Collaborate, Innovate & Deliver: Realising the Polar Values

My feed on LinkedIn is constantly being bombarded with market research reports highlighting the key risks within the Data Center industry. These inevitably include power availability, supply chain labour, skill shortages, price increases and longer lead times. I agree these are the main challenges we face as we try to keep up with an ever-increasing demand.  So, how can we address the elements within our control and what is our approach to overcoming these issues?  To do this, we need to look differently at the project delivery model.

One of the key reasons I was drawn to join Polar was its strong commitment to core values. Throughout my career, the most successful projects I’ve been part of have placed some principles at their heart, ensuring every stakeholder is aligned and invested to: Collaborate, Innovate, and Deliver. Often values are a corporate ‘strapline’ that don’t necessarily translate into the work that is done, however, at Polar, we embed these into our processes so they are captured in everything we do. 

As a relatively new data centre operator, Polar is in the privileged position of not being bound by age-old procedures, with needless elongated gateways or historical bureaucratic guardrails for project delivery.  That’s not to say we are acting without governance, but rather have started with a clean slate when it comes to setting up our delivery model, supply chain, systems and processes.  This provides us with an opportunity to look at traditional delivery models in an alternative and innovative way to best react and deliver for our customers. In writing this article I wanted to reflect on my first year at Polar and explain how I'm realising our company values and actively taking them into the portfolio of projects I'm responsible for.

Collaboration

To build lasting partnerships with trust, honesty and loyalty. To act with integrity and humility. To have a problem-solving, and collaborative mindset that’s anchored on equality and transparency.

The foundation of our existing supply chain is 100% based on existing relationships. Whilst our industry continues to grow, we all naturally turn to those we know to support us to deliver, often going above and beyond to support business success.  To achieve the speed we need to deliver projects to meet customer demands, we try to avoid  traditional long tendering timelines and instead are building an experienced but lean supply chain that wants to collaborate in an open and transparent way. Turning to trusted consultants and suppliers has enabled us to engage industry-leading experts to solve complex engineering challenges, while proactively managing and mitigating risks, such as long lead-time equipment delays and resource availability constraints.

The key to this is the ‘collaborative mindset’.  This starts on day 1 of a project.  Someone wise told me early in my career ‘a problem doesn’t grow better with time’, this is a mantra that I have carried with me ever since.  By setting up the entire project team as early it is possible, we get the key delivery members around the table to build trust and relationships and collectively using their knowledge and expertise to collaborate and problem solve.

I am a strong believer that projects achieve best in class safety records, high quality metrics and delivery on time and budget through collaboration.  This starts with constructability sessions during the design phase, promoting off site manufacturing and effective work sequencing, which translates to onsite collaborative planning and daily activity briefings.

Inevitably in construction projects, issues arise. The privilege of working in this industry is the large number of stakeholders we work with across any project and the expertise and experience they bring.  By leveraging these experts and working collectively on issues, we are better able to manage risk and overcome challenges.  The key is setting a good and open dialogue early on with key stakeholders and ensuring that communication remains open throughout the project.

Innovate

To be responsive, agile and dynamic. To think laterally and remove barriers to solve problems. Learn and reflect to support continuous improvement.

One of the key drivers for our end users is flexibility within our design.  Our technical requirements have been developed in conjunction with our consultants and supply chain to maximise offsite manufacturing (as our DRA01 project demonstrates) whilst still delivering an end product that provides the adaptability our customers require for their deployments.  Densities and layouts are often not fixed until later in the project delivery phase, so we need to be able to accommodate our customers' requirements as late as possible without impacting the end date.

Our ability to improve and innovate in the future relies on us capturing the good, the bad and the ugly through our lesson learnt process (something my colleague Simon Wilkins discussed in his article).  This enables us to record the great things our team and partners have achieved so we can replicate them in the future while also adapting and improving those things that need changing.  By consolidating these lessons and focusing in on those most impactful, we can make small improvements that make a large difference. 

I am not a cycling fanatic myself but often I am reminded of a concept I first heard  from Sir David Brailsford – ex-Head of the Sky Cycling Team.  The strategy he implemented, which he referred to as the ‘aggregation of marginal gains’ stated: "The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improved it by 1%, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together”. 

If we apply this analogy to a construction project, small gains across the design, procurement and delivery life cycle through early engagement and collaboration in a project can provide opportunities for innovation and significantly improve the certainty in the delivery of the project. 

We are also embracing new tools to allow us to better control and manage our projects.  We are using scheduling and commissioning platforms that incorporate AI in their outputs to enhance our project control capability enabling us to spend more time analysing project data, rather than wasting excessive time generating it.  We are making these tools fully collaborative with our supply chain, so we can all leverage the systems and collectively benefit from the data to manage the project.

Deliver

To be results-driven. For our teams and partners to be empowered, take ownership and to be accountable. To always deliver best value to our customers and grow the business sustainably.

Beyond safety and quality, some of the key metrics that define project success are cost and time.  We develop schedules, cost plans and budgets to hit the key milestones set out by our businesses and for our customers.  Often customers will drive as hard as possible to reduce both key metrics through competitive tendering and aggressive negotiation and ultimately execute contracts that push risk on to the contractor and their supply chain with minimal contingency.  These pressures unfortunately lead to parties cutting corners to protect their commercial position, often to the detriment of safety and quality. 

When I joined Polar, I set out an ambition to deliver projects differently, through structured and continuous collaboration, we selected . with ‘Integrated Project Delivery’ as a method to support this intent. The principles have been around for a while in the US, mainly driven by the American Institute of Architects (AIA).    Indeed, they say it best:

IPD leverages early contributions of knowledge and expertise through utilization of new technologies, allowing all team members to better realize their highest potentials while expanding the value they provide throughout the project lifecycle.

Ultimately, the ethos we want to instil is a ‘no blame culture’, moving away traditional transactional and contractual relationships that exist in construction projects and more towards an open and honest integrated project delivery mindset where problems are shared, resolved and learnt from. 

Our aim is simple, if a project is successful (in the traditional terms) we all win.  By promoting this model (and we still have some way to go) it further enhances our ambition to drive collaboration, promote the safe delivery of projects, and increase profitability for our partners and improve efficiency for all parties.