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

Case study

Danny Brennan Senior Project Manager South Time with business: 5 years, 1 month

I heard about Shaping our Future when I was on an internal management development programme, and volunteered to be on it – but I subsequently found out I was being put forward to be on it anyway. The programme was about what we can do as individuals and as a company to help progress Morgan Sindall into a better position going forwards in the future and continue developing on where we want to be as a company. I was excited about how taking part could help my own individual development but also to be part of a process that might potentially come up with a golden nugget idea that changes or helps the wider industry going forwards. The academic learning side I would describe as being positively intense. We are used to taking on and using a wide range of information at quite a quick pace in this industry, but we are wired as engineers and as managers in construction to find solutions to problems. When we are running projects, even if everything has gone well, we are looking for how we can do things better, quicker, or more efficiently. With Cranfield, we were focusing on understanding the problem in more depth, which was a very different way of thinking than that which we have all developed over our decades in industry. Ultimately, we came up with various solutions, but the idea of exploring the problem was a very alien way of thinking for me and it felt quite uncomfortable at first. Back in the day job, it is hard not to revert back to how we have always done things, because I’ve had 12 years of running to the solution. But I have found myself on several occasions since the programme, when faced with

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