Change management seminar – 2

Yesterday, I travelled to Bristol to chair a Construction Productivity Network seminar on change management (see post).

We heard an interesting pair of presentations from Robin Wilkin (MPS) and Professor Ming Sun (University of West of England). Ming (who, incidentally, was one of the people who encouraged me to write my book) has been leading a research project evaluating the use and benefits of MPS’s web-based CCM (contract change management) solution focused on the NEC/ECC contract, so we heard some interesting feedback on the initial results of a questionnaire survey conducted in late 2006 (PDF version of document available here).

I read the document on the journey home. The findings are very positive in respect of the NEC/ECC contract and of the benefits of the CCM system. When analysed by discipline, clients and project/contract managers tended to be more positive than contractors, with the latter also tending to rank the top 10 benefits differently – reflecting, I suppose, that contractors will have different commercial pressures, responsibilibities and priorities to other team members. Further research is to be conducted into the use of the system to build upon this initial phase.

I also enjoyed the presentation given by Adrian Terry (until recently group staff development manager at Halcrow and, before that, a Respect for People project manager). He described a change management programme conducted in Halcrow, and included a short video of one of the group’s events. As a former Halcrow employee, I found this particularly interesting: it was like watching a home movie, as I tried to spot people who I used to work with.

At very short notice (we’re talking about 10.30am yesterday morning, just 2.5 hours before the event’s start!), Esther Ridsdale of CSPI Associates agreed to fill a gap caused by the late withdrawal of another speaker, and did a sterling job, drawing on experiences in change programmes for supply chains in Honda and Nissan, among others, and stressing the importance of letting individuals know “What’s in it for me?”

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2007/01/change_manageme_1/

2 pings

  1. […] also been available as a standalone application from MPS for four or five years – see posts here and here); and BIW first showcased its project financial control functionality at its 2006 user […]

  2. […] using web-based tools (I mentioned how MPS‘s CCM tool was used to manage NEC processes in January; and highlighted [my employer] BIW’s own efforts in this field in September), and I remain […]

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