres, as well as improving and maintaining water mains and sewerage networks across the East of England.

Anglian claims the model allows it to set “radical and ambitious” goals such as halv­ing carbon. This, it says, has galvanised its engineers, and led to an “explosion” of inno­vation in digital technologies.

Moreover, the results of alliancing and collaboration can be clearly measured. It has reduced carbon, reduced cost and helped keep customer bills low.

The scale of the initiativeThe @one alliance delivers projects on behalf of Anglian across its entire portfolio. More than 50 per cent of the water compa­ny’s AMP6 schemes have been or are being delivered by the alliance.

Anglian is the biggest water company in the UK by geographic area. It claims its alli­ance model and approach to supply chain management is “held up as best practice” by companies and experts across the engineer­ing and construction sectors globally.

What was the target group?The @one alliance is a “revolutionary con­cept” in supply chain management built on collaboration. It has become the driving force for innovation across Anglian’s busi­ness and the supply chain sector.

It is not aimed at any one target group, because it is a concept rather than a project. It has, however, achieved certain, targeted goals such as reducing carbon and reducing cost, which have helped generate efficiencies and keep customer bills low.

Why this approach?Having worked in the traditional way with contractor partners for each individual infra­structure project and seeing the learning and knowledge that was lost each time a new job was started with a new contractor, Anglian believed it was possible to take a more col­laborative approach that would stimulate investment in innovation and fundamentally retain learning within the organisation to benefit future schemes too.

After a fresh look at its approach to sup­ply chain management, the first alliance took the company away from the traditional project­by­project client and supplier rela­tionships found in the rest of the industry, to true partnerships with collaboration at their heart. Having proven successful at that early stage, it has since grown and evolved to the alliance model it is today.

What were the initiative’s KPIs?The alliance delivered on all its performance targets for AMP5. It achieved: 30 per cent efficiency gains (22.5 per cent target); 54 per cent reduction in embodied carbon (50 per cent target for 2015); and 26 per cent reduc­tion in operational carbon (20 per cent target for 2015).

Anglian says achieving its carbon KPIs has only been possible because of the rela­tionships and shared goals of its @one alliance.

The @one alliance is delivering more

than half of Anglian Water’s £2 billion capital investment programme

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Operations & Assets

Winner’s comments“Alliancing has been recognised as best practice by the World Economic Forum’s report on construction and through the IPA’s Infrastructure Client Group, and now also Utility Week. This true model of collaboration, a total alignment of goals and leadership and focus throughout the business, has achieved great results which we’re proud of, but we’re far from complacent. The journey continues. We’ve extended the collaborative alliancing model to all areas of our business and have set even more stretching tar-gets in carbon reduction.”CHRIS NEWSOME, DIRECTOR OF ASSET MANAGEMENT, ANGLIAN WATER

The judges’ verdictThe judges said the winning entry was about more than a single project – it demonstrated an industry-leading way of working strategi-cally with the supply chain.

Anglian Water on awards night

For AMP6, the company has set even more stretching targets, including a 60 per cent reduction in carbon by 2020, and the alliance is on course to exceed these. Other KPIs include halving time in construction, and 75 per cent on­time delivery – for which the industry benchmark is 60 per cent.

Longer term, Anglian is working to become carbon neutral by 2050. This is a huge challenge, not least because deliver­ing water and sewerage services makes the company one of the biggest energy users in the East. Nevertheless, it intends to achieve its goal by reducing its own emissions rather than carbon offsetting.

How was creativity demonstrated?Total incentivisationAfter proving the success an alliancing model could bring, Anglian launched 15­year contracts with its @one partners and intro­duced a completely new system of incentiv­ising them for their work. Partners in @one now only make a return when they outper­form. If they underperform, the opposite is true.

This “total incentivisation” model is unique and means the @one partners need and want to invest and innovate – they have a vested interest in finding new, more effi­cient ways of working.

InnovationThe fact the @one alliance is delivering half of Anglian’s £2 billion capital invest­ment programme means learning is not lost between construction projects.

Halving carbon in construction demanded a fundamental step­change in the company’s approach. The challenge inspired engineers within the @one alliance and across the business and led to an explo­sion of innovation in digital technologies, construction techniques, the development of standard products and new ways of working.

For example, below ground – the company adopted technologies to repair and replace pipes and equipment without needing to dig, and above ground – it avoids building new assets by maintaining and reusing existing ones wherever possible.

Landmark schemesThanks to landmark schemes such as Raithby water treatment works and the Graf­ham resilience scheme, the @one alliance is setting new industry standards.

Anglian’s water treatment works at Raithby, Lincolnshire, signified a step­change when the company challenged the project team to build a new works for the same embodied carbon as a refurbishment of the existing one. It resulted in a radical rethink of the way sites are designed, built and operated.

Anglian claims Raithby is one of the most eco­friendly water treatment works built in the UK. Its carbon footprint was reduced by 55 per cent, and it sailed through local planning, despite it being in an Area of Out­standing Natural Beauty, thanks to its strong eco­credentials and beautiful design.

The company says it has achieved simi­lar savings at many other sites, including the huge new extension to Cambridge water

recycling centre, where the project’s carbon was reduced by 64 per cent.

What has been the impact on the company?In 2008, Anglian made a commitment to halve embodied carbon. By 2010 it had begun to work on this target through the @one alliance, and in 2015 achieved it.

Having proved the success an allianc­ing model could bring, Anglian now has an array of different alliances covering its entire supply chain and business, from water and water recycling maintenance to IT.

The company has also set its sights on solving more altruistic problems through the @one alliance. Together, the company’s partners are helping benefit deprived parts of its region, donating to WaterAid and tak­ing their expertise overseas to countries like Nepal to help deliver safe drinking water to millions more people.