So welcome, everybody. Welcome to those that are online and welcome to everybody that's in the room. I'm Melissa Zanocco. I'm head of programs for the Infrastructure Client Group and I'm also the co-chair of the Project 13 Adopter Community. I'm just going to start the usual housekeeping. So there's fire exits that they're located just outside the space out there. And if you're looking at the lift, they're on the left. And then you make your way down to the ground floor and the meeting place is just across the road in front of the church. Then for those online as well as in the room, we're using Slido for questions. And also we've got some polls, got some exciting polls coming up. So you need to go on to Slido, even if you're in the room. So we want everybody to go through Slido. And you enter the code, it's hashtag 7449361. And I'll just say that again. So it's hashtag 7449361. And then you can join in with the polling and also ask questions. And if you like questions and they get moved up the list, so then we know which ones to ask. So moving swiftly on to why are we here? What is the purpose of the event this morning? So what we really like to do is to identify if there are actually practical ways of accelerating the building of trust in different forms, as we're going to hear, and have some really practical examples. And I'm going to start off very briefly just by telling you about Project 13 and how this event came about from our side. So can I get the next slide? Are you able to put the Project 13 slide up? So for those that don't know, Project 13 is a global industry-led change movement. And its aim is to improve the way that infrastructure is created and delivered to get greater value from it. And it advocates moving from a transactional approach to a more integrated and collaborative models. And the models bring together the right capabilities with the right technologies into integrated enterprises. And a few years back, the infrastructure client group, and we have a past chair sitting in the front row here, we looked at current exemplars and poor projects drawn from across infrastructure. And that piece of work was led by the UCL and Bartlett. And that identified aggregated characteristics that we saw in those projects to define that overall approach to Project 13. And those have been consolidated into the Project 13 principles that look good, you can see on the slide. So it's really important to note that this is not theory, it's actually based on actual practical examples. And several people were doing this, and all we've done is sort of brought it together. And it's now being put in practice by clients in the UCL and globally. And basically, it advocates a shift away from the transactional approach. So we have normally have linear relationships with clients and contractors and consultants, and there's competition around work or scope. And that often drives adversarial behaviours around things like gaming and parent-child dynamics. And that creates the value-destroying behaviours. And also, it feels like the supplier ecosystem doesn't get a good deal out of it. And what we know is that 50% of the spend on projects is usually outside the primary relationships, kind of further down the supplier ecosystem. And that's where a lot of the potential and the value sits. So Project 13, the enterprise model, brings together integrated and collaborative teams that are engaged to deliver outcomes, not work. And that recognises the need to create the right environment for the enterprise and the integrated teams to operate. And that enables the positive value-addying behaviours. And we would argue, hopefully this morning, that that helps to build trust. So since its launch in 2018, we've got a growing group of formal and informal adopters. And many of the adopters are in the room today. And they're actually putting the principles into practice and sharing their learning and challenging the sort of status quo. And we've also got a Project 13 network. So if you're not aware of that, please sign up immediately. And that's an interactive web-enabled community where members can connect with other practitioners, with experts, with innovators, everyone who's interested in delivering infrastructure differently. And they're all putting their Project 13 principles into practice. And it's currently got about 4,500 members across the world. And we have various governance groups to govern this movement. And in all of them, this theme of trust keeps coming up. So whether it's the adopter group, whether it was the supplier community, whether it was even our digital transformation task group. And we believe that the Project 13 model and the principles help to establish the enabling environments to accelerate the building of trust. And that's something that I hope we're going to explore today. So in a moment, I'm going to ask Beth West to explain why this is a joint event with NPLAN and the discussions that she and Dev have been having to arrive at a similar place. But first of all, I was just going to introduce the members of the panel. So we've got Beth West here, who is CEO of East West Rail. And East West Rail are Project 13 adopters. And she's here representing the kind of the client view and clients building trust with its supplier ecosystem and trying to change that parent-child transactional relationship. And we've got Tony Slater. So he's Programme Director for the National Highway Smart Motorway Alliance. And that's another Project 13 adopter. And he's got particular experience with building trust at the lower levels of the supplier ecosystem, below what we would have traditionally called the Tier 1 and the Tier 2. And then I've got Dr. Jaz Kalra. He's an Associate Professor of Operations and Project Management at Manchester Metropolitan University. And he's actually done research into building trust between suppliers. And he sits on the Project 13 supplier engagement community. And he was recently head of supply chain at Arcadis, working on national national highways, lower terms crossing. And then we've got Andy Brown. And he's Group Chief Sustainability Officer at Anglian Water Services, which is another Project 13 adopter. And he's led community engagement work for Anglian Water. So building trust with the public and getting their feedback and input into Anglian's business plans and projects. And last but not least, so is Dev Amrati, who's co-founder and CEO of mPlan and also co-founder of this event. Along with Beth West. And we've been talking about the need for this discussion for a while, actually. And he'll be looking from the angle of building trust in data and information and the hot topic of the moment, AI. But also how data and digital can be actually a key enabler to building that trust. So now, without any further ado, if we can get the next slide up as well. I'm going to hand over to Beth so she can explain the discussions that she's been having that led to this. Thanks, Melissa. And thank you all for coming this morning. I think what this really comes back down to is that even if we talk about construction and even if we talk about big data, we're talking about people who deliver these things. And we need people to have a certain set of behaviors in terms of how they're going to make things happen. And as Melissa said, it's an industry that through the annals of time has been fraught with confrontational behaviors and really sort of trying to get one up upmanship