Don Ward, chief executive, Constructing Excellence
Behavioural assessments are a good thing as they encourage successful collaboration, and certainly much greater focus is needed in procurement on the quality of relationships. Intelligent clients with the capability will use such assessments to improve how they procure to get a better fit from their suppliers. However, I suspect that it will be limited to larger programmes and so most firms will not feel the benefit.
One of the challenges will be whether clients have capacity to carry out assessments – at local government level, for example, there are no longer enough people client-side. Consultants will probably support the process, but clients will need to invest resources as without their involvement the assessments will not be able to judge compatibility.
Edd Burton, associate director, Turner & Townsend
To an extent behavioural assessment has already caught on for high-value, high-complexity projects. The question is how much it will be adopted in other sectors, such as energy and property development, as well as more standard projects.
Ultimately this will come down to cost benefit analysis. For lower value projects, or for clients sceptical of their usefulness, you really need to show tangible benefits to quantify the cost benefit.
Data will be the driver of greater adoption. Those looking to sell the benefits of behavioural assessments may need more than just the testament of client organisations. Obtaining empirical data to demonstrate the time, cost and quality benefits brought to a project is key.
Katy Harris, associate director, Project Five Consulting
Behavioural assessments can add a tremendous amount of value to a project – after all, construction is about people.
However, my concern is in its ability to go mainstream, as implementing the assessments can add a lot of cost and time to the procurement process. To do a behavioural assessment properly requires a lot of buy-in from the client as they need to spend time seriously working out what behaviours they need and want.
Those not carrying out behavioural assessments should take advantage of processes that are already in place, such as the interview, to gauge behaviours. Price will obviously remain an important factor in procurement, but more attention should be paid to the people side.
Ian Heptinstall, director of product & knowledge, ArcBlue
I hope the idea of assessing the people and their collective behaviours does catch on. Like many techniques of good procurement, it needs using appropriately. Procurement history is littered with people picking up a great tool, but using it in the wrong way.
If you are looking to use collaboration across the members of the project team, then definitely assessing the behavioural characteristics of the key staff should be a critical part of the supplier selection process. But a team of 30 clipboard-wielding assessors does seem very OTT.
In the past I have included it in the general supplier assessment, and that worked fine. With a supplier it is less important than with a key employee – you can always get the supplier to change the people on the team if they don’t “gel”.
I would certainly look at the key people in a supplier. Do they really believe in cross-team collaboration, and do they understand what it means for their behaviours?
Canute Simpson MCIOB, director of inspiration, Smart Objectives
A lot of my main clients are the major developers and I haven’t had one yet ask me to carry out a behavioural assessment. However, assessing people’s behaviours is extremely important – and definitely preferable to personality tests. You can see behaviours, whereas it is hard to judge personalities and how they will impact on how a team will operate.
Although clients are not asking directly for behavioural assessments, they are asking us to carry out workshops for project team members. Often these involve tasks where we record behaviours – so it’s fair to say we are already assessing behaviours. Carrying out these sorts of workshops is definitely a good idea as long as they are not just box-ticking exercises.
