Infrastructure operators and owners have to deal perpetually with a set of broad challenges: enhancing the assets, while keeping their construction costs and lifecycle costs to a minimum; ensuring health and safety at sites; and minimizing any harmful environmental impact.

Anglian Water is no exception to that: the largest water and wastewater company in England and Wales (by geographic area) serves about six million customers in the East of England, and aims to reduce capital costs in infrastructure delivery by 15% relative to 2015 as well as cut emissions in construction and operations until 2020.

To that end, the utility has adopted an innovative collaboration model. Launched in 2005, the @one Alliance formally links Anglian Water Asset Delivery (Anglian Water’s team responsible for the capital delivery process) with six key contractors – Balfour Beatty, Barhale, MMB (Mott MacDonald Bentley), Grontmij (Sweco), MWH and Skanska – and the wider supply chain through framework agreements. During each five-year regulatory period, the Alliance designs and builds the majority of Anglian Water’s projects, numbering about 800 and costing about £1.2 billion ($1.5 billion) in total.

Aligned through a common set of objectives and performance incentives, the Alliance companies collaborate effectively and share knowledge openly. What’s more, taking a longer-term perspective, the Alliance has embraced product standardization and optioneering to speed up and improve construction. Learning from complex manufacturing, it has also adopted a digitally enabled product lifecycle management allowing for instance to virtually operate an asset and train operating staff with the help of immersive technology before the start of construction.

“Design engineers have to become product optimization and integration engineers”
Lindsey Taylor, Product-based Delivery Manager, Anglian Water @one Alliance

The impact of the Alliance is impressive – reducing capital expenditure, carbon emissions while improving quality of delivery as well as health & safety. Getting there required the organization to change its mindset to adapt a product-based thinking and continuous improvement, implement new procurement models as well as constantly incorporating new innovations.

Download the case study on the right to read the full success story of the @one Alliance and its many lessons for other E&C companies.