on each other as part of the industry. And way back when I was a commercial director, I became really obsessed with behaviors. And I did have someone sort of strangely say to me quite a long time ago that it was very odd for a commercial director to care so much about behaviors. And the reason I care so much about behaviors is basically back to what Melissa was talking about. It's about how do we actually get the things done that we want done? And it is about how do we get people to work together in a functional and helpful way and to allow align the objectives. And as I've explored this more and more, I've been I have a handy piece of material that someone else produced. But I do get rather obsessed about the trust equation. And just to break this down a little bit, the trust, trust equation is do people you know, it's a few components is do people really know what they're doing? So you can't have trust in someone if you if you think they're incompetent, quite frankly. So are you working with people who are competent in what they're doing? That's the credibility. Reliability is about do they say do they do what they say they're going to do? You know, you can be amazing at doing something, but if you never deliver anything on time, or, or, you know, it's way over budget, or, you know, it's that is a problem. So you not only need to know what you're doing, but you actually have to do what you say you're going to do. The next one, and I think this is the word intimacy is a bit weird, but it's about do you have a personal relationship with people? I think this is important. And I think more and more as I think about trying to make a diverse industry, we need to think about intimacy, particularly as we try to understand each other. And if we have diverse groups of people from diverse backgrounds, it's even more important that we can communicate with each other effectively, so that we don't miss each other's words. And I think that that intimacy thing is really important about how do we build a relationship. That's the numerator, the denominator, and the thing that can absolutely squander all of this is if you have high degrees of self orientation. And that is all about do you look only at your own, your own outcomes, and not about the outcomes as a whole. And I think this plays what really well into project 13. Because this is about are we aligned in our objectives? Are we as a group of people absolutely all driving forward in that same direction? And that's the trust equation. And I keep coming back to it, because I think it really spells out really nicely what what the behaviors are that we want to have in our construction environments, to make sure that we're getting to the right, right outcomes. Dev and I talked about this several years ago, and I was doing a little bit of work with mPlan. And we were looking at and I'm sure he'll touch on this bit later, how can we actually help build build the trust equation? And are there ways in which we can use data to help foster that? Because one of the things that we don't ever want to do when we're trying to build that trust is have a difference of opinion on the facts. And if we're looking at it as a common set of data, it's really difficult to have a difference of opinion on the facts. And I think we all know, in construction, there are lots of times when you've got three sets of books being run. One are the actual things that are going on in the project, one is the one you're showing your client, and one is one you're showing your management. And that is the basis of absolutely not having any trust at all. So that common bit of data that we can all talk about is critical, because having that basis is how we start to have the right conversations about how do we problem solve? How do we collectively go, this is an issue, what are we going to do about it, rather than arguing, did it cost two or three, whatever. So on that note, I'll hand back to Melissa to crack on with that conversation. Thank you very much. And then before we dive in with the panel, we do want to ask a question. So I'll just check the week. Are we ready? Can we ask a Slido question? Oh, yes, excellent. So the question is, is it possible to use tools and techniques to build up trust more quickly? Or can it only happen over time? That's a slightly different? That's the wrong question. That's the wrong question. Ah. Okay, well, answer that question. Do that one. Just give a few minutes. On the word map. Yeah. And then let me know when we can flash it off. And then we can flash it off. Yeah. It's there. Oh, it's brilliant there. Okay. So the... Ah, I see. This is the word cloud. Sorry, this is not the question. This is the word cloud. Oh, it's even more exciting. Right. So, yes, I had a feeling that it was going to be the opposite of trust. I had a feeling. Well, like sneaky. Yeah. Discombobulated. Is anyone saying anything positive? I'm looking. Well, like I said, it's a good reason. I think this panel has a lot of work to do. It's a good thing. It's a good thing. It's a good thing we're having this event. Absolutely. It's very needed. It's a good thing. Well, so let's start by... And I think I'll start at the other end. I started with you there. So if any... Do any of you have any views on it and do jump in? Anyone got any views on what they're seeing? I'm intrigued about husband and wife. Oh, yeah. Not parent, child, husband, wife. Okay. Anyone want to comment on anything from the... You don't need to, but if you've got any comments on what you're seeing, apart from crying. It is concerning that we're not cutting through yet. You know, this is all pretty negative stuff and very hierarchical and conflictual. It's not the way I think any of us want to go to work. I mean, I think that's the... In terms of how do we want to show up in our offices and on site, this is not it. I mean, probably 10% of people do. But I think, you know, for most people, this is not a happy way to go to work. Need a therapist. Well, I'm... You wouldn't normally say this at the event, but I hope there's no young people here who are hoping to go into the industry this morning. Normally, you would encourage that, but today I'm saying, no, don't look at this if you are. Cover your eyes for a moment. This isn't going to attract people into the industry. Anyone else got any comments? What I would say is it's typical of a history of an experience that people will have of UK infrastructure, UK construction. And as Project 13 has been around a while now, Melissa, it's probably not embedded. That just shows that it isn't embedded at all, isn't it? You know, across infrastructure. And that's pretty sad. So you look at that and I just think, well, that's... It's pretty demotivating. But flipping that, which is what we need to do, is to flip it into a positive, is to look at the amount that we can do to turn it. So no, we'll give you an opportunity. Yeah. Anyone else want to add any thoughts? I'm going to say something and get immediately hated. I was interviewing a client a long time ago at... Not at the start of the project relationship, but at somewhere in the middle. And they say that it was an arm's length client working with a contractor. And they said, it seems like it's tail wagging the dog a lot of times. That's what the impression was, that we are now being led by them. The other thing is that the moment we signed the contract, we gave the power away. So it was almost... It's transactional, but