Name: Tom Clarke
Employer: Midas Retail UK
Project: M & S Home & Food, Cardiff Capital
Contract: JCT
After successfully delivering 46 projects for a client over nine years, a contractor could be forgiven for thinking that its track record guaranteed continued business. But Tom Clarke was given no chance to rest on his laurels on this fit-out.
His task was to ensure that the business relationship between contractor and client remained in fine condition. He would do so, not by delivering the consistently top-notch service that had kept the client sweet, but by ramping up the quality still further while cutting costs and maintaining the programme. In essence, Tom had to better everything achieved to date by Midas for the client.
The only way to do this was to win the buy-in of the design team and supply chain partners from the outset. While this is by no means impossible with an established project team, many of the participants on this project were client-requested specialist suppliers making their first-ever Marks & Spencers appearance.
Tom passed this hefty test of project leadership with flying colours. He used his people skills to great effect, bringing together the many stakeholders, aligning their business and individual needs, and motivating the team to act cohesively.
His ability to keep control of the flow of project change was masterly. He efficiently tied into the programme the independent specialist conceptual designers at work in various areas of the store. And with the concepts constantly changing or being updated even as the project progressed, he brilliantly handled the stream of revisions. His sensitivity and pragmatic rescheduling, balanced by a refusal to countenance any derailment of the completion objectives, kept the project on track.
He held the weekly design meetings onsite so that all issues could be addressed in situ and resolved immediately. He ensured daily liaison with the design consultants by whatever means worked: phone, email, fax, videoconference. And he captured change and its programme/budget impact through weekly reviews.
He drew up a full project quality plan and implemented it on day one. As the scheme progressed and the works multiplied, he brought a quality and finishing manager in to drive standards. It was an approach that delivered the challenge Midas had set: thanks to Tom, the contractor’s 47th Marks & Spencer project was its best to date.
Value: £5.7m