Balfour Beatty is a leading international infrastructure group.
They have over 100 years’ experience of delivering large and highly complex critical infrastructure schemes through to projects at the heart of local communities, and operate with the highest levels of quality, safety and technical expertise. Certain Advantage has held the MSP from 2013 to 2022 and deals with both blue-collar and white-collar roles. The average spend is approximately £55 million pa on white collar and £35 million pa on blue collar, with the number of temporary workers at any one time ranging from 600-800 for white collar and 650-1200 for blue collar.
The Challenges Faced
by the Balfour Beatty recruitment team
- Complex corporate structure with an inconsistent hiring process
- Strong legacy relationships hindering supplier development
- Large list of suppliers with variable fees, terms, and service quality
- High administrative burden with multiple supplier invoices and limited reported capability
- Lack of visibility with the incumbent supply chain
- No realtime compliance processes
The Certain Advantage Solutions
- We introduced a mandatory, company-wide VMS
- We also standardised the engagement and authorisation process whilst providing comprehensive MI
- We rationalised the PSL creating a structured tier system, and also renegotiated fees and implemented new SLAs, reducing margins and rebates
- Purchased order systems introduced to ensure all payments are allocated to the correct department and budget
- Pre-invoice reports provided to reduce the volume of invoice queries/errors and the amount of time taken to resolve them
- We introduced PSL best practice standards and supplier audits
The Results
- More efficient recruiting behaviours and the virtual eradication of rogue hiring
- Number of suppliers reduced by 40%
- Estimated savings of £2.5m in one year
- Regained control of spend
- Greater transparency of costs and improved cost recovery
- A 92% fully-compliant supplier based with documented remedial actions and re-audits for points of failure
