Building resilience and capability: Shaping the future of Morgan Sindall Construction

Case study

Luke Owen Commercial Manager Cardiff/Bristol Time with business: 6 years, 5 months

We were programmed in our business and our functions – when given a problem – to immediately come to a solution to fit the shortest, least impact, or best outcome, and it was stopping us from being innovative. I don’t think that was the fault of the business; I think it is the nature of the industry we are in. In construction, we tend to work on projects. These projects have a start and end date and a rigid programme that has usually been developed by someone else, so your job is to try to stick to the plan. Anything that comes up is a fire that you naturally try to stamp out immediately. The biggest thing I learned from the Shaping our Future programme was the need to step outside of this way of thinking and explore the problem and how it might be fixed before jumping to a solution that may or may not solve the issue. By taking the time to pick the problem apart you can come up with more innovative, better, out-of-the-box ways of solving it. It has 100% changed my approach to my job. When I’m presented with an issue, I don’t just jump in with a solution. I bring other people in on it to get their viewpoints. We chat about it, explore the problem, and come up with a few options for how to solve it. From a project point of view, we might take an extra day or two up front with this approach, but that has a benefit in the long run.

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