Building a OneTeam culture in a complex multi supplier environment: Lessons from the National Underground Asset Register (NUAR)

APM and the South Wales and West of England Branch successfully delivered our first hybrid event on 24 May 2023 at Atkins in Bristol. One of the speakers, Anuj Goyal, presented in the room and Ibtissam Adem joined us virtually. We also had a few delegates who joined virtually due to their preferred working arrangements. Giving people the choice of how to consume this event enabled a high degree of psychological safety and this, combined with the digital connectivity provided by the speakers, led to a highly interactive event.

The Geospatial Commission is building a digital map of underground pipes and cables that will revolutionise the way we install, maintain, operate and repair our buried infrastructure - the National Underground Asset Register (NUAR). In this session we shared our experience of setting up this complex project, managing over 650 stakeholders and creating a OneTeam approach across public and private partners. 

There is currently no comprehensive underground map of the UK’s service network. Different organisations have their own maps showing where such things as gas pipes and electricity cables are, but the lack of a combined map creates an increased risk of potentially lethal accidents. Over four million holes are dug in the UK each year, many in the wrong place. Unforeseen ground conditions are a major obstacle to all construction and housing projects, especially on previously developed land.

Atkins is building a new digital map of underground pipes and cables will help improve efficiencies in construction and development, reduce disruption and improve workers’ safety. As well as the technical solution, Atkins has engaged with over 650 Asset Owners (AO) to get access to their underground data and transformed this, so it is available in a consistent way on the platform.

This session covered an overview of what we did and our experiences in Stakeholder Management & Teamwork covering;

• Building a One Team Approach
• Boosting staff morale in a multi-supplier project and
• Collaborative Working

Speakers:

Anuj Goyal, Professional Head of Discipline, Business Consulting & Transformation, Atkins

Anuj is a strategic change leader with a track record of designing and delivering transformation change and improvement across a digital and technology landscape. He has experience of leading complex projects up to £100m with multi-disciplinary teams from inception to completion, ensuring both soft and hard realisation of benefits and transition to business as usual. Anuj was the PM for NUAR from Sept 2001 to Nov 2002; he built the team structure, set up the project workstreams, implemented a digital PMO and was the main client interface during this period. He is now the Professional Head of Discipline for Business Consulting and Transformation in Atkins, responsible for integration of capabilities and developing service lines.

Ibtissam Adem, Graduate Consultant, Atkins

Ibtissam graduated from Queen Mary University of London with a First-Class degree in Chemical Engineering in 2022. She joined Atkins in September 2022 and joined the NUAR programme and contracts team in which she supported project managers across a multitude of workstreams by running day-to-day processes for the entire NUAR team of over 100 people which spans 5 companies. Ibtissam is now working as a business analyst on the Severn Trent Water project.

The speakers have very kindly allowed their presented material to be shared on Slideshare and also embedded below for your reference.

Previous events and webinars can be viewed on the APM Slideshare and YouTube channels. 

Follow @APMEvents for upcoming event information.

  #apm-swwe