Balfour Beatty and its partners commended for collaborative approach

Balfour Beatty today announces that its Strategic Design Consultant Partnership (SDCP) and its Highways Delivery Community (HDC) have achieved the ISO44001 international accreditation for collaboration.

The SDCP is formed of Balfour Beatty, Atkins, Mott MacDonald and WSP while the HDC brings together Balfour Beatty, Chevron, Hanson, HW Martin, Tarmac, Atkins and Aggregate Industries.

The IS044001 accreditation is the first international standard of its nature and helps organisations build and develop effective competitive business relationships based upon a collaborative approach.

Rather than being driven by contractual obligation, the SDCP and HDC communities are driven by a mutual desire to influence and change the industry.

The SDCP partnership brings together designers and engineers from four companies to encourage a new level of openness, collaboration and innovation not previously seen within the construction industry while simultaneously creating a new and smarter way of working to deliver safer and more efficient solutions.

The HDC partnership harnesses the knowledge and expertise of leading highways experts to deliver innovative, new solutions; providing specialist, reliable, sustainable and creative advice with a focus on safety, efficiency and quality.

The SDCP and HDC will utilise the ISO44001 accreditation framework to explore and implement new ways of working across the industry; sharing resources, opportunities and successes to generate efficiencies, increase safety and deliver value for customers.

Catherine Crespin, Balfour Beatty’s Group Head of Customer Experience, said: “This is a great achievement for our SDCP and HDC partnerships and testament to their continuous drive to improve collaborative working across the industry.

“Through these collaborative new working methods, we will realise new innovative solutions which will deliver maximum value for our customers while enhancing our performance through improved processes and working methods.”

The IS044001 international framework follows from the British Standard BS11000, for which Balfour Beatty was accredited in 2013. The BS11000 evolved into the international standard IS044001 in 2010 with Balfour Beatty being named the first company to achieve certification across its business, in 2018.