Integrated Supply Chain

Winner - Birmingham Construction Partnership

With its unique two-tier supply chain Birmingham Construction Partnership proves that local authorities can drive sustainability and health and safety issues by its choice of contractors. Birmingham council’s urban design service formed an alliance with three firms: Wates, GF Tomlinson and Thomas Vale, which together form the first tier of the supply chain. The second tier comprises 61 companies from whom equipment and services are sourced. This approach has produced £5.8m of council offices, saved £120,000 in installation costs, promoted the use of local labour and developed partnering principles. The solution proved so effective that a permanent partnership area has been set up in both the council’s and contractors’ offices, which hints at a successful union for a long time to come.

Runners-up

Bovis Lend Lease

Bovis Lend Lease rose to the sustainability challenge with its £3.2m groundbreaking materials consolidation centre, serving large building projects in London. The 5000m2 facility, located outside the congestion charge zone, processes more than 200,000 pallets of material every year, increasing construction productivity while reducing carbon emissions, journey times and transport costs.

Interserve Health Wales

In 2004 NHS Wales instigated a review of procurement strategy then produced a £750m initiative and a brand new approach to healthcare procurement in Wales. The six-year scheme involves Interserve as a key player, with three supply-chain partners implementing projects worth over £5m. A big change has been single en suite rooms replacing multi-bedded wards in Welsh hospitals, to be extended to mental health and long-term care, too.

Logic Homes

Developers, architects, housing associations, contractors and environmental consultants make up Logic Homes, a delivery vehicle in which the whole supply chain works together from inception to completion. Delivering private and affordable housing, with more than 1,000 homes on site, the suppliers contribute to decisions about programme. Sharing workload avoids duplication and increases efficiency, enabling the development of larger programmes, with fewer resources and lower overheads.

Mace

Carbon reduction has received much attention recently, but water conservation has faded somewhat from public view. Still, work to alleviate the crisis continues, with schemes such as Mace’s Three Valleys programme, which provides water to more than 3 million customers in the South-east. This project involves £250m worth of improvements to the water supply infrastructure, including state-of-the-art treatment plants, new security measures and the replacement of 600km of leaking pipes. So water management seems to be in safe hands.

VincentStokes

VincentStokes works in the private leisure market; SLM manages local authority leisure contracts. Together, they have refurbished and doubled the rate of use of 10 leisure centres, at a cost of £6.4m. Vincentstokes helped SLM expand its portfolio, develop realistic budgets and deliver projects on time and to budget. This has meant that SLM had the most successful bid rate in the industry over the past two years, and the public leisure sector now competes with the private market. The team hopes it has made a real impact on the country’s health problems.