Kier distinguishes two distinct facets within the Marketplace element of responsible business.
First, the outward facing external market to our customers, which includes both traditional contracting on a business to business basis and for our Services division business to customer.
The second is the internal market with our supply chain partners where Kier is the customer.
To address our external markets and recognise the critical importance of the Localism agenda Kier maintains a network of regional offices across the UK, enabling us to be truly local for our customers and engage with local suppliers. This, coupled with Kier’s national buying power and resources, enables our businesses to deliver real local value to our communities.
Customer focus is the bedrock of our business. We will always try to add value for them in the course of our operations. Many of our customers have little experience in capital procurement or building projects. Supporting and educating our customers around the construction process is an important element in delivering their business plans. We have engaged with many of our customers to help them meet the Strategic Forum for Construction Clients’ Commitments. We involve our customers in seminars, workshops and educational talks, often with our supply chain. These cover a wide range of topics including environmental, health and safety, climate change, sustainability and associated construction-related issues in a bid to provide better project outcomes.
CR and measured impact is a key customer driver. When considered holistically, ie: envornment, workplace, marketplace and society, performance may account for over 35% of the scores awarded for bids and prequalification.
We have an ISO 14001-certified environmental management system that governs our processes and is used to drive further environmental performance. We delivered our commitment of Halving Waste to Landfill a year early and last year diverted 80% of our waste from landfill. We work closely with the Building Research Establishment, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and other wildlife organisations, the Construction Products Association and Packaging Action Group to develop industry best practice.
We deliver 70% of our works through established supply chains. As a client ourselves, we understand the importance of understanding, defining, meeting – and exceeding wherever possible − client expectations. Client feedback is a valuable source of information for us. Kier carries out in-depth customer satisfaction surveys at four stages of a project’s life cycle: the first takes place at least two weeks before we start on site; the second mid-contract for projects of 40 weeks or more; the third within three weeks of completion and the fourth at the end of the defects period.
To improve the quality of data generated by our customer satisfaction surveys, in 2011 we reconfigured the surveys to ask questions in much greater depth. We are pleased to report on a like-for-like basis the results shown below.
In the period 2011-12 our surveys cover 82% of eligible construction projects against a target response rate of 75%.
Our Services division has a more complex client mix and both B2B and B2C relationships. Recognising this fact, at the beginning of this year the division launched a comprehensive Customer Insights Programme encompassing the clients of every business stream operating within the division.
Feedback is used to create both individual service excellence plans and division-wide business improvement projects to continually drive high performance.
Benchmark survey results are being used to set improvement targets going into the future. Customer service is now being managed more robustly. This includes divisional board-level representation, additions to balanced score cards for directors and a target put in place to improve our performance across the division by 10% in the coming year.
Kier is a supporter of the Strategic Forum for Construction and signatory to the 2012 Construction Commitments which set out a series of best practice principles particularly in respect of supply chain management. Consequently the Group has been audited by Achilles Building Confidence and awarded level 5 compliance for its supplier management.
Customer focus is the bedrock of our business. We will always try to add value for them in the course of our operations.
The Group agrees payment terms with suppliers and subcontractors on an individual contract basis rather than follow a code or standard on payment practice. Our policy is to abide by these agreed terms whenever we are satisfied that the suppliers or subcontractors have provided the goods or services in accordance with the contract terms and conditions.
Our supply chain policy ensures that more than 70% of project spend is with our approved supply chains, well above the SFC 2012 target of 30%.
We remain proud of the fact that a large volume of the work we undertake is repeat and framework business for long-standing clients, representing in excess of 70% of our workload.
CR and measured impact is a key customer driver. When considered holistically, ie: environment, workplace, marketplace and society, performance may account for over 35% of the scores awarded for bids and in prequalification. Therefore it is critical that we maintain our continued levels of performance across the whole agenda.
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Sustainable Supply Chain School
Kier is one of the founder members of the Sustainable Supply Chain School (SSCS), which is providing our supply chain with cost effective training to raise their awareness of sustainability issues within the construction industry and to improve their skills and competence.
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Business ethics
The Group has a zero tolerance policy to bribery and corruption and has undertaken a Group-wide training programme to raise awareness of the Bribery Act 2010. To follow this up, during the year, a revised Group Business Ethics Policy has been produced by the Group Board to better address recent legislation and other requirements. This is now on the website and intranet. In particular, links to this policy appear on the supply chain section. We are also in the process of increasing the profile of our independently hosted whistleblowing hotline and the anti-fraud awareness programme.
By July 2012, 75% of employees with access to computers (5,208 out of 6,690) had successfully completed the ‘Preventing Bribery and Corruption – complying with the Bribery Act 2010’ e-learning course and a DVD-based programme was well advanced amongst all employees with no such access. In this period, 71% of targeted management (420 out of 593) had completed the ‘Shades of Grey’ e-learning course concerning gifts and hospitality.
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