Simon Cross to drive our approach to Performance Measurement

A huge thank you to John McGovern for his leadership of the Performance Measurement Group over the past 5 years. John has been a huge champion of Constructing Excellence values and specifically around the need to understand performance. As John so eloquently put it ‘If you want to improve surely you need to understand how well you are doing.’ John sees learning from each other and adopting and adapting best practice principles as a great way to drive better performance. John has made a tremendous impact on Constructing Excellence and we wish him the very best for his retirement – he is of course always welcome to join us – his knowledge and insight are extremely valued.

Constructing Excellence

Simon Cross is a Director at Mott MacDonald focusing on accelerating construction transformation with clients by deploying digital, MMC, DfMA and delivery models to improve productive and sustainable outcomes. Formerly, he was Innovation and Digital Director with Cast Consulting and led BRE’s strategic advisory group, and latterly Smartsite, a Software as a Service business. Simon has held supply chain manufacturing and construction positions with Unite Students and Tarmac Group. He is chair of a Construction Leadership Council group leading on demonstrating smarter ways to design and construct housing through data and metrics to demonstrate performance outcomes.

“We’re at an exciting juncture with UK construction performance measurement, supported by strong policy and market-led digital innovation. I’m looking forward to working with sector colleagues to link design and construction methodology to measured performance – improving the quality of assets, safety of construction workers, sector productivity, carbon usage, cost, programme certainty, and waste is critical in advancing the sector”

Aim: Create a hub of excellence enabling members to share best practice, exploit the opportunities of digitalisation and build on our KPI capability

Objectives:

  • The group should be the collator and coordinator of best practice metrics from other group sources
  • The group should seek to standardise metrics for use by the sector, giving clarity and a roadmap for use
  • The group should assist with connecting examples of methodology that deliver improved sector performance, reported through metrics
  • The group should use the “framework” membership to bring together common procurement approaches with metrics

The main gaps we are focussing on are:

  • Standards
  • Signposting of who holds what data
  • Shift in how and why we measure – measuring outcomes instead of inputs and outputs.
  • Recognised benefits from measuring – link to the Construction Playbook, CEO and
  • CFO and ESG Investors

Who we want to involve

  • Constructing Excellence Members – re-invite broader membership to join the group based on new focus
  • Access to research resource or influence research focus through BRE and academic partners / members
  • Explore the award winners and finalists for examples of performance measurement
  • Finance community – how do investors / CFOs want to measure performance
  • BSI – look at the potential for flex standards
  • Cabinet Office / Crown Commercial Service
  • Construction Leadership Council

Next meeting

The group will meet on Tuesday 5 October to establish how we move forward with this vision. See www.eventbrite.co.uk to join us.