Right First Time

Keeping our promises and delivering Right First Time is what makes Balfour Beatty a trusted partner.

To help us do this, we need everyone, from our own people to our customers and supply chain partners, to play their role by making four simple commitments:

  • Understand what is required
  • Have the right skills and knowledge
  • Use the correct materials and tools
  • Carry out, check, document and hand over the completed work

By making these commitments and continually improving how we deliver, we avoid re-doing works and minimise health and safety risks for our workforce.

We also remove the additional carbon emissions and waste production that occurs as a result of doing a task more than once, helping us to achieve our climate change and resource efficiency targets and commitments.

By doing everything Right First Time, together we will deliver great projects and services to delighted customers and end-users.

On our Lowestoft Tidal Walls scheme, the team implemented a robust methodology for developing, vetting and using Inspection and Test Plans (ITPs) to drive quality.

The team undertook thorough planning at the mobilisation phase, which enable them to create tailored ITPs for distinct work packages to facilitate relevant and accurate quality checks. The project's ethos of 'no approved ITP, no commencement of work' underpinned a culture of progressive assurance, complemented by clear checklists and adherence to established hold points, ensuring rigorous quality control at each stage of the project.

The relentless drive for quality assurance has set a benchmark for future projects, proving that with the right leadership and systematic application of best practices, excellence in construction quality is not just aspirational but entirely achievable.

As part of our works for West Sussex County Council, we inspect the authority's bridges including those that span waterways, are of significant height or have other factors that restrict access.

To overcome this restricted access, we’re trialling the use of drones for inspections. Using drones helps us safely survey the bridges by capturing high resolution images and video. These images and videos are vital to understanding what maintenance, if any, is required and help us make sure we have the right skills, materials and tools in place when undertaking repairs. Following the completion of repair works, the drones can also be used to document the work.

As well as helping us to get it right first time, this approach also reduces disruption to the public as less traffic management is required during inspection works.

Balfour Beatty Kilpatrick’s Off-site Solutions facility has supplied over 10,000 metres of prefabricated pipework, ready to be installed on site at major projects in the nuclear sector.

To ensure the quality of the pipes that we provide is right first time, we work to the highest quality standards throughout the manufacturing lifecycle. This includes every weld requiring non-destructive testing and visual inspection, with our skilled team achieving an industry leading weld acceptance rate of over 99%.

Using 4D modelling, our teams plan construction delivery in a virtual world, helping them to fully understand what is required and work through any problems before we start work on site. This approach has helped us to improve productivity and deliver right first time.

To deliver the Manchester Engineering Campus Development at the University of Manchester, we put the latest technologies into action from the outset.

Drawing on tools such as BIM360, 3D scanning, 4D planning, Synchro and more, we created a consistent data set that was used from the outset to explain works to the University and their stakeholders, during construction to plan, programme and deliver works and then handed over to the buildings operators as a record of what we have delivered that will help them maintain and operate the building efficiently. Watch the video to find out more.