How:

Integrated and resilient supply chain

Chapter 11 of the Construction Playbook highlights the benefits of successful relationships: “Acting together with suppliers drives mutual understanding and helps to solve problems more effectively, leading to better and faster delivery.”

At Kier, we work with our long-term supply chain partners to collaborate on each kit-of-parts, including our consultant supply chain, to optimise the design, manufacture and assembly.

By using an integrated supply chain we have transparency over capacity, risk, and compliance. We have pre-agreed terms and conflict resolution. We have relationships at all levels already in place, with behavioural and cultural alignment.

It also enables an opportunity to collaborate and invest in innovation and continuous improvement together.

So what?

De-risks capacity across supply chain (especially in areas of high demand and remote locations). This will be particularly important for areas such as the East of England, as identified by the Industrialisation Strategy of the NHS New Hospital Programme.
Familiarity and continuity reduce inefficiency, rework, and uncertainty across delivery.
Harmonised requirements enable us to maximise cross-sector interoperable components. For example, we have consistent components across our education and defence sector for roofing, windows, walls, floors and doors.
Cross-sector harmonised requirements also enables new market entrants to invest in their capacity, providing further diversification and resilience of supply chains.

New Prison Programme:

Industrialised construction delivering quality at scale

At HMP Millsike there were over 90,000 cast-in components and 42 offsite manufacturing locations where precast concrete and offsite MEP was produced. These were all designed, procured, manufactured and delivered consistently to enable our industrialised construction approach.

Using digital tools, we are currently tracking over 20,000 precast components across our prison projects, achieving an up to 99.3% precast quality rate.

We also achieved a 14.9% reduction in embodied carbon of the precast concrete compared with the Fosse Way baseline (MoJ's previous completed prison). Due to the industrialised nature of the programme, our precast supply chain worked together to review and improve the whole carbon lifecycle. This involved optimising the structural design, the concrete mix, and both the manufacturing and installation processes. 

Watch: 4-storey high building services riser installation at our HMP Glasgow project