• Who are we
• How can we help
• The benefits
• Who we work for
• Past project
• Our Partners
• Contact us

Who are we

Pearce Consulting Ltd is run by Mark Pearce. I am a civil engineer turned consultant.

I spent the first half of my career with construction companies such as Taylor Woodrow International, Skanska and Stanhope Properties.

I helped them to build hotels, offices, hospitals, roads and bridges all over the world.

I was project manager, development manager and director of project management. The higher I rose, the more I felt that the adversarial approach adopted by much of the construction industry wasn't necessary and that there was a better, more efficient way of doing business.

In 2001 I was project managing the development of a software system. We needed to describe the steps that the software design engineers had to go through to develop the system, to implement it, and to support it. And we also had to describe in detail how to use the system once it was up and running. This proved an impossible task in Powerpoint. We tried a number of simple flow chart tools and they weren't up to the job either. Eventually we did find a software tool to help map all the work processes that would be required. It was easy to use. It was also easy to link the processes together and to make changes. Immediately, I thought, 'This is what the construction industry requires'.

The software tool was called Control 2007 and it was developed by a company called Nimbus.

I became a supplier of Control 2007 and set up Pearce Consulting Ltd the same year. Since then I have been helping construction companies to understand how they work. Who does what? Why? And how? And more importantly, could the way you work be changed to become more efficient - and more valuable to your customers?

How can we help

Once companies grow beyond about 100 people, the directors at the top of the tree, and to a certain extent the managers half-way down, lose the tight control that is possible when a company is very small.

It is no longer easy to understand who is doing what, why and how. New ways of working evolve to carry out the day-to-day tasks. These ways are devised by individuals lower down the ladder.

As the company introduces new software and systems, employees think up new workarounds because each new system throws up a few problems or doesn't do everything exactly the way the users want.

Some of these work processes can become overly complicated. Worse still, a director can find himself in the position of being responsible for ways of working and decision-making of which he has no knowledge. It becomes impossible to audit a work process from beginning-to-end. So when things go wrong it's not clear why or how they went wrong.

Our job is to help you to unravel exactly how your business works. Who does what? Why, when and how? We call this creating the intelligent operations manual for the business.

The service we provide is best categorised as consultancy. It's a mixture of advice, running workshops and supplying software.

Your work processes

Most businesses, however complicated, have a very few core processes. This is a fairly typical scenario:

1. processes that define what the business is about
2. how we find out what our customers want
3. how we win work
4. how we do the work

In addition, there are a number of support processes for: finance, IT, managing people, buildings and suppliers.

Once appointed, we work with you to draw up teams of your staff that you think best represent the core and support processes.

These people are asked to attend a series of workshops.

The workshops

The people who attend the workshops are drawn from all aspects of your business: sales, marketing, administration, accounts, technical support, project management ...

It is important that all levels are represented from the director who is ultimately responsible for a particular work process to someone whose job it is to do the work.

We facilitate these workshops in such a way that together we draw out the detail of what these teams do, how they do it, why they do it and the problems they encounter along the way.

With the help of a specialist software tool, called Control 2007, we map these processes from beginning to end so that they are clear to everyone.

To begin with we run each workshop. But the aim is for you to become self-sufficient. Over time your products and services will change. So too will the way you deliver these services. Each time you change the way you work you need to recognise the changes and map the new processes in Control 2007. So we train your staff to run the workshops themselves.

If the project is large and you need a number of workshops run simultaneously we can bring in other fully trained Control 2007 consultants.

The outcome

At the end of each workshop the team can see each work process from beginning to end. Each process is mapped and is shown in a series of graphical process diagrams.

These process diagrams are not flow charts.

This is an important difference between Control 2007 and flow chart tools. With flow chart tools you merely describe the function: 'recruit technicians'. With Control 2007 you also describe the trigger for the event and the outcome: 'need to recruit more technicians'; 'recruit technicians'; 'technicians recruited and ready to start work'.

Describing what is needed to make an event happen and the outcome of that activity (the inputs and outputs) is vital.

At the end of each workshop the team has an agreed process captured in Control 2007. Everyone (particularly the director at the top who owns the process) gains a better understanding of what's going on: who does what, why they do it and how they do it. This process is also instantly available to other users carrying out parallel or consequent tasks.

The ability to capture the work processes instantly is an important difference between Control 2007 and flow-chart tools.

What usually happens is that at the end of the workshop the facilitator ends up with a full white-board, numbers of post-it notes and copious pieces of paper. These are taken away and transcribed into the software tool. This can take several days. And it almost always results in revealing some hidden discrepancies which weren't spotted during the workshop, which don't make sense and have to be questioned, thought out and agreed.

Not so with Control 2007. With Control 2007 the transfer is instant. The work processes are mapped straight into the software and the facilitator and the team can see immediately if a step has been left out or if there is an obvious duplication.

Control 2007 saves time and money.

Once you and your managers can see every task from beginning to end you can see when decisions are made and by whom. You can see where the bottlenecks are and where people could be more efficient.

And you can spot where some simple changes to the way you do things would make your service to customers much more valuable.

The benefits

There are five quantifiable benefits to be gained from understanding how you work and describing the process in detail:

Procurement ... Compliance ... Consistency ... Performance ... Profit

The benefits – Procurement

1. Procurement. The majority of procurement managers now demand that companies should be able to demonstrate that they follow 'best practice' or use some recognised 'business model' to conduct their business. Mapping your processes using Control 2007 proves that you do.

But it also gives you far more than just a tick in the box and a chance to have your name on the shortlist of preferred suppliers. It gives you a working system that has been agreed by your staff. They can see where and how they can be more efficient

Procurement ... Compliance ... Consistency ... Performance ... Profit

The benefits – Compliance

2. Compliance. Whether it's ISO, IIP or Sarbannes Oxley, your shareholders, auditors, lawyers and insurers all want to know that you comply with best practice and that you are squeaky clean when it comes to corporate governance. Mapping your processes using Control 2007 proves that you have a clearly thought out, documented way of conducting business

Procurement ... Compliance ... Consistency ... Performance ... Profit

The benefits – Consistency of service delivery

3. Consistency of service delivery. By having the best way of doing the work mapped in control 2007 this information is available to all the staff wherever they work, as control 2007 is web based software and can be accessed across the internet either on your own network or from a hosted service. This makes delivering a more consistent service to your clients easier and quicker.

Procurement ... Compliance ... Consistency ... Performance ... Profit

The benefits – Performance

4. Performance. At last it is easy to measure your performance. Before now, if your customer satisfaction survey wasn't that great how did you know where you were failing them and more importantly what to change? If staff morale in one department was a bit low, did you know what changes to make? Now you know.

Procurement ... Compliance ... Consistency ... Performance ... Profit

The benefits – Profit

5. Profit. Some may map their processes in order to gain a tick in the box from their customers' procurement officers. But to go through this worthwhile process and walk away is madness. With Control 2007 you can see how your business works so you can start to make changes that will make you more efficient. You can also introduce new ways of working and new services that will be welcomed by your suppliers and customers.

Procurement ... Compliance ... Consistency ... Performance ... Profit

Our partners

Because of my understanding and experience of the construction industry, Nimbus, the developer of Control 2007, chose Pearce Consulting Ltd as its Alliance Partner for the construction industry.

This means that we can help any company or organisation whose business is linked to construction: contractors, architects, design consultants, project management companies, structural engineers, service engineers, estates departments of property investors ...

Read about the the software we use

Read about past projects