NG Bailey create exceptional environments for present and future generations
NG Bailey is the UK’s leading independent engineering, construction and facilities and infrastructure services business. Their mission is to responsibly design, build and maintain buildings, infrastructure and IT services. The company employs over 3000 people across the UK.
“There is a great understanding, teamwork and trust between us. This has resulted from the hard work we’ve done together in a very collaborative environment, focused on delivery and business outcomes.”
Ian Birdsey, Director of ICT, NG Bailey
IFS implementation challenges
NG Bailey were driving the implementation of IFS across multiple divisions to replace legacy systems. The team lacked the bandwidth to support the divisions already live with IFS, whilst rolling out the solution to other divisions in parallel.
They were also finding that, although a great fit in most areas of their business, technologies other than IFS needed to be considered in order to strengthen and complement the overall system transformation.
The programme was in danger of overrunning as the team balanced the competing demands of supporting live divisions, delivering the planned divisional roll out on time, and considering changes to the overall systems architecture to strengthen the solution.
It’s common that the function and operation of a programme of this magnitude be reviewed mid-delivery to maintain focus and stay on track. NG Bailey had the foresight to do this and contacted Fluidto support.
Why NG Bailey chose to work with Fluid
Michael Porter, NG Bailey’s Chief Financial Officer, had experience of working with Fluid on a successful finance transformation programme when he was the Finance Director of the Built Environment Division at Shepherd. Michael referred Fluid to support the IFS implementation at NG Bailey.
He said, “Trust Fluid. The Fluid guys were exceptional in delivering this project for us.”
The Fluid approach
The team’s first step was to work with the senior management team on aligning the major initiatives NG Bailey had in progress. The Facilities and Infrastructure Services division was in the process of transforming their business architecture and developing new ways of working. The ICT and Change departments were ready to bring their Group-wide systems’ transformation to Facilities and Infrastructure Services.
With two major vehicles for change making good progress and running in parallel the Heads of ICT and Change wanted to ensure the business fully understood the interdependencies and had identified all the opportunities for efficiencies in delivery. Most importantly, they wanted to ensure that both major initiatives and any associated smaller projects were united in their business objectives.
Fluid facilitated senior managers’ thinking on how to align these initiatives, improve communication between Facilities and Infrastructure Services and ICT and provide a mechanism for monitoring progress towards fulfilling business objectives. Fluid brought together representatives from the two programmes and delivered a visual strategy workshop, called VMOST, to align IT initiatives with business plans.
“The VMOST session was very good in terms of getting the business thinking about tactical activities linked to their strategy. The visualisation at the end was very powerful.”
Neil Florence, Group Head of ICT, NG Bailey
Introducing complementary technologies and new ways of working
NG Bailey partnered with Fluid to help restructure the team and the programme in light of the expanded remit and risk of overrun.
Together they introduced new ways of working to improve efficiency, added further resource to increase bandwidth, and brought new skill sets to cover the expanded function. They also took time to gain a fresh perspective on the overall systems architecture and introduce complementary technologies.
The team then drove a successful divisional roll out alongside the embedding core skill sets and processes required to support and manage the new systems architecture for its life cycle across all divisions.
Business-led change delivery
The workshop output, the visual strategy board, gave NG Bailey greater insight to the overall business value in each initiative. This enabled NG Bailey to dovetail the two transformation programmes, prioritising and scheduling the combined deliverables for greater efficiency, minimum business disruption and maximum business value. The session also highlighted gaps in the work programme – showing where business objectives would not be met by current strategies allowing NG Bailey to take mitigating actions.
Fluid’s partnership with NG Bailey brought a more business change-led approach to delivery. They improved the support and service provided to the existing business implementations, improved the relationship with end users, suppliers, and reduced reliance on third parties by increasing the knowledge and capability of the permanent team.