Alliance

 Back in 2005 I had just completed the asset management graduate scheme, fresh from completing my PhD. Anglian water formed an alliance with their construction partners. As yet unnamed a competition was held to name it. The name @One was selected from the entry. This, it was felt, represented the contemporary, clever and future looking nature of the alliance. Representing, as it did, a move away from the old ‘them and us’ attitude of the past contractual ways of working. I was quickly drafted into the @One alliance delivering various aspects of process engineering; modelling, writing the technical component of IChemE red book contracts, appraising bids and interviewing suppliers for procurement, assessing And comparing rival technologies, Hazops, commissioning. All good stuff en route to becoming a chartered process engineer. 

And the best thing about it was the collaborative nature of the @One alliance. Trust and collaboration everyone on the same side, a consortium of construction companies working under a single cooperative risksharing framework.  working together to deliver the most appropriate solution. By sharing cost incentives and working integrated as one team, the alliance was a global gold standard in engineering. And it has endured, Partners are varied a little overtime and have numbered between six and eight. I too remained with Anglian water, Enjoying a career covering many aspects of the water industry over what eventually amounted to 30 years this year.

And yet something of the spirit of the A1 alliance Seems today to be at risk of being lost. It is specifically the “@One” Nature of the alliance that makes it what it is. And if this is lost, If old divisions of ‘them and us’ are allowed to return Then it will have lost one of its most valuable characteristics. One that made it A groundbreaking global blueprint, being at one, and not them and us, A unified strategic vehicle for delivery IS precisely the model required for this The largest ever AMP. NOW THEN IS NOT THE TIME TO BE TARNISHING THE GOLD. We must not lose our integrated collaborative @One quintessential characteristic of the alliance, Or we risk losing it’s very Strength. That is the challenge ahead of us as we move into delivering amp8.