also another phrase that was used was, are they... They're supposed to be arms and legs, but now we're without arms and legs. So that is the kind of... You know, you kind of get those reactions. I probably... I admit that I interviewed them at a particularly dangerous phase of a project. So maybe that's where the emotions are coming from, but it pretty much sounded like a therapeutic conversation. Yeah. Anyone else want to... Because otherwise that leads quite nicely onto you, Tony. Yeah. Because I was going to say, so you've obviously got experience as well with the... We try not to use the term tier one and two, but in the old term tier one and two. But you've also got experience further down, sort of trying to push that, the relationship building and the trust further down. So is there anything you can share with us about how to get around this? I think when you look at an enterprise, I work in an alliance, which is an enterprise. And whilst it's quite well integrated at that level, at the alliance level, and there's an element of trust and there's the whole experience is different. So that if you ask the people in that team, they'll get a very different experience output. But when you try and take it to another level within your supply network, so supply network's a better term than chain, isn't it? But the supply network that you've got around you and with you, the group, the alliance group or the enterprise group don't see themselves as the client, but they are. So if you look back to the Project 13 principles, the capable owner piece is adopted by that group, isn't it? It's adopted by the enterprise. They've got to take that with their wider supply network. So a bit of a link that you need to make initially is to understand that you are the capable owner in that case. And then you drive that through. And going back onto the trust equation, the intimacy piece and the self-orientation piece, I'll just pick those two up. So from the intimacy piece, how you interact with your supply network and how you zipper them. So as a tier one contractor or a principal designer or that kind of organisation, you expect to be treated as a principal by your client. You expect to be supplier relationship managed. But how often does that happen from a tier one or principal designer level? It just doesn't happen the same. So you've got to create the zipper. You've got to create the relationship zipper to get to the intimacy piece. The intimacy piece only comes with having a safe way of having multi-level conversation. And that multi-level conversation gives you a wider social capital. And that's what you need to get to get intimacy. It's that social capital piece, which will be a differentiator to get to your intimacy. So you've got a really competent relationship with that wider supply network. The self-orientation piece, which is the most significant, is you have to demystify. So from my perspective is if you work in a client, whatever part of infrastructure you work in, client, contractor, designer, a different supplier, you need to understand those other needs of those other organisations that you're not involved in. So you've got to explain it. So as a principal, as a capable owner, you should be trying to explain it and demystify it. So clients go through all sorts of very stringent governance, very stringent protocols. They can't do certain things. That's not known. So you want to make them find relationships with each other, so everyone could go over and say that they don't know it. Have to do all sorts of things. And you stick around the organisations. Anyway, up to you... How you're kind of feeling? the self-orientation to understand the perspectives and really demystify that. Yeah, brilliant. Thank you. Does anyone want to jump in with any comments on that? I'll just add to what you just said and it quite links nicely with the trust equation as well. What got me excited there that trust and social capital, these concepts they quite map quite nicely with the equation. The important aspect is that trust, the three forms of trust, it takes time to develop. So first of all you have the contractual trust or the structural aspect of social capital, where you're just trying to get to know each other. You're like, can you do this job? What's on the contract? Is it something that I can trust you with that you are capable of doing that job? And that is something which is almost at the embryonic phase of the supplier relationship. Then you get to the cognitive capital, which is more competent, trustworthy. I see that yes, we have worked together before or we have data that proves that you have performed well on last projects. So I can trust you with giving you more and more work and I can trust you to manage my supply. for me. And then, and that's where most you, at the end of that, you have a choice, but to drop that relationship. That's what happens with these major projects because they're temporary in nature. They are supposed to end at some point and that's where most relationship gets stuck. But then you have a choice to actually get to the goodwill trust or the relational aspect of social capital or intimacy where you say, actually, the definition is that, can I be vulnerable with you without, and, and know that you won't, I won't be taken advantage of. So that's the highest level of trust. And that takes some time to build. So I think it's, we should be looking at trust as a process where you gradually get to those three levels of process and, and accelerate that journey as fast as we can. Brilliant. Thank you. Anyone else want to add anything to, to this particular thing for you? I perhaps wanted to just ask Tony more specific examples. Um, love the zipper idea, right? Like illustrate the zipper and the Alliance for us. Yeah. So I work for national highways. So national highways will contract with a lot of partners. partners on multi levels, multi programs, and you've got to be able to kind of compartmentalize each one of those relationships to some degree, because as a, as a client, an ultimate client, you might have a negative relationship in one place, but a positive relationship in, in, in another. And that's quite natural. It's quite normal actually, isn't it? As you look at the organizations that, that, that we do deal with. So you're going to get performance issues from a client perspective, and you're going to get performance issues from a, from a supplier perspective too. You're going to, you're going to kind of separate them out. But from a practical example, um, from, from my experience with, with, with, with the, with the program I'm currently leading, creating that alignment, that initial alignment and a common intent and a common language. So people can hook into that and understand what your principal objectives or your outcomes are and how they can then support that. And then it's the social capital piece. It's sort of the whole language. It's the whole culture that you build around that, that, that keeps that as the front and center of every, of every decision and every, and every point that you're trying to. And I want to add to that, the zippering has to go all the way through each organization as well. And I think, as you're saying, you know, that, that culture is super important because I've, I've had experiences where I'm getting really great. Um, cultural engagement and getting those behaviors at the, at a senior level. And then when it starts to go