How Laing O’Rourke is championing the value of procurement

A mix of innate curios­i­ty and a keen­ness to leave full-time edu­ca­tion prompt­ed Car­ol Williams to land a job that she’d nev­er even heard of with the Min­istry of Defence at the age of 18. Despite her “huge learn­ing curve”, she rel­ished the role in MoD con­tracts and finance, which entailed buy­ing war­ships, and spent the next three decades ris­ing through the ranks of arma­ments and aero­space pro­cure­ment.

Today, as Laing O’Rourke’s head of pro­cure­ment, Williams wields a £1.8bn bud­get in the equal­ly male-dom­i­nat­ed con­struc­tion sec­tor. But she has nev­er for­got­ten the ear­ly days of her career – “girlie cal­en­dars on every wall and lots of mak­ing cof­fee” – and con­tin­ues to advo­cate for women in the work­place.

More­over, in light of Gren­fell, Brex­it and Covid, she believes that the val­ue of pro­cure­ment itself needs to be cham­pi­oned.

“Any­one in this pro­fes­sion can keep prices down. But, in terms of its social val­ue to com­mu­ni­ties and its com­mit­ment to sus­tain­abil­i­ty, pro­cure­ment needs to start mean­ing much more,” Williams says. “It’s up to all of us to be ambas­sadors for a job that brings immense val­ue to organ­i­sa­tions every sin­gle day, yet is still mis­un­der­stood and under­es­ti­mat­ed by our col­leagues and the pub­lic.”

Declar­ing frus­tra­tion at the pref­er­ence of many mil­len­ni­als for careers in the hi-tech sec­tor – “it’s Ama­zon, Google or noth­ing” – Williams notes that attract­ing next-gen dig­i­tal skills to pro­cure­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly in con­struc­tion, is still a work in progress. 

“We need data ana­lysts, busi­ness ana­lysts and dig­i­tal engi­neers. But, as I can tes­ti­fy, young peo­ple often have a strange idea of what pro­cure­ment is,” she says.

I was approached to help make safe­ty part of this company’s DNA, both for our work­ers and for the pub­lic who use our build­ings

Williams was appoint­ed by Laing O’Rourke in 2019 to rep­re­sent her depart­ment to the firm’s stake­hold­ers on issues such as safe­ty, qual­i­ty and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. She leads a team of more than 100 and over­sees a sup­ply chain of about 2,500 com­pa­nies.

While oth­ers may envy her exten­sive brief and bud­get, Williams believes that all pro­cure­ment lead­ers can and should seek to show their val­ue. It’s about being brave, becom­ing an influ­encer and, above all, demon­strat­ing com­pe­tence, she argues. 

Procurement platform

Williams counts her­self lucky to report direct­ly to Ray O’Rourke, the company’s vet­er­an founder, CEO and chair­man, who is “per­son­al­ly com­mit­ted to rais­ing pro­cure­ment stan­dards”. This has giv­en her a sol­id plat­form from which to influ­ence both the organ­i­sa­tion and the wider indus­try. 

Williams’ exper­tise in health and safe­ty – gained in sev­er­al senior roles dur­ing her two decades with Lock­heed Mar­tin – under­pins her con­sid­er­able clout. Effec­tive safe­ty pro­ce­dures are entrenched in the avi­a­tion indus­try, but this is not true of con­struc­tion, where many work­ers are accus­tomed to using poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous equip­ment in sub­op­ti­mal con­di­tions. 

“I was a com­plete out­sider to the world of con­struc­tion,” she says. “I don’t doubt that this was why I was approached, total­ly out of the blue, to help make safe­ty part of this company’s DNA, both for our work­ers and for the pub­lic who use our build­ings every day.” 

Although improv­ing construction’s safe­ty record is a vital first step in improv­ing the tar­nished image, it also feeds into two oth­er press­ing issues: dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and recruit­ment. In a bid to address the safe­ty con­cerns of its clients, Laing O’Rourke – whose projects in progress include Hink­ley Point C nuclear pow­er sta­tion and the Eliz­a­beth Line and HS2 rail­ways – wants more than 90% of its projects to be fac­to­ry-built by 2025. Achiev­ing this tar­get will require a con­sid­er­able amount of tech­no­log­i­cal upskilling.

