Thames Water to Establish Alliance Partnership

Water Service Has Moved a Step Closer Towards Establishing Its Innovative New Partnership Approach for the Future After a Day of Team Building at Ascot Racecourse

The company held an ITN (Invitation to Negotiate) launch event for five shortlisted companies and consortia on 1stSeptember with the ultimate goal of creating an ‘infrastructure alliance' to deliver its clean water network and developer service contracts for the next five years, with an option to extend by a further 10 years.

The alliance also has the ability to include optional scope for waste networks and metering.

Bidders, each represented by five people, attending were Amey Cappagh JV, KCD (a joint venture between Kier and Clancy Docwra), the Lanes Group Alliance, Murphy Morrison JV and Skanska.

Over the course of more than six hours the 25 delegates, plus an equal number of key staff from Thames Water, explored the company's vision and values for creating a radical new way of delivering up to £1bn worth of business over the next five years.

Thames Water's head of capital procurement, Tim Coles, said:

"We have often heard from our contractors that projects and programmes could be delivered more efficiently and cost-effectively with the customer more in mind if they had been involved earlier."

"Our approach to this alliance means that the successful bidders can join us right at the start of our thinking and planning."

"We want to work with organisations that can join with us in a collaborative approach to working in new ways, to deal with the challenges we face in the future, of which we have many. We want to seamlessly work together with our future alliance partners to achieve our collective goals and deliver on our customer and regulatory promises."

"Our approach to this alliance is similar to our eightâ‚‚0 alliance and this is a very new and exciting way of doing business in our industry."

The day was principally concerned with the serious business of sharing knowledge and insight collaboratively between companies that could normally be viewed as competitors, and encouraging them to take the first steps towards putting together a business plan for an alliance that has the potential to radically change the way utilities operate in the future.

Adam Gosnold, Morrison's Utility Services executive director for southern England,who is already working with Thames Water on two joint ventures commented:

"It's a departure from Thames' normal approach, collaborating at this stage. The company is walking the talk!"

Source: Water Briefing

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Taxonomy

• Joint Venture
• Governance & Planning