down the organization, it's breaking. And I, and I have said that, that, that, you know, in, in, in, in an experience in the past, that either, um, the person at the top is just telling me what I want to hear. And then the rest of the organization, isn't doing it or or he doesn't know what's going on down his organization and people are behaving in the old school way and i'm not sure which one is worse you know it's sort of either you've got the basically the lying which is going to break trust in terms of how the organization is going to behave or they're not that that culture hasn't gone all the way down it down deep into the into the organization to get away from these words and and i think that that's one of the important things is that that organizational culture has to go from top to bottom and actually that leads me quite well onto my next question for you jess is um around um that the fact that a supplier can be uh in an enterprise over here and they're supposed to be best friends with their this other everyone in the enterprise and yet the rest of their organization is probably in competition and is bidding against them um and as you were just saying beth there can be you know there's a leadership team in this organization over here that's removed from the stuff that's going on in the enterprise so just have you got any experience kind of experience kind of from that that you want to share with us the uh the the supplier ecosystem in in the construction industry set in such a way like you said that in one enterprise or one project they would they would be expected to cooperate and collaborate and work with the with each other whilst they are bidding against each other in another one so there's the whole notion of co-optition that how do you how do you make that work and i think uh my work for hinky point c which uh a couple of years ago from now uh uh they were quite a good use cases that we developed there was i mean one of the success stories we had was a catering alliance that we ended up developing it's called somersetlada uh which was basically a set of six small uh smes really my small businesses them coming together and then hinky point c played the role of an active client in in in the process of getting them together got them to design a service from farm to fork and and basically form an alliance and then that became somersetlada and now it's bidding not just for hinky point c but all other future contracts as well so it was about building that trust together but i think the the more sort of what that learning led to develop or went towards development of the meh alliance where it was all the big boys uh who actually they were very hard to get to the get to a negotiation table and that actually you need to work as a consortium work as an alliance and develop this whole meh uh um piece of work to us not just you know mechanical electronic and civil separately so that actually ended up being a success story because in key point c the client was actively making that collaboration happen they were not being arm's length and distant they're saying we are actually going to lead you and actually make it work so these are the rules of the game so i think there's a very important role of client here as the network orchestrator to actually make collaboration work between suppliers there were also areas where it where it didn't quite work for example catering or an accommodation accommodation but some of these contracts where the whole alliance model and the supplier collaboration model worked really well there were other ones like bussing and facilities management where it did not work and those were the areas where the client took a step back and said that okay these are the success stories they will learn from them and do it by themselves and those sort of did not work out that way so i think there is an active role that client needs to play particularly in the construction industry so construction industry where you need to work with suppliers to actually make that happen and sometimes due to lack of funding the way payment structures incentives are there the client kind of end up taking a step back the piece of work that just started a piece of work that we ended up doing at lower themes crossing i i realized that the only way to get suppliers to work with each other is actually to get to the supply chain and and understand what their challenges are not just look through a tier one or tier two lens on what their what suppliers are and uh with source actually we ended up going there build a data set of uh all the suppliers suppliers and understood their challenges and the feedback that we got they don't want to share data with tier ones they don't trust each other they don't trust the tier ones and they said the only person we are going to share data with either a decentralized uh of a centralized system or a centralized client so one of the two or the other so i think it all came as that you have to use more than contracts you have to use relational mechanism behavioral mechanisms but also digital mechanisms have a role to play but clients need to be the orchestrator of it yeah that's brilliant thank you i'm going to move on because we're running out of time so i'm going to move on to the next question so i'm sure you will want to comment on that but we can come back to it um because i'm going to move on to you andy um because it's almost a slightly different type of trust but one that's um maybe much more vivid to people because it's in the newspapers every day which is the trust between say clients and the community and the public um and and you've got i think a lot of experience in this and sort of lead that work for for anglion water so can you just share with us about how to get the trying to get the buy-in of either the local community or the public at or what you're trying to get the trust equation or what you're trying to get the trust equation or what you're trying to do yeah sure so and and yeah going back to the trust equation i guess um it's pretty obvious that there's a lot of work to be done on the kind of the credibility and the reliability element we have got to get the performance into the place where that we want it to be we also have to explain the kind of detail behind that as well so that's really really important but i was going to kind of focus on the other elements the intimacy and the self-orientation um and i guess i can split those down into three three three three three layers so the uppermost layer is kind of the the things that we need to do at the kind of national level so you may not be aware that angling water changes articles of association four years ago so we have put purpose environmental and social prosperity into the the kind of legal framing of the company so that's really really important to kind of set your stool out and say okay this is where we want to get to this is where we want to get want to be we want to make decisions in line with that so a lot of my work is actually ensuring that we do that ensuring that the board does that and making sure that goes right the way down i'm sure that's appropriate to say right the way down the zipper but you know and into the supply chain and then it's about holding ourselves account publicly against that and what we've done over the last couple of years is work with the british standards institute to develop a new publicly available specification pas 808 which is a kind of