Critical infrastructure projects connect communities, build resilience and drive prosperity in the economy, and unlocking pace in their delivery comes from instilling the right culture and behaviours.
We sat down with Claire Fryer, our Group Behavioural Management and SHE Strategic Performance Director, who has pioneered a structured, ethical, and impactful approach to behavioural management and coaching that can quickly and positively impact project performance.
What is Costain's behavioural management programme?
“Costain offers a world-class behaviour-based safety programme founded on the principles of behavioural science. The programme engages and shares learning with people from all levels within the organisation, from the executive board to site teams and the wider supply chain. It’s about ensuring people to do the right things, because they want to, not because they have to. This creates the right environment to implement and reinforce the key behaviours to maintain our excellent standards in safety, health and environmental performance.”
What is the difference between workplace culture and behaviour?
“Workplace culture encompasses the values that an organisation believes in and what it stands for. Behaviour relates to the observable actions that stem from this environment. It’s the combination of culture, values and behaviour that helps create a safe, inclusive and productive workplace environment.”
Why is it important to build a workplace culture in a professional environment?
“In any professional environment, whether working remotely, in an office or on a project site, a common culture and set of behaviours need to be agreed and followed. This is essential for driving purpose and fostering good practices around things like safety, inclusion and productivity.
“Tone from the top is key. It’s the organisation’s leaders who are responsible for setting the culture across the workplace and define the values and behaviours within which the people in that organisation operate and conduct themselves. At a project level, project directors, front line managers and supervisors are responsible for shaping the culture and creating the right environment where behaviour is an enabler of good practice; some get it right and others don’t. The additional challenge can be combining teams and the supply chain with their own organisational cultures and behaviours.
“Then there are leaders within smaller teams, each working to create the atmosphere and ways of working that delivers the best outcomes for everyone.”
How difficult can it be to influence behaviours, especially when working with different groups of people in a large and complex project?
“Changing attitudes and behaviours can, in some cases, be a long and complicated process, in others not. A first step is to acknowledge that an organisation and its workers may have operated in certain ways for a long time, and any inertia is natural. Ultimately, the performance of a project team is a direct reflection of the leader and the environment he or she has created for it.
“How a leader behaves and appears is so important; where undesired leadership characteristics have developed, they can be deeply ingrained, and this requires a personal approach. We know that one of the most impactful ways to tackle this is through confidential coaching. From our experience, discreet coaching is the most effective way to develop and influence leadership skills.
“The most effective leadership style focusses on positive reinforcement which, if done correctly, leads to discretionary effort which creates value for the immediate project team as well as the client and senior stakeholders.”
How do you know when behavioural science has been effective?
“At Costain, we use a systematic, data-based approach to specifically pinpoint the desired behaviours across a particular project or team. Once any behavioural change has been introduced, and implemented, the next step is to measure them for impact and this needs to continue, so change can be measured over time, and any interventions can be acted upon. Successes should be reinforced, and help given where required. Finally, it’s important to give positive feedback and ensure the positive behaviours are embedded – and stick.
“In any environment we want people to do the right things because they want to, not because they have to. In a project family, the leader is key to setting the desired behaviours and expectations so there is no room for ambiguity and interpretation. In the context of the chair or leader of a project review, these behaviours are even more important to drive collaboration, create an open and honest forum where asking for help is the norm, provide the opportunity to give and receive constructive feedback and acknowledge successes, however small, towards achievement of the end goal.”
How has Costain applied cultural behavioural management to support the projects it works on?
“For more than 20 years Costain has been developing, refining and delivering cultural and behavioural leadership training internally and to customers across the infrastructure ecosystem. A bespoke approach is always taken depending on the individual challenges faced by leaders and their teams and this can have a transformative impact on the delivery of major projects.”
Network Rail’s North West and Central region was undertaking a safety revolution. Its safety promise to employees was to get ‘Everyone Home Safe Every Day’. Costain’s behavioural change management programme helped to embed this promise across Network Rail and transform safety standards.
Our work involved more than 600 people participating in a bespoke listening exercise, designed to provide open and honest insight into daily safety challenges faced. This was followed by 69 sessions delivered across the organisation to gain a broad range of opinions from frontline staff, senior leaders and team members.
The insights informed the development of a behavioural change management programme which has improved safety techniques and decisions.
Behavioural management has allowed our leaders to understand the environment they create and behaviourally engineer a new one. This has not just improved our safety decisions but allowed us to be more holistic and understand that ‘safety behaviour’ does not happen in isolation.
Head of HSE Improvement NW&C Network Rail
Read the case study in full to find out more.
A major capital delivery framework for a water company required improved levels of engagement, understanding and awareness of the Contract Targeted Risk Monitoring process (CTRM). One of the issues was the low number of CTRM's completed each month, and the low number of actions that the process raised in order for teams to swiftly manage and close out risks.
Costain’s Behavioural Management Programme provided site-based coaching across the framework, starting with training in the principles of how to successfully carry out the CTRM process, and an assessment of the behaviours required to achieve informed and fact-based actions through open and honest conversations with the site team, rather than relying on observations alone.
One-to-one coaching was provided to 21 delegates across the framework, ranging from project managers, general foreman and SHE professionals, ensuring all feedback conversations were anonymous.
The Programme led to improved engagement and positive safety outcomes, with 100% of people successfully completing the relevant CTRM forms and increases in timeliness, accuracy and quality.
The quality of the CTRM actions raised by the site team was vastly improved since they've had the coaching and they have a better understanding of how and why the CTRM process is reducing hazards on site.
Feedback from delegate
Working with an alliance of 18 local authorities and three local enterprise partners, Costain delivered a Cultural Behavioural Management Programme from inception to agree a common approach to behaviour.
With 23 different nationalities, and several delegates not having English as their first language, the Programme helped alliance members develop and adopt one common language with the behavioural principles forming a key part of working practices across the alliance. This helped every alliance member recognise and manage behaviour appropriately to understand why people do what they do, improving the day-to-day running of the alliance.
The initial courses were attended by the Alliance's senior leadership team, the Alliance Directors, Directors from engineering, finance, commercial design and production. Subsequent courses included supervisors, who worked with the onsite operatives and supply chain. More than 100 behavioural improvement plans, each aligned to key reporting areas, were produced and successfully implemented.
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