NAVIGATING INDUSTRY CHALLENGES
No sector has been untouched by the long-term impacts of Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine conflict. These global events have continued to contribute to inflationary pressures facing wider economy, and construction has been particularly affected around the supply and unprecedented increases on the cost of materials.
The prices of raw materials, such as steel, cladding, aggregates and concrete, have impacted our margins and naturally costs have been more challenging to manage and balance with our commitment to provide price certainty to clients. Fuel and energy costs also continue to yo-yo while increasing interest rates put pressure on material prices and reduce the demand for assets in the marketplace. Nevertheless, we can say that our business strategy has again proved its resilience and we’re now seeing many costs stabilise.
Our reputation for delivering innovative and sustainable schemes to industry leading standards amongst new and repeat business clients has enabled us to further expand our customer base. And as the momentum towards responsible business practices and ESG commitments continues to accelerate, so does the demand for our specialist expertise and resources in this area. Leveraging our extensive industry knowledge and over 20 years of experience, we are poised to adapt and thrive and proactively address market changes and trends, whatever they may be.
years of industry leading experience
75 HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE – OUR GREEN SUPPLY CHAIN
Our Sustainable Procurement Framework is helping is to source materials more sustainably, ethically and, where possible, locally, but in creating a Green Supply Chain (GSC), we’re taking things to the next level with research and development. Approximately 75 suppliers whose carbon reduction is crucial to us achieving our Net Zero ambitions and our clients’ ESG goals are members of the GSC.
Winvic hosts bi-annual GSC workshops in collaboration with Greenbox Thinking and Achilles, Winvic’s Net Zero independent third-party verifiers, as well as undertake initiatives with GSC members. Together we focus on how we can make Net Zero a reality by sharing ideas, developing innovative and sustainable product and material solutions, trialling new methods of construction and utilising technologies which are energy efficient and reduce carbon. Our ultimate and collaborative goal is to have the lowest embodied carbon emissions throughout the lifecycle of a project, considering labour, design and instalment techniques.
By working together we’ve reduced the amount of plastic packaging arriving to our sites by using pallets and through collaborative ordering and delivery planning, there are less deliveries coming to sites each week. We’ve rolled out electric and hybrid plant and machinery, including with our largest earthworks contractor and some members of the GSC are delivering sustainability training to their operatives and educating their supply chain partners. We’d like to thank our GSC partners for also pledging to further reduce carbon on all procurement and construction activities undertaken on our behalf, and to reduce their Scope 1, 2 and 3 operational carbon emissions by 10 per cent year-on-year.
75 Members in our Green Supply Chain
OUR SUBCONTRACT PARTNERS
Winvic is proud to have an impressive roster of repeat clients, an enviable staff retention rate and several trusted supply chain partners who have been part of the team for many years. Our subcontractors share our vision, help us to continue delivering projects sustainably, safely and innovatively and they are committed to joining us on the path to becoming a Net Zero business by 2025. Simply put, our success is through our supply chain’s effectiveness in delivering the quality assets our clients require.
It’s therefore important that we fully support them and help to safeguard their sustainability. Winvic’s values drive our one team relationship with our supply chain partners and by having open and honest relationships, our construction directors and operations managers lead roundtable discussions on the shape of the industry, broad pipelines and sector challenges as well as specific projects. We involve subcontractors as early as we can in project planning to guarantee feasibility, secure their services and validate costs and during the project our practical payment terms help partners to keep their cash flow healthy.
While we have a very loyal supply chain and a whole host of companies have been helping us to exceed client expectations for over 20 years, we are always open to engaging new subcontractors and specialist consultants. In line with our Sustainability Strategy, working with contractors that are local to our projects is important and we’ve held ‘Meet the Buyer’ days as part of project social value activity, to discover new, local suppliers. A can do, collaborative attitude, passion for innovation and having high standards are attributes of all our suppliers, and of course governance and effective procedures are also crucial. However, we promote a one team, one goal approach and therefore will always support our partners to navigate requirements.
That’s how we procure the services and products we require, but who is our client based and how do they appoint by us?
LEADING THROUGH INNOVATION
We are passionate about uncovering innovative solutions – from sustainable materials to more effective delivery methods to AI-enabled equipment. Therefore, we support our team to become experts in the very latest digital technologies, we’re committed to research projects and we advocate partnership working so we can lead the way in technology development.
Digital innovation and supply chain collaboration is at the core of how we are developing sustainable solutions to deliver quality, low or zero carbon assets for clients, and we do this by:
- developing one of the industry’s first effective embodied carbon calculators
- executing works using forward-thinking subcontractors, construction methods, products and materials
- implementing circular solutions
- incentivising and supporting providers to create supplies made from sustainable, renewable or recycled resources, as well as those that require minimal transportation
We are proud to have offered industry standard Building Information Modelling (BIM) Level 2 to clients for many years. Our BIM CAVEs – where building designs and construction timelines, and training, can be experienced in 3D – can be found in our on-site Sustainability & Innovation Hubs and in our Centre for Innovative Construction (CIC) at our head office.
These facilities and our approach to digital design benefit our clients and team in numerous ways, not least, Virtual Reality (VR) makes schemes, solutions and programme planning come to life and become so easily understood. We can detect and address package clashes rapidly, apply design changes and get them approved in hours and when the project is complete, interactive design manuals are accessible online. We have also been involved in three significant technology development and research projects. The AIVR Lookout comprises AI-ready on-site cameras which immediately send alerts to managers when a hazard is spotted and ASPEC is a web-based system that calculates a project’s embodied carbon output in minutes from a Revit model. We also provided the data for the Conversational AI project, which aimed to develop an intelligent voice-controlled headset to view designs in 3D out on site.
Chris Allsopp, Commercial Director
“We’re in a fantastic position to turn exciting ideas into reality and we’ve already seen several positive outcomes from our Green Supply Chain. We’ve always prioritised supply chain relationships and because of those many years of partnership working, we’re now able to cultivate an even more collaborative environment to grow and thrive on our Net Zero journey together.”