principles and behaviors standard a different approach to looking at what does a purpose-driven organization actually look like if it's operating effectively we're the first company to put ourselves through that guide we're just about to publish the results but what i was really pleased about actually was that they came in and they audited right the way through the company from the ceo right the way through down into our supply chain looking at stuff going on in the ground at the pipeline that's being delivered across the north to the south of our region at the moment and that came back with kind of wonderful kind of um you know experiences with the auditor saying that people were able to articulate the purpose you know so these were people who were subcontracted down from from our kind of top tier so doing stuff at the national level that top level was really really important then at the kind of corporate level bringing customers into our decision making process so we have a number of people ways in which we do that we have a kind of independent challenge group that works on our business plan with us and those are representatives of different stakeholder bodies so they are bringing in and you know challenging the development of the business plan before that goes in to our regulator at off war but a couple of years ago we decided well actually those are representatives of stakeholders we need to get some proper some true stakeholders and ground level stakeholders in so we developed a customer advisory board as well so those are everyday customers from across the region who were part of the thing that we'd already developed called the online customer community which is about 500 customers that are there to for us to put challenges to to put questions to to test things with them and for them to kind of raise issues with us but we we asked for representatives to step forward and we've now got a customer advisory board that links to our management board and very recently we tested our long-term delivery strategy the 25-year kind of strategy with them and asked them to feed back on that and they've also fed back on how we develop our performance related bonus schemes for our execs as well so that's really really really really important um but but also kind of having that kind of opportunity to communicate and then gather stakeholder views is kind of absolutely essential with the challenges that we face as an organization around as well as a 199 because we can't meet those challenges in isolation. So doing that at the regional level is really important. And then getting into the hyper-local, it's then on a project-by-project basis, seeing where we can get customer stakeholder input into that. And our investment delivery programme runs a six-capitals framework where we look at social capital alongside natural capital and intellectual capital and others in helping us to evaluate. So that kind of direct connection between our alliances and how those schemes in construction and commissioning are going to impact on the communities gets fed into that process. And this is where our major alliances are five plus five plus five-year contracts. And I look at it in terms of, yeah, how do you move away from that transactional kind of interaction to a proper relationship? And it's our belief that by having those long-term contracts, you create opportunity and get skin in the game. So our alliance partners have worked closely with us on place -based regeneration projects completely outside of the kind of delivery model to try and make a difference to some of the most, you know, yeah, lowest in social mobility, greatest in deprivation in the region, like Whiz Beach, like Lowest Doft and bits of Norwich as well. And actually what we're starting to see now is some of our alliance partners taking the lead on that. So Kia have taken the lead in the work in Lowest Doft. Barhala stepping forward to take the lead in some work in Norwich because they've got associations with those locations. Brilliant. Thank you very much. And again, just because we're running out of time, if you've got comments and thoughts, hold them. So I want to make sure we get through everyone. Just to remind everyone about Slido, I'll just give you the number again. So it's hashtag 744-9361. So do go on and do your questions. But I want to move to you, Dev. So I've deliberately left you to last because I'm hoping that you've got some things to combat. And you're going to give us some sort of real tools and techniques because I think that data and digital can help to build trust. But then there's also people, there's a lot of mistrust in data. It depends on the quality of it. And in particular, at the moment, there's a lot of mistrust around AI. So I wondered if you could sort of do both and a bit of Jekyll and Hyde and sort of say what you think the issues are, but then also hopefully give us some light at the end of the tunnel. Yeah. There's a word that I use, and perhaps it's a bit too rude to go onto a piece of, onto that slide. And that is bullshit. There's a lot of bullshit. Can I just stop it? You're wonderfully framed in the window, but we can't see your face. I'll look this way. Oh, the blind. Ah, the blind. Ah, sorry about that. Yes. So there's a lot of bullshit in the system, right? Each party generates some and passes it over to the next. And that essentially starts breaking a lot of trust down. I want to just give you specific examples. So NPLAN is perhaps the least known organization on this panel. What we do at NPLAN is we take past schedule data from just over 750,000 projects and use that data to be able to forecast how long a current or a future project is most likely to take and what could go wrong with it. The thesis is if you can learn from historical information, then you should be more, you should be more reliable at executing your projects going forward. Don't make the same mistakes twice is a nice way to say it. So I made the point that there's bullshit in the system. And, and there are two examples that I want to share with you, both very real non theoretical things that have happened. The first is in the private sector with an oil and gas company called Shell. This is now the trust barrier between the financier and the project team, right? Even though it's just one organization, the person who holds all the money and the person who delivers projects are different. people. And there is challenge between the two. And so the story is of a project in Singapore, where they were trying to expand a refinery called the Bookum refinery. And the project team needed to go seek funding to the tune of one and a half billion US dollars. And the executive in the Netherlands kind of looked at that investment case as they look at all investment cases around the group, and think, how much bullshit are we reading in this investment case? And it's a very difficult, difficult, difficult, difficult debate to have, right? Again, this is just within the organization. So just imagine the politics that can also exist in this in this in this transaction that needs to occur. And so what the project team did was they said, well, we're not going to mark our own homework and take it forward to the to the board, we're going to do the right thing and show what the actual risk of executing this project at this site, with this technology will be. And if it means that we are not a competitive project, then so be it, it is for the greater good