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Bond Bryan
Bond Bryan have worked with Willmott Dixon, both nationally – and locally, in the North – since our practice’s inception in 1987; we have, over the past decade in particular, worked together on some of our most successful projects.
This relationship has been built up over a whole host of construction projects: delivered in close collaboration, Bond Bryan and Willmott Dixon have forged a relationship built on trust and respect for each other’s knowledge base and skillset.
Having won multiple awards on a raft of highly successful schemes delivered nationwide, together we have become allies – with many of our respective people forming close personal working relationships and often relishing the chance to collaborate together again on a project.
We have forged an outstanding relationship – working together on Manchester City Centre Campus we have demonstrated great team working, overcoming the complexities of the project and the demanding requirements of the customer to deliver a fantastic design service
We have ensured that the detail – on both our drawings and incorporated supply chain design information – is exemplary.
This approach – and level of detail which we have committed to deliver – will stand us in good stead in ensuring that the project achieves the technical and quality requirements which we need to achieve.
From pre-construction to construction stages, we have gone ‘above and beyond’ with our high-quality practice standards – from customer engagement, trust, level of technical skill and care. We are fully engaged with the yellow book lessons learnt from other projects and from resultant feedback. Willmott Dixon have started to use our level of detailed design to assist other design managers/DRMs in showing the standards that we are all expecting as a service provider.
We have delivered and supported Willmott Dixon on a number of schemes, initiatives, frameworks, strategic property projects, speculative project bids and a number of our largest projects.
Even when things do not perhaps go smoothly, we ensure that we improve and adapt. We are constantly supportive of the New Business Team, in promoting their service and in trying to include them in new opportunities.
A few of our highlights, which we have achieved together, are: the Manchester College City Centre Campus, the Doncaster Danum Gallery, Museum and Library, the Rotherham City College, the National College for High Speed Rail in both Doncaster and Birmingham, and also the Doncaster Enterprise Centre which saw the complete transformation of the listed markets building into a thriving 21st century destination for the town and the community.
We are currently working with Willmott Dixon on three new housing developments in Rotherham, which, we recently bid and won together. This type of development is critical for local authorities with ambitious housing growth programmes and town centre masterplans demonstrating a significan step forward in making a difference to the local communities; we hope that we can continue and replicate this type of project within other areas.
We are currently on site with the Melton Police Operational Support Building and are also assisting with a number of feasibilities in the private sector too.
Matt Hutton comments: “Personally, I oversee the majority of our work with Willmott Dixon. I am currently enjoying working alongside the northern new business team, specifically Kevin Clarke and David Atkinson, to unlock the potential of a number of public and private sector collaborations.
Mark Dobbs, an ex-employee of Bond Bryan, is now working collaboratively with us as WD’s design manager on the Melton Police support building with Karen Read. James Woodhouse and his team are working alongside the Manchester College site team which includes Paul Core, Latifah McIntosh and David Wood.
Duncan Hogg and his team are working with Andy Hurcomb and Richard Stowell at Doncaster. I think that the important thing to note is, not only the working relationships, but also the friendships that have developed over common goals and the shared vision to improve and transform people’s lives. The camaraderie which we tend to share – that is a real added bonus.”
The core principles of Willmott Dixon are principles shared by us at Bond Bryan. We believe in always putting people at the centre of our approach to design and delivery – the customer, the end-user, our staff and our collaborative partners.
We also believe that strong and positive relationships are a core tenet of successful design and delivery. By building strong and professional relationships with our collaborative partners at Willmott Dixon over the past three decades, we have created a shared culture between our two companies where our project teams have regular working experience with each other.
This, in turn, ensures that we are always able to meet both the project and the client’s needs throughout the course of any project. By working together as partners, both in appointment and in ethos, we can ensure that the relationships – between our staff, ourselves and our customers, and between our two companies – is a pillar of strength at the core of every successful project delivery.
By focussing on people – and the relationships which we build with them – we can ensure that we are able to work from the same state of mind as Willmott Dixon. This ensures that, on any project or bid – no matter the scope or scale – we are able to share Willmott Dixon’s one-team ethos, and form up a design and delivery team that becomes one team which is working with one set of principles towards a common, and shared goal of success.
We strive to deliver everything that Willmott Dixon wants and needs to fulfil their requirements – it is a partnership. We know that a project is defined by the quality of the information that is received through each stage: on the Manchester City Centre Campus project,
we have established a one- team approach, the technical skill and quality of the information produced and also the willingness to create a yellow book project through truly collaborating with WD.
This project has been substantially de-risked in pre- construction by getting the design right – by designing in the buildability requirements from the early stages, removing the risk at construction stage; this approach gave Willmott Dixon the ability to cost what we are building. We are well aligned, willing to recourse the project correctly to account for project pressures and challenging timeframes, so that information is available to meet the construction programme (to an exceptional standard).
We see our role as being one of assisting and enabling transformation and change; this commitment to commitment to continuous growth and improvement doesn’t just rest with our projects: all of our staff share the same inherent drive for improvement and it is a core part of our practice purpose. We want every project to be more successful and more sustainable than the last, in whatever way that success might be measured – socially, environmentally or economically – and in improving our world for the better as a result.
This improvement, for us, means learning, not being afraid to challenge what we might have done previously and in asking why we might have done it in a certain way. We take every new project as an opportunity to build upon what we have done before and to constantly change things for the better – based on evidence, insight and inspiration.
To achieve this, our approach to the design process is one of continuous development. On every job, we question, we record, we measure, we test and we scrutinise; we hold ourselves accountable and we challenge our teams to constantly explore and reflect where and how things might be made better. It is this constant desire to Engage, Evolve, Evaluate and Enhance – within every project, at each stage and from one job to the next in a continuous cycle of improvement – that underpins our pursuit of excellence.
To achieve this, our approach to the design process is one of continuous development. On every job, we question, we record, we measure, we test and we scrutinise; we hold ourselves accountable and we challenge our teams to constantly explore and reflect where and how things might be made better. It is this constant desire to Engage, Evolve, Evaluate and Enhance – within every project, at each stage and from one job to the next in a continuous cycle of improvement – that underpins our pursuit of excellence.
This painstaking approach to betterment and continuous improvement is reflected throughout Willmott Dixon and is a key area of synergy between our two businesses which has resulted in us delivering ever more innovative projects.
We have had the pleasure of attending and being active participants in the Developing Leaders conferences over the last few years. The business- focused dialogue and lessons learnt from the wide variety of speakers has always filtered back into our business at every level – from putting purpose and culture at the top of our agenda to considering mindfulness and a team ethos.
We regularly support events held by Willmott Dixon: Myself and associate director, Roger Newman are due to collaborate with Richard James, the national account manager, Higher Education and Further Education on an Unlocking FE Capital Projects event this month.
