Michelle Johnson

Said the following about Tony Heap:

“To meet and exceed our customers’ expectations we strive to take an innovative approach to both project process and design, this was evidenced recently by Tony Heap from IP, who, when faced with a project requirement specification deficit for delivery of the £40m PRS earthwork programme, took a pro-active lead to negate the problem and realise substantial client benefits from doing so.

The strategy Tony developed took a wide and all encompassing view of the problem and aimed to achieve a solution that would not only enhance and promote a positive sense of reliance on the IP team’s capabilities in project delivery, but also ensure ownership of the PRS remained with the client. Tony first brought together the client, the contractor and Infrastructure Projects through a programme of twice weekly joint site visits and reviews.

To help drive time efficiencies and promote innovation, the design process was woven into this development process and each site review included:

• all project aspects of the PRS needed to meet the new CP5 earthwork policy

• practicable solutions

• site access

• method of construction and potential to combine/ remove items as was beneficial

To ensure the smooth running of these project-critical visits, Tony personally collected the client from their home and took them to site.

Between four and six sites per shift were systematically covered between London and Berwick, as was the bi-weekly PRS review meeting. This strategy enabled the smooth running of the PRS and removed the requirement for all schemes to be approved separately, generating significant cost savings in the design process and enabling the contractor rapid advancement in the programme to enable site works.

Thanks to this proactive and efficient approach there have been no major scheme alterations after PRS submission and no design issues. This agility to finding productive working methods has also brought in contractors construction expertise from the onset, which has fulfilled the customers CP5 efficiency targets.

Not only are the customers efficiency targets being met for all PRS but we are also on track to having an agreed design solution by July 2015. The tangible result being that IP are now three years ahead of schedule, this not only promote our capabilities to the customer but also actively encourages opportunities for the client to bring in additional work to IP (circa £20m).“