Innovation in infrastructure: how does collaboration boost outcomes?

As a sponsor at the UK Infrastructure Show in March 2024, our team spent the day meeting plenty of main contractors and project procurement leaders as the UK looks ahead to further infrastructure project builds.

Adam Hicks, our Director – Strategic Partnerships & Major Projects, held a session at the Future Pipelines Zone, talking about “best practice in buildability through streamlined logistics, with safety and sustainability in mind”.

Our experience is that productivity is a major challenge and plays a big part in delivering projects, on time, on budget and to specification. Adam asked, “what’s stopping us from increasing or improving productivity?”.

Good logistics are a crucial, and often underrated, part of a construction project. So much time and money can be wasted waiting for materials to be removed from site during excavation or delivered to the incorrect location during construction which is completely avoidable if greater consideration is given to logistics at an early stage. We need to ensure early engagement with the whole supply chain, including the logistics team, as well as ensure subcontracts and commercial agreements allow for effective logistics management, as often logistics can get buried within these arrangements. If we begin to decouple the supply chain, we can investigate what we could do differently and what expertise we can draw from to make improvements and deliver value.

As Constructing Excellence has said: “Good logistics is about getting the right materials to the right place at the right time. If we can ensure this is happening, we will improve productivity”.

Adam went on to talk through the problems and solutions that we have been involved in at a series of UK infrastructure projects, including:

• Accelerating excavation on a Crossrail site in London
• Bespoke design and manufacturing of a range of equipment for lifting and safety improvements at Hinkley Point C in Somerset
• Bespoke temporary propping at various levels on the Thames Tideway project in London
• Speeding up mass excavation and providing a bespoke working platform on two packages on the HS2 route in London
• Supporting at an early phase, solving the significant complexities involved in working within centimetres of vital transport infrastructure at the Elephant & Castle Town Centre Redevelopment project in London.

We know that trying to bring in new innovations that change methodology once construction has started, or utilising a trial & error approach, is both difficult and costly. How do the entire project teams from design through to sustainability keep up to date with new time saving innovations? What best practice principles can be applied?

As we look ahead to projects like the TransPennine Route Upgrade, further HS2 packages, Sizewell C and the potential Lower Thames Crossing, here are our thoughts:

• Superior logistics methods are key
• Early engagement with the supply chain ensures all ideas are on the table
• Reducing dig time, project planning acceleration and cost-time benefits can be balanced and realised
• Whole site lifting plans, storage and safe meeting zones support the removal of people-plant interfaces
• Solutions on-site in the construction phases are available that reduce water, waste, transport movements and CO2 emissions.

If you’re working on an infrastructure project in the near future, why not get in touch with Adam to talk through our experience in the pre-construction and build phases on recent major infrastructure projects, or find out more here?