The business had a strong pipeline and a clear ambition: to grow to roughly twice its size. But it was set up to deliver at its current scale, not its future one.
Teams were busy with well-intentioned initiatives, yet there was no shared view of which mattered most, how they connected, or who owned them. Without firm foundations, growth would simply magnify the problems the business already had.
Strategy only works if the people delivering it understand it and own it. We started with the executive team, then brought the wider business in to decide how each objective would be met.
An executive away-day surfaced 131 live and planned initiatives. A correlation exercise mapped how they depended on each other, revealing 12 categories and 7 themes that the team shaped into five transformation initiatives with 18 objectives.
Each initiative had an executive sponsor, a goal and clear objectives. Scoping documents set out scope, milestones, dependencies, expected benefits, risks and resources, and 23 were signed off by sponsors.
Workshops with the workstreams each sponsor nominated defined the how: 59 strategies and 325 tactics, created by the people who would deliver them.
Tactics were scored for impact against effort and cost against risk. 152 went forward to triage, each mapped to one of the business’s four strategic pillars.
A simple model of none, blended or full support put improvement resource where teams lacked bandwidth. 78 tactics were taken on with direct support.
A programme of works, a maturity model and a fixed reporting rhythm (monthly growth and operations boards, monthly and quarterly executive reviews) kept progress visible and owned.
Four transformation initiatives, with people development at the centre and digital transformation underpinning them all. Every tactic traced back to one of them.
Not every good idea needed doing now. Workshops generated far more tactics than the business could deliver, so each was tested for value before any resource was committed.
A mobilisation guide and plan template built from a review of more than 500 pages of existing guidance, a deliverables tracker and T-minus process, and standard site layouts. The triage gate moved from stage 4 to stage 2 to bring the right people in earlier.
A new labour strategy: 22 agency bids assessed across more than 5,000 data points and shortlisted to five, with a vendor management platform to run external labour from requisition to invoice. Service line spend data was reconciled to within £1K.
Assessments on six projects with more than 30 stakeholders engaged, and a framework validated with subject experts and presented to the executive team, with Last Planner methods and delivery KPIs set as the next step at project level.
A baseline capacity matrix across the portfolio, supplier categorisation into core, core+ and non-core, and spend-against-forecast data through 2027, giving leaders a fact base for growth decisions.
Client details have been anonymised. Figures are drawn from the engagement’s own reporting.
Direction came from the executive team, so every later decision had a clear line of sight back to it.
Strategies and tactics came from the people who would deliver them, which built commitment as well as better ideas.
Triage matched improvement support to each team’s bandwidth, rather than loading new work onto people already at full stretch.
A fixed reporting rhythm kept every initiative on the agenda of the boards and executive meetings that mattered.
We help construction and manufacturing organisations put the foundations in place before growth tests them. Let’s talk about where yours stand.