While recruit­ing enough dig­i­tal engi­neers and ana­lysts to han­dle this trans­for­ma­tion may not be her team’s respon­si­bil­i­ty, Williams is ready to get involved.

“I tend not to swim in my own lane,” she says. “I’ve always found that strict report­ing lines are irrel­e­vant when organ­i­sa­tion-wide issues such as tal­ent acqui­si­tion require coop­er­a­tion between depart­ments.”

Construction collaboration

A nat­ur­al col­lab­o­ra­tor, Williams says that her col­leagues have always wel­comed her per­spec­tive as an out­sider. Ever since she joined Laing O’Rourke, her team has “become known as the go-to func­tion” for help in tack­ling a range of prob­lems that wouldn’t nor­mal­ly be seen as a pro­cure­ment con­cern.

Her approach was recog­nised last year by the Char­tered Insti­tute of Pro­cure­ment & Sup­ply, which gave Laing O’Rourke an award for excel­lence. It com­mend­ed her depart­ment for being “core to the com­mer­cial aspects of the busi­ness”. 

As the com­pa­ny aims to achieve net zero green­house gas emis­sions by 2030, the next chal­lenge for its pro­cure­ment team is to align itself more close­ly with the inter­ests and devel­op­ment of the sup­ply chain.

“The social agen­da and the require­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly with gov­ern­ment projects, to demon­strate social val­ue is huge,” Williams says. “From employ­ing ex-offend­ers to emit­ting less car­bon, there are added com­plex­i­ties to fac­tor into our buy­ing deci­sions.”

Instead of sim­ply ditch­ing sup­pli­ers that fail to keep pace with chang­ing atti­tudes, pro­cure­ment should help all parts of the sup­ply chain to attain new stan­dards with train­ing and accred­i­ta­tion, she says. “By walk­ing in the shoes of sup­pli­ers and ask­ing them how events such as Brex­it are affect­ing them, pro­cure­ment can – and must – be part of the sus­tain­abil­i­ty dia­logue that our sup­ply chain is hav­ing every day.”

Supply-chain dialogue

Dur­ing the UK’s first Covid lock­down, when the con­struc­tion sec­tor was still required to deliv­er new hos­pi­tals and oth­er vital infra­struc­ture, the know-how of pro­cure­ment pro­fes­sion­als proved cru­cial, Williams says. 

She cites the exam­ple of the Grange Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tal in Cwm­bran, which opened four months ear­ly, below bud­get and with no sig­nif­i­cant defects last Novem­ber. This was just in time for it to help treat the sec­ond wave of Covid-19 infec­tions in south-east Wales. With pro­cure­ment teams help­ing sup­pli­ers to under­stand the pipeline bet­ter and giv­ing stake­hold­ers infor­ma­tion about capac­i­ty, risks and oppor­tu­ni­ties, busi­ness-con­ti­nu­ity plans could be man­aged far more effec­tive­ly than they might oth­er­wise have been. 

Now that pro­cure­ment must look beyond imme­di­ate price con­cerns to the long-term envi­ron­men­tal effects of its deci­sions, the whole pro­fes­sion needs to form a new mind­set, accord­ing to Williams, who says: “Bal­anc­ing all the dif­fer­ent sus­tain­abil­i­ty fac­tors requires some­thing new. We need robust ways of work­ing, as well as skilled pro­cure­ment pro­fes­sion­als who can engage with design­ers, clients, sup­pli­ers and oth­er key deci­sion-mak­ers to influ­ence the best out­comes.”

‘Grey beard’ women

Williams believes that the con­struc­tion indus­try urgent­ly needs to pro­vide sus­tain­able, inclu­sive and flex­i­ble employ­ment for less tra­di­tion­al employ­ees. With female rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the UK con­struc­tion work­force at only 13%, Laing O’Rourke’s tar­get of 50% by 2033 is, she believes, ambi­tious yet achiev­able.

While the fig­ure is 39% in the pro­cure­ment pro­fes­sion, research by Gart­ner sug­gests that the pro­por­tion of women in senior roles fell from 28% in 2019 to 21% last year.  

Williams believes that women’s extra car­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties dur­ing the Covid cri­sis may have con­tributed to this decline, but she notes that old­er women are being left behind in the profession’s recruit­ment dri­ve.

