Interview: Raising IT's profile at Skanska

Computing speaks to Steve Capper, director of IT at construction giant Skanska, about re-energising a stale IT environment

When Steve Capper joined construction firm Skanska as director of IT, he joined a company that was facing a number of significant IT challenges. However, Skanska understood the vital role an innovative IT approach could play within the organisation, helping to win work and attract talent.

Steve went to Skanska having quit his job as head of IT at engineering company Arup - a firm he had joined 23 years earlier as a junior in the print room.

What made him jump ship back in February 2012 was, he explains, the challenge.
"There was growing interest in IT at Skanska and a realisation that we could do more," says Capper. "For example, we wanted to improve our backup and recovery systems."

When he started at Skanska, Capper's brief was to do more with less. To add to the challenge, the IT team "needed re-energising".

"I presented my strategy to the board, showing them where we needed to invest, and got it," Capper says. "I just told it simply; how many racks and cabinets we needed, rather than going in with technical details, which were of no relevance to them."

Having successfully secured the investment, Capper then started with the back-end infrastructure, which he says the team fixed in a year.

"Our core switches were from Nortel and were over 10 years old. We didn't dare switch them off in case they never came back up. We replaced them all with Cisco, and replaced the virtual network with Cisco UCS. All best-of-breed enterprise-class kit."

Capper was eager to get stuck in from the start, and began introducing improvements on day two.

"You get 100 faces from your staff looking to you for direction. I said I'd meet them all one-to-one. The themes that emerged were a desire for greater staff development, and more best-of-breed systems in place."

Capper identified a number of areas for improvement from the meetings.

"I didn't want to wait," he explains. "There was a great desire and appetite internally to push ahead and carve out a reputation for excellence."

Constructing a team
Eighteen months on, he describes the turnaround as "fantastic". The team is re-energised, with as it turned out 35 people out of 112 replaced - significantly lower than the 60 per cent predicted. The IT department now has the focus and the training it had been crying out for.

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Interview: Raising IT's profile at Skanska

Computing speaks to Steve Capper, director of IT at construction giant Skanska, about re-energising a stale IT environment

“If you want to come here and give 100 per cent I’ll look after you, if you don’t I’ll help you leave,” says Capper. “I told them to put their name above the door. It’s not Skanska, it’s ‘