Project Helios Capital Programme

We have worked as consultant to Dstl since 2015, providing wide ranging management and design services. We have embedded a large team of consultants working directly alongside Dstl’s team, with additional support provided from our multi-disciplinary business working from our offices, and our specialist supply chain. The full-time presence of key staff on site has been crucial to establishing a collaborative and responsive relationship with Dstl’s management team, its scientist teams using the facilities and its appointed contractors.

By its nature, Dstl is subject to the highest levels of security and is a highly regulated, controlled environment. Areas of research include bio-medical and chemical science, radiological science, electronics, cyber security, and forensic analysis of explosives.

Many Dstl projects have complex user requirements to construct unique, scientific research facilities. Our team have had to harness and capture requirements of a diverse range of stakeholders when supporting project delivery.

The procurement strategy has predominantly been two-stage design and build with early contractor involvement. It was essential that briefs were captured in a consistent way, and that exacting performance requirements were defined and communicated to contractors’ design and construction teams.

We applied lessons learned from previous projects where our project managers have led teams on sites with high levels of security: for example, tailoring mobilisation plans to include discussion of security protocols at project launch and induction, and setting strict protocols for secure digital information exchange when using BIM.

To engage end users, we have carefully mapped stakeholder groups and providing an expert Requirements Manager who has captured and played back to stakeholders the complex range of operational requirements using diagrammatic/graphical and written formats. This has ensured designs have been optimised to meet the needs of the users of the facilities.

Technical assurance of contractors’ proposals was built in through a consistent, best practice approach to drafting NEC contracts and associated works information, setting out the how the works were to be carried out and the specific constraints imposed on methods of working. These were developed collaboratively with the Dstl and contractors’ teams over a period of several months.

In 2019, we entered Dstl into the NEC Contract Awards, for which they were highly commended in the ‘Client of the Year’ category against major international entries. This is a testament to the best-practice delivery methods that we have implemented on their projects.