VINCI Construction UK

VINCI Construction UK saves 22,000 man hours in procurement and supply chain management with Constructionline and the COINS iPortal

VINCI Construction UK is a market leading national construction and facilities company, and part of the VINCI Group. The organisation employs 4,000 people across four divisions to deliver exceptional quality work in all sectors.

In 2013, to achieve a robust and efficient supplier pre-qualification and approval process, the organisation adopted Constructionline – the industry solution for streamlined procurement and supply chain competency assessment.

REDUCING RISK IN SUPPLIER SELECTION

For any main contractor, identifying and reducing risk in the supply chain is a key activity. Understanding the latest legislative requirements for each trade they engage with can be an endless task.

Constructionline gather and assess information on each supply-chain member to ensure they are ‘fit to supply’. We also verify they have the correct insurances, licences and accreditations in place to undertake their specified trade.

Neil Mant, Supply Chain and Procurement Director at VINCI Construction UK explains, “As a main contractor, we are legally obliged to ensure that our supply chain is compliant and competent. Constructionline collect, check and verify our suppliers’ data to their PAS 91 aligned standards – taking the onerous task of initial data collection and verification away from us, whilst still ensuring that we are compliant with the latest government and industry requirements.”

ACHIEVING EFFICIENCY SAVINGS

To reduce the burden of assessing and managing suppliers’ information, Constructionline acts as a central database of standard company information. We collect, assess, verify and monitor suppliers’ financial, insurance, environmental and health and safety credentials and make this data available to over 3,800 companies, including over 40% of the Construction News Top 100 Construction firms.

So as a registered buyer with Constructionline, VINCI Construction UK has made considerable savings in the supplier assessment process for themselves, but also for their supply-chain. Discussing the efficiency savings made with Constructionline, Neil Mant told us, “When I joined VINCI Construction UK, we were assessing every contractor on every order that we placed. We placed over 11,000 orders in a year with each assessment taking approximately 2 hours to complete. To put this into perspective, with Constructionline handling the initial assessment work for us, we save 22,000 man-hours per annum – Constructionline is a more efficient and robust way.”

INTEGRATING CONSTRUCTIONLINE WITH THE COINS IPORTAL SYSTEM

In 2014, as a part of their collaborative approach to supply chain management, VINCI Construction UK adopted the COINS iPortal to facilitate the pre-qualification, approval and ongoing performance and relationship management of their sub-contractors – a system that seamlessly integrates with Constructionline.

Major contractors such as VINCI Construction UK constantly seek new ways to work as efficiently as possible. So by linking with an organisation’s existing procurement systems, Constructionline can further simplify the supply chain management process for our buyers.

Neil Mant goes on to explain, “The COINS iPortal is the hub for all the information that we keep on our supply chain, so it’s really important that this information is easily accessible. All the Constructionline information that’s held on our supply chain links directly through to the iPortal system. This also means that our supply chain is only required to pre-qualify with us once for Stage One approval, making the process much more efficient for VINCI Construction UK and our supply chain.”

ADVISING THE INDUSTRY

VINCI Construction UK is an active member of Constructionline’s Main Contractor Advisory Steering Group.

The group was set up initially with nine of the UK’s largest construction companies in 2014 when they pledged to adopt the UK’s leading procurement and supply chain management service, Constructionline, minimum health and safety assessment standard, Safety Schemes in Procurement (SSIP) and PQQ standard, PAS 91:2013 in a bid to streamline procurement within their supply chains.

Neil Mant said, “Being a part of the Main Contractor Advisory Steering Group offers VINCI Construction UK the chance to work with other major UK contractors in a collaborative way and allows us to make a major step forward in the industry’s on-going quest to reduce duplication and simplify procurement for second tier suppliers.”