of the organization we work for. So n plan was part of that. And we were able to show, you know, the risk profile to executing this project is not that rose tinted thing that everyone was hoping it was going to be. But it enabled a much more adult conversation to come to the table, right? All of a sudden, the executive was not questioning that we were able to be. That project team's integrity in the information they were presenting, which I think is the parent child relationship, right? They were like, thank you for actually coming to the table with real information I can trust. Because it was not them marking their own homework. Again, the result was was to the right hand side of what the project team were hoping for. That project did not go ahead. Now you might think, oh my god, that's just like the worst outcome in the world, right? Like here we are saying that we helped them. And then the project got canceled. And the whole project team got disbanded and had to go find other jobs within the group. They all did find jobs. The point is that that was them building their bank. And it's like you build and Beth has talked about this before with me that trust is not this thing that you just suddenly come to the table with. Yes, that conversation was more adult. Everyone felt the conversation they had was much more productive than a conversation without that data. But what essentially has now happened is that that project team, when they go forward to their next seeking funding, they're in a far stronger position than other project teams around the group, right? So other projects around the group are like, we also want to be at that kind of table with the executive. You know, we don't want to get beaten down every time we go forward asking for more money. So that's one example. The other example is a client-contractor relationship. Here in the UK, at Network Rail and with Kia. So another typical transaction that happens or typical information exchange is when contractors are bidding on work. And that work is finite. And unfortunately, they're not bidding on five plus five plus five years. But instead, here's an 18 month scope of work. Can you just get it done, please? Right? And this is the fixed price you have to hit. And oh, I'm going to award it to the lowest price bidder. But they're probably not good examples of project 13 principles in there. But that is a very frequent way in which we build and buy things in the world today. So there, here is the contractor that decided to use nPlan. They said, Well, we don't want to be the cheapest or the fastest, we want to show the client that we can actually get this thing done, and get the station opened in the way that the client expects they to be able to deliver to the public, right? The public don't really care whether it costs 50 million or 60 million. What they care about is that I can get on my train when they say, the train would run. And so confidence of outcomes was the key that the client said, I want you to show me that you can confidently deliver. Again, a problem where, how do you actually do that? You've heard statements like, procure for your outcomes? Well, how do you procure for an outcome? I mean, great things that are written in books, but insanely hard to actually put on a piece of paper. Procuring for an outcome, one of the key key enablers to that is, is don't mark your own homework. Show that you have done, show that you understand what you're actually putting forward. The specific part that I liked inside this example here, is that here, we're able to negotiate with the client, and say, We have done all of the analysis on this scope that you want us to build. There are many parts of this scope that we can't take the risk on. You need to take this risk with us. And all of a sudden, it wasn't a high-level, fluffy conversation about risk and who should take it in what pot, but it was very specific. Like, here are the specific things we need you to hand off and take, and we'll take these ones. Is that a fair transaction now? And as soon as you make the transaction more fair, meaning both parties are actually absorbing the correct risk they ought to own, the likelihood that you get to, basically, the likelihood that you need to call a delay consultant in is significantly lower, right? That's one of the, you know, keys to seeing that you've got a broken trust, you've broken your trust equation down. And yes, the project is still going on. We get to see what the total outcome is, but at least it started from a position where the client didn't feel like the contractor is, you know, pulling one over them, and the contractor feels like, actually, I'm in this because I know I can get, to the profit margin I need to get to, because, you know, that's kind of what they want. Yeah, thought, those are just two examples to share. That's brilliant. And thank you, all of you for giving practical examples. That's really helpful. Now, I'm slightly nervous about asking for a Slido question. So, do you want to put it up before I say, before I tell you what it says? Can we, can we get another, yeah? Okay, so, it is, having listened to our panelists, how do you feel about your ability to build trust more quickly in relationships going forward? Wow. Live feedback. I know. Candor is also appreciated here. Yeah, yeah. We're trusting you to be honest. Well, while they're doing that, because I kept jumping ahead, does anyone want to comment on anything that anyone said in the panel? Are you bursting to reply to somebody when they said something? Anyone's got any comments? I'm interested in Beth's point about the trust bank. We talked about this before the panel, right? But do you want to build on that a bit, Beth? And I think that it's very much about what you were talking about with Shell. It's sort of, it's not just a one-off. And it's that whole thing, you can't just walk in and say, trust me. And I think this goes to stakeholders as well as it does to contractors and those relationships. You have to continually build the bank of goodwill. So, you have to keep filling it up because things do go wrong, right? I mean, that is life. Things go wrong. Things go in ways that you do not plan. But when you, if you are continually tending to that, you know, it's probably like all relationships. They all need to be tended. And you need to keep filling, you know, filling that up and continuing to manage that behavior. Because when things go wrong, you will have to sort of dig deep, try to problem solve. And, you know, I think it does go as much with your communities. You know, you can't show up and say some stuff, send out a newsletter and off you go. It's, you know, you have to keep working at it. And I think actively recognize that, like every relationship, these things need to be managed and built and keep growing on it. And I think, you know, it's sort of reflecting that work is like life and that relationships really matter. Yeah, we refer to it as the reservoir of trust. Good one. And you've got to fill it up first before you can draw down on it. Absolutely. I was going to pick up a point that Chaz and Dev made. And I think it's about alignment. So when we've got different partners working for different clients, and it's very difficult to draw out a solution from an ultimate supplier, an ultimate client relationship, the specifics that you're working on can be quite compelling. So the point that, Chaz, we've got a particular relationship