“They may not have the ‘grey beard’ sta­tus that’s accord­ed to men, but many old­er women in our indus­try have a wealth of knowl­edge that can be hid­den under the weight of car­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties,” she says. “The real­i­ty is that too many expe­ri­enced female pro­fes­sion­als find that their careers are stalling at a time when men of a sim­i­lar age are gain­ing more pro­mo­tions. I want to tack­le the root caus­es of this.”

Hav­ing served on more diver­si­ty com­mit­tees than she can remem­ber over the years, Williams con­tin­ues to cam­paign for a fair­er deal for women in the work­place. She believes that, by focus­ing first on inclu­sion and “valu­ing the con­tri­bu­tions that any­one, of any back­ground, can bring to an organ­i­sa­tion”, a more diverse work­force will ensue.

It’s often the deeds of influ­en­tial indi­vid­u­als in an organ­i­sa­tion that cre­ate momen­tum, she says, cit­ing one espe­cial­ly mem­o­rable inter­ven­tion of her own. “Some years ago, I hired a female engi­neer for a com­mer­cial role, based on her tal­ent and poten­tial. At the time, that was wide­ly seen as high­ly irreg­u­lar and even risky. I firm­ly believe that actions cre­ate beliefs in oppor­tu­ni­ties and pos­si­bil­i­ties. In that case, a sin­gle appoint­ment made a dis­cernible dif­fer­ence to an entire organisation’s atti­tudes to trans­fer­able tal­ent.”

Elon Musk and autism

Williams is the exec­u­tive spon­sor of a Laing O’Rourke sub­com­mit­tee address­ing the under-employ­ment of dis­abled peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly the 80% whose impair­ments are hid­den. A fel­low of the Roy­al Aero­nau­ti­cal Soci­ety, she is fas­ci­nat­ed by what Elon Musk – who has Asperg­er syn­drome – has achieved “with­out any help from NASA”. She believes that cel­e­brat­ing neu­ro­di­ver­si­ty is the next big chal­lenge.

“It shocks me that, more than a quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry on from the Dis­abil­i­ty Dis­crim­i­na­tion Act 1995, only 16% of autis­tic peo­ple are employed, even though so many more of them are very capa­ble and long to be accept­ed into the work­place,” she says.

Williams argues that new ways of think­ing about busi­ness prob­lems should be sought by all organ­i­sa­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly those with skills short­ages, although she adds that the stereo­typ­i­cal view of autis­tic men in par­tic­u­lar as maths-lov­ing geeks is unhelp­ful.

“Neu­ro­di­verse can­di­dates are just as var­ied and as indi­vid­ual as neu­rotyp­i­cal ones. Nei­ther group will ben­e­fit from a one-size-fits-all recruit­ment strat­e­gy,” she says.

Oth­er inclu­siv­i­ty sub­com­mit­tees at Laing O’Rourke include those devot­ed to car­ers, sin­gle par­ents, and women deal­ing with menopause.

Williams is accus­tomed to being the only woman in a room, espe­cial­ly in “meet­ings full of more junior men who all play golf”. She says that, while male club­bi­ness can be irri­tat­ing and even offen­sive at times, the sit­u­a­tion has improved over the years. 

“Peo­ple often point out that I’m the sole woman in a gath­er­ing, but now I’m so engrossed in how oth­er peo­ples’ jobs relate to my own that I rarely notice,” she says. “When I joined the work­force in the 1980s, ‘nudge, nudge, wink, wink’ sex­u­al innu­en­do was the norm. If a few men today want to stay root­ed in the past, that’s their prob­lem, not mine. But, for the most part, I’m encour­aged by how many peo­ple have a fresh­er out­look.”

Hav­ing kept a low pro­file for many years – some­thing that was encour­aged in her pre­vi­ous sec­tors – Williams is hap­py to be more vis­i­ble in her cur­rent role.

“I’ve picked up a lot of knowl­edge since those ear­ly days at the MoD. If I can use it to influ­ence my indus­try across sev­er­al fronts, I’ll be glad,” she says. “After all the recent dis­rup­tion, pro­cure­ment is tak­ing a more strate­gic direc­tion. As far as I’m con­cerned, this is long over­due.”

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