Name: Malcolm Mitton FCIOB
Employer: Wates Construction
Project: HMP Littlehey II, Perry, Huntingdon
Contract: PPC 2000
Straightforward? Hardly. For a start, Malcolm Mitten’s project involved 14 buildings and four different construction styles (modular, flat pack, tents and traditional).
Then there was the little matter of the timetable. The client took an axe to the proposed 50-week programme, leaving Malcolm 43 weeks to build a second prison alongside another (of a similar size), which had taken 161 weeks to construct! Oh yes, and adding to the programme pressure was an overwhelming emphasis on security, where the rules constantly evolved, usually for the worse.
The diverse building design, the restricted site layout and limited access through the external fence made scheduling deliveries (up to 200 a day, including the 40-tonne lorry load of each cell module) exacting. The client likened Malcolm’s stupendous organisation to somebody catching a pack of playing cards thrown off the top of a tower block – with one hand and in suit order!
Malcolm bought into the client’s Lean planning and reporting initiative. He constructed a detailed programme giving the required 20% buffer allowance within all tasks, none of which took longer than five days. He rescheduled the buffer every week and analysed the programme to focus the project team on the construction position, including the critical path and a ‘look ahead’ to forthcoming activities.
The intense monitoring and heads ups enforced buy-in to the Lean principles from designers, suppliers, subcontractors and installers. And although it demanded Malcolm master the steepest of learning curves early in the project, it generated key benefits: quality, budget and delivery on time to the tightest of schedules.
Value: £64m