that's going badly somewhere else. You can, you know, you can fix it somewhere else if you're focused on what that outcome is. So if you cut it down, you cut the problem down, what are you trying to solve? And if you can agree to that, what is the objective? What is the outcome? What is the thing? So what are the things you're trying to collaborate on? What are the things you're trying to solve to build that trust? The example that Dev gave you, two specifics were quite specific, but right, because they build so much externally. So it's not trying to solve a corporate relationship, it's a specific and let it grow that way. So rather than fix the top, you fix within and down to build. Yeah. I just build on it. Well, so looking at this result, I feel like it's working, so we should push on. Okay. Try and push it up a bit higher. So I'm going to move on to the slide of questions, but I'm going to take the chair's prerogative because I've got a question first of all. So, and I'm actually going to direct this at you, Tony, because I think this is a passion of yours as well. So, which is around the contract and the commercial models and how, what big an influence that has on developing trust, if any. Yeah. So, massive. So my experience is we get a lot of intelligence into a contract structure. A lot of input goes in as to how you want it to operate, how you want it to feel. But then commercially, the commercial model that sits within that tends to be less complementary. And also what we tend to do is we tend to let managers manage the organisation and the contract and commercial people manage the commercial relationship and we separate them. And actually that's completely wrong. We let the commercial people go together in a silo and they try to operate how they've always operated in the word cloud that you've seen. And they try to look at their respective interest. What happens is the commercial model then becomes dominant. It becomes more dominant than how you want it to operate. My counsel is you've got to suppress the model to operate it in relation to how you set the contract up and keep drawing in how you want it to operate. The commercial model is there to serve that, not the other way around. A lot of my day in the early stages of the program I'm leading is how does the model protect that, not serving the model. And that relationship becomes quite difficult to manage on a daily basis and they flip. The artist stopping it flipping to become more important. I think there's some other things with that as well, though. And I think we as clients need to make sure that we recognise that it's good for our contractors to make money. You know, that is a good thing, not egregious money, but, you know, making a profit is a good thing because that's how you get investment. That's how you make progress. And trying to beat down profits doesn't serve anyone particularly well. On the flip side, I think that it's, you know, it's really important for everybody in the supply network to understand what those objectives are, but also to be honest about what they're trying to achieve so that we can align the objectives. And it all comes back to, you know, getting rid of self-orientation and aligning objectives. But there is that honesty that we need to bring into it that we as clients need to recognise contractors are there to make money. And that's good because they use that to do other things. But also, you know, we need feedback and honest conversations about what is going on in supply network to make sure that we understand what their constraints are so that nobody has to lie about what they're trying to achieve. And I think that, again, the network perspective is really, really important because you don't have the visibility. How many tiers down you have the visibility and what does visibility really mean? So is there might be a supplier on your tier four, which is absolutely critical to a key supplier that you need. But if you don't have the visibility of that or how it's performing, or is it going to go best? If you don't have that visibility, you don't get to solve that as a client. So I think there's this whole idea of honesty, and data sharing and getting the bullshit out of data is really, really sort of important. And that transparency needs to be on the client level. So yeah. Okay, brilliant. Thanks. So I'm moving to some of the sliders. The one that's got the biggest thumbs up is clients are under real pressure to cut costs and fit the project within budgets. And a natural tension results with contractors protecting margins. So how do they trust in that circumstance? We would like to, we've sort of covered it a little bit. Anyone want to tackle that? I can start if you want whilst you think. I'll split words out whilst you intelligent guys think. That's a cue, by the way. So my experience of this is, is scope. And it's understanding what the scope is, and how that's defined. And what is the thing you're trying to deliver, and get that completely right. So what a client struggles with is, but particularly a lot of the government led or government backed infrastructure bodies is the asset is always dynamic. There's always something happening. There's always different things. And the scope is actually quite specific. But actually, as you look at a dynamic asset that's aging, or whatever it is, your scope gets quite blurry around some of the edges. And that's where your tension comes in, because the costs come up and the cost to achieve the outcome includes probably adopted scope. It's understanding that that's probably where it comes. Yes, you get cost pressures. Yes, you get all that. But actually, it's that adopted scope. So clients can protect that. The rest of the supply network is around the cost of what it's there to do. And it's, it's, it's getting that and a point I made earlier, which is around understanding each other's, each other's perspective. So the self orientation piece is about sharing that. So it's clients got to share the ability to adjust scope and to protect it and look at how they can fund different elements of it. Whereas the suppliers who are supplying their cost base and what things are costing and get to some, some harmony across that is absolutely necessary. This is my, this is actually my real life issue at the moment is because I think that the big thing for me is how do I know how to what my capital cost is on a day? I'm very early in my development phase, but I actually really need to know what my capital cost is every day. Because when people start to make design decisions, I need to know if that's taking my cost up or down. Because what I don't want to do is get to the end of a design freeze, and then be hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I think that's a lot of millions of millions of pounds over budget because people have been making decisions as we go. So if anybody knows people who know how to do this well, please have them call me because it, because this is again, a date is a data point about how do we have that really good data about costs because what we, you know, we are always under cost pressure. If you're a government, you know, government has no money. So we need to, if we're doing capital investments, we need to do it really consciously and thoughtfully about how do we get to the outcomes. I think Anglian has been doing it well, as I understand. for a long time because everybody's aligned to get to those outcomes