1.
Doing the best for society and the
planet through project delivery -
creating the environment for
success
Dr Jo Jolly
Head of Project Futures,
Infrastructure & Projects Authority

2.
Our basecamp
• 2015-2021 £2.6bn of Grant in Aid invested - first long term
programme
• Secured £500m of partnership funding (exceeding 15% settlement
condition)
• Over-delivered 10% efficiency target
• Exceeded 300,000 homes better
protected on 24th March 2021
• Huge achievement from a range
of stakeholders including RMAs,
RFCCs, local communities and
delivery partners
• Overcame number of
challenges such as
winter floods and
COVID-19

3.
Climate Chaos: “it’s not part of the project brief”
“In its scale and complexity, the climate emergency is more
difficult to manage than coronavirus. We must adapt and get to
net zero quickly.
This demands massive change across industry.
The Environment Agency and our partners are working with
behavioural psychologists to help us overcome the natural human
barriers that get in the way.
Because, it will expose vulnerabilities and requires courage.
And, it will require collaboration and trust on a scale we haven’t
seen.”
Emma Howard Boyd, Chair of the Environment Agency
- CBI construction roundtable,
25 February 2021
Let’s start with why

4.
Deep and rapid
emissions
reduction
Greenhouse
gas removal
at scale
Restoring
damaged climate
systems

5.
How are we doing?
• The probability of delivering a
major project within cost, time
and benefits is 0.5%
• Productivity has stagnated
• The major blocker to including GHG
reduction and climate adaptation in design:
“it’s not part of the project brief”

6.
Learning from major projects

7.
How do we want it to be?
Imagine a time when….
We value the human factors in project delivery
and can even predict project performance
We drive out waste through the sharing of data
on a scale we haven’t yet seen
Every project delivers benefits far beyond their
original stated purpose

8.
Human factors

9.
Pooling data across project delivery
“This ambition is a bold one….
by working together there is
an opportunity to democratise
solutions and accelerate the
pace of change.”
Andy Murray
Chief Executive,
Major Projects Association

10.
Delivering benefits
Boston barrier
flood risk
management
scheme

11.
2021 - 2027 programme
• £5.2bn settlement secured at March 2020 budget
• Better protecting 336,000 properties and
delivering a range of wider benefits
• Investing in over 2,000 schemes (700 more than
the previous programme)
• Securing partnership funding (£310 to £610m
required)
• Global impacts of supply chain issues etc….
• Collaborative working key to delivering the
ambition of the programme
• Net Zero by 2030

12.
In April 2019 we embarked on a new way of working with our Delivery
Partners, our commitment to optimise delivery through…

13.
Approach underpinned by 6 Collaborative Behaviours

14.
Working with Business Psychologists: Zircon BeTalent
Undertook 124
behavioural
interviews - cross
section of leaders and
practitioners
Engaged with over 600
colleagues from
across Delivery
Partners and EA who
are working together in
integrated delivery
teams
431 colleagues responded to our
behavioural online diagnostic and Values
card sort exercise 70% response rate
Independent calibration and analysis of data
both quantitative and qualitative. Further
validated through interactive workshops with
leaders and practitioners (250 staff)

15.
Key findings
Creating Simplicity
within Complexity
Out of the 124 people that
were interviewed as part
of the research, 84 people
could not recall the
Collaborative Behaviours
before being invited to
take part.
The findings have
confirmed that there is a
vast amount of overlap in
the frameworks and that
people are not using the
collaborative behaviours
on a daily basis.
Clarity of Focus
The culture within the
Environment Agency is
creating a supportive and
friendly environment where
people feel that they can
make a real difference to
communities.
Colleagues spoke about
having a clear organisational
strategy, however this was
not so evident at the
practitioner levels with many
conflicting priorities, high
workloads and a lack of
capacity to deal with
change.
Enhancing
Psychological
Safety
As a result of the friendly
and caring culture,
Zircon BeTalent
observed colleagues to
be highly consensus
driven, which is resulting
in slow decision making
and a lack of appetite for
risk. This points to a lack
of psychological safety.
We therefore need to
think about how we can
better empower our
colleagues to feel safer,
able to speak up and
challenge others.
Increasing Diversity
Overall diversity
representation is low,
creating a challenge for the
organisation and its
partners to reflect the
community they serve.
The average tenure of
employees at the
Environment Agency is 17
years. This wealth of
experience has positive
impacts as it creates
consistency and stability in
an organisation. However, it
does have impact on the
organisation’s ability to
quickly change, adapt and
think in different ways.

16.
Psychologically
Safe
Teams…
Speak Up and Share Ideas Consensus Driven
Personally Connected Professionally Focused
Courageous Want to Please
Embrace Diversity Seek Consistency
Inclusive Defer to Leadership
Learn from Mistakes Avoid Failure
Create Purpose Require Purpose
Candid and Honest Nice all the Time
Appreciate each Other Have Relentless Expectations
Trust each Other Cautious to Trust
Psychologically
Unsafe
Teams...
© 2021 Zircon BeTalent All Rights Reserved
Fearless organisations

17.
“When people
believe they can
speak up at work,
the learning,
innovation and
performance of
their
organisations is
greater. Teams
and organisations
in which people
believe that their
voices are
welcome
outperform their
counterparts.”
Dr Amy Edmondson, author of The Fearless Organization

18.
VUCA
The term VUCA was coined almost 30 years ago by management
advisors and popularised by military strategists
• V – Volatility: lack of stability and predictability
• U – Uncertainty: lack of ability to foresee what major changes
might be coming
• C – Complexity: moving in ways experts have never seen before
• A – Ambiguity: problems in understanding what is the best
course of action

19.
BANI
Situations in which conditions aren’t simply unstable, they’re chaotic. In
which outcomes aren’t simply hard to foresee, they’re completely
unpredictable. Or, to use the particular language of these frameworks,
situations where what happens isn’t simply ambiguous, it’s
incomprehensible.
• B – Brittle: lack of stability and predictability. Easy to shatter,
subjected to a total and sudden failure. It is the idea is that we are
susceptible to catastrophe at any time.
• A – Anxiety: fear that any choice we can make might be the wrong
one, and the constant need many feel to be up-to-date on social
media in real-time, all day long.
• N – Nonlinear: disconnection between cause and effect in time,
proportion, perception. What was complex became, in turn,
nonlinear.
• I – Incomprehensible: Extremely difficult, if not impossible, to
understand.

20.
Sir James
Bevan
Chief Executive
Environment Agency
“Climate change: too true to be good.
Let’s tell it like it is. Let’s tackle it
together. Let’s redouble our efforts.”