01.07.13
Achieving BS 11000
Source: Rail Technology Magazine June/July 2013
NSARE, the National Skills Academy for Railway Engineering, recently became the smallest organisation to achieve BS 11000 certification, the British Standard for Collaborative Working. Peter Harnett, the organisation’s head of commercial services, explains the process.
On May 16, the British Standards Institute awarded the BS 11000 certificate to NSARE at the House of Lords in recognition of the work it had done over the previous 16 months to develop and implement collaborative business relationships. Roy Rowlands, business development director for RTM, NSARE’s media partner, joined NSARE to celebrate the occasion.
Peter Harnett, head of commercial services for NSARE, who attended the ceremony, explained that he and NSARE chief executive Gil Howarth decided to go for BS 11000 following a meeting in November 2011 with Les Pyle, CEO of the Institute for Collaborative Working (ICW), and Simon Jamieson, one of NSARE’s founder board members. The McNulty report earlier that year had pinpointed collaboration as a key way of achieving better value for money across the industry.
NSARE became a member of ICW’s executive network and engaged Dr Robin Singleton – who has contributed to RTM in the past – to help it achieve BS 11000 accreditation.
Network Rail achieved its own accreditation in April 2012, and at a networking event celebrating this, Howarth told the audience: “Collaboration is in our DNA – it has to be!” This, he explained, was because NSARE’s position in the industry means it can only deliver its objectives if it brought its stakeholders together to work in a more collaborative manner.
Harnett, who was appointed as ‘senior executive responsible’ for implementing BS 11000, explained: “We wanted the industry to see that NSARE was capable of collaborating with any organisation and our size, relative to the other key players in the industry, should not be seen as an obstacle.”
NSARE has just 15 full-time equivalent staff (up from 10 when it started on the BS 11000 ‘journey’) and a board of 15 non-executive (unpaid) directors.
Therefore the most significant challenge, Harnett said, was managing the additional workload on top of existing commitments.
But they got to work, and after drafting processes and procedures, the team held an ‘away day’, with the executive management team evaluating their individual collaborative ethos against a common set of criteria.
The team created its ‘collaborative profile’ based on this, tested with six potential partners at one-day workshops facilitated by Dr Singleton.
Harnett said: “Two of those relationships blossomed into full-blown BS 11000 accredited collaborative business relationships – one with Siemens Rail Systems and the other with the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) National Programme via Network Rail.”
To ensure all the work that needed to be done got done, NSARE employed Dave Cochrane as part of the implementation team on a part-time basis. Cochrane joined Harnett on May 16 at the House of Lords ceremony, which was sponsored by Atkins.
Lord Evans of Watford, ICW chairman, said at the event: “We at ICW have had an absolutely brilliant year; BS 11000 continues to grow, and the importance of our relationship with BSI is very important, as is the importance of collaborative working as a discipline.”
On receiving accreditation, Howarth explained: “We knew we were collaborative but as a microcompany our challenge was to put processes in place to evidence this.
“Large companies will have the processes in place – their challenge will be the culture change necessary to demonstrate collaboration.”
What is BS 11000?
BS 11000 allows you to collaborate successfully. It outlines different approaches to collaborative working that have proven to be successful in businesses of all sizes and sectors. BS 11000 shows you how to eliminate the known pitfalls of poor communication by defining roles and responsibilities, and creating partnerships that do nothing but add value to your business.
The benefits:
• Collaborate successfully with your chosen partners
• Create a neutral platform for mutual benefit with business partners
• Define roles and responsibilities to improve decision making processes
• Share cost, risks, resources and responsibilities
• Provide staff with wider training opportunities
• Build better relationships that lead to quicker results
Source: BSI