When it comes to incremental improvement, don’t be afraid to take the best ideas from wherever you can get them, says Temple Group's Chris Fry

I recall a rower friend of mine describing his coach’s highly successful approach to motivating his squad to attaining higher levels of performance. 

Expecting the coach’s post-race team talk to pinpoint precisely what was going to be needed to optimise the complex dynamic of power, technique and equipment, he instead said just four words: “next stroke, row better”. 

Small improvement every time added up to a big difference. It is probably equally simple for new infrastructure projects to take the same approach so that we don’t squander the enormous opportunity that the UK has to provide great assets for the 22nd century.  

In a global market where new ideas are being exchanged instantaneously, traits like not invented here/not appropriate here are damaging to the UK’s infrastructure expertise and competitiveness.

So what is stopping us from simply making each project better than the last?  One thing might be that budget and time constraints often lead people to be safe and take a painting-by-numbers approach to conceiving, planning and designing projects.

This can result in a lack of early proper thinking about the big issues for the project in hand. Another highly damaging trait is the not invented here/not appropriate here response that can be pervasive across different parts of the infrastructure world. 

Such thinking means that the best engineering and environmental solutions and opportunities are missed. In a global market where new ideas are being exchanged instantaneously, these traits are damaging to the UK’s infrastructure expertise and competitiveness abroad as well as missing opportunities in our UK projects. 

The overall purpose of infrastructure is to improve people’s quality of life.  Focusing on how the infrastructure will improve the environment conditions and work for its communities helps project teams to remember that infrastructure is a means, not an end in itself. 

My hunch is that the teams that achieve most and deliver the highest value infrastructure will have conscious early thinking and will be open to beg and borrow good ideas 

In turn, this broader appreciation can deliver value to projects by leveraging opportunities from other aspirations for an area.  For example achieving lower cost, higher performing habitat compensation or flood risk attenuation by looking a little beyond the immediate project boundaries.  Even on a tactical basis, the things that communities worry about most, such as noise and changes to land use, are commonly the issues that delay or derail project approvals requiring costly redesigns.  

Not every project has the scope to innovate like the Olympic Park or make big step changes in technological innovation but incremental improvements that compound the benefits are within reach for every project. 

My hunch is that the teams that achieve most and deliver the highest value infrastructure will have conscious early thinking and will be open to beg and borrow good ideas from elsewhere. Remember Pablo Picasso’s view: “good artists borrow, great artists steal” and don’t be afraid to adapt the best ideas from wherever you can get them. 

Chris Fry is a director at Temple Group