and are very focused on cost. But we need to be in that space all the time, because there's just not enough money. So how do we get the outcomes we want? And it is about being mindful every single day about how design decisions are impacting cost. And I'm, this is literally my, I was having this conversation 12 hours ago, kind of thing, because it's so important about how we're going to deliver East West Rail. And it's back to data points, and then being able to have a conversation of, well, if you want to do that, you're going to be able to do that. That's how much it's going to cost. What's your, you know, how do we solve that problem? How do we make a decision about how high a, you know, are we doing a viaduct or are we doing a cutting or are we doing a tunnel? It's about knowing the capital, understanding the risks, understanding it, and having a conversation, a really good, transparent, open conversation about the deliverability of things and risks. Yeah. Now, this might one, you might want to start on this one, Andy, because it's kind of about public and image and reputation. And I'm going to sort of merge two together because we're running out of time. So this one's very specifically about HS2, saying it's damaged our reputation internationally. And so that's sort of created distrust. And so what can we learn from it? And why did it happen? And then somebody else has asked, how do you deal with the political influence on our major infrastructure projects? So I don't know if you want to have a stab at that? What's the answer? Yeah, I'm not sure about the HS2 question, I think. Well, a bit of it follows from, you know, your answer about setting the scope, and being honest about the scope, and being transparent about what the benefits are going to be, and then, you know, and not doing that once. But having that conversation kind of throughout the process. And we live in a volatile world. So things change. So it's about being kind of open and honest about, you know, having that discussion as those change points occur. In terms of the kind of political element, that's a really interesting one. And, you know, we are constantly in conversation, you know, so the kind of position we find ourselves in industry at the moment is, you know, there is a lot of conversation about certain elements of infrastructure investment. But the conversation we have isn't a conversation kind of with all the facts. Yeah. So I think it would be easy to curl up in a ball and hide from it. But it's the opposite of what we need to do, we need to be out having those conversations, and sharing more of the, you know, we talked about data a little bit, sharing more of the real data in kind of real time to show what is actually going on. Whether that will influence political decision making, particularly, you know, where we are in the electoral cycle, at the moment, you know, it hasn't done up to now. But I think being purpose led, going back to being purpose led is hugely important, because it's a I know why I'm building my railway, right? I am very clear on why I'm building my railway. And we need to keep coming back to that and making sure people understand that story. If you if the purpose changes, if people don't want to deliver those outcomes anymore, then you do get into political, you know, those political machinations. But, you know, I'm clear on why I'm doing it. And that's the polit, you know, that's the politics that we need to keep working with is that we need to have the political buy in to why we're doing it and keep going back to it over and over again, major projects are inherently political, but we need if they're purpose led, I think they stand a much greater chance of being successful, because you know why you're doing it and who you're doing it for. Well, we've sort of run out of time. But I want to give you the last word, Dev, because everyone's mentioned data. So I feel like you should comment on it. But there's also a question here about that Beth mentioned a single view on data and how can we open up data and do any things like data trust. So I don't know if you will go to you for the end if you've got anything to say about data and openness and how that can help. Yeah, I mean, I'll also try and answer the previous question on politics. If I can, we've all of that. Trust is built through an understanding of what being open and open with your understanding of what you know. And data is just an enabler to all of that, right? It supercharges what you are aware of at that present moment in time. And then your ability to communicate that engenders trust. So we know that we are in this very weird political world. So not declaring that that is a risk to our projects and to the effects that will lead to our supply chains is just silly, right? And how do you engender trust? You talk about that openly. Can we quantify it reliably? I don't think so. Can I implant? Probably not either, right? So, but misleading someone or misleading a party to believe that don't worry, everything will be okay. We're fine. We're fine. We're fine. And actually then inside you, you know, well, actually, I don't know whether we're fine. Right. That's where everything starts breaking down. Can data help? Yes, of course, data can help. The question is that I often go head to head with organizations that we work with is rather how can data not be used as a weapon? You know, just that example I showed with Shell could have been seen as a weapon, right? The board used this weapon to go kill a project. It's seen in a very negative way. It's seen in a very negative way. I think we're out of time. We are. I do want to say one last thing, if that's okay. And I think there's a slide for that. So once again, thank you everyone for coming. I know there are 10 times more people online. So if you're there online, thank you very much for coming. I do appreciate you spending your morning, your evening, depending on where in the world you are today. For the people that joined us here at Fora in Borough in London, thank you for making the trip. There is breakfast served now. The reason NPLAN is here, the reason we're sponsoring this event is largely down to how important we think the trust equation is to raising the game in the delivery of infrastructure, the built world, the built environment, the thing that we all love and need and for society to flourish. So we think this is a very fundamental part of raising the game around the world. And that's why we're doing this. I want to give a quick shout out to what's coming up next. And it's, I don't think Beth has internal access to NPLAN's documents, but the challenge that Beth just laid out there about trying to understand how decisions in the day-to-day can affect outcomes is one little secret that is going to get released on the 6th of December. So if you are interested in hearing and seeing what our research team at NPLAN have been working on, we're going to be releasing a lot of earth-moving developments on the 6th of December. So come for that. There'll be lots of food and drink at that event as well. But thank you once again for coming. Thank you for Melissa for setting this all up, for setting the questions, for keeping us to account, and the panellists for your stories and for your candor. Yeah, thank you. Breakfast is served. Yeah, if anyone wants to, we didn't get through all the questions, so please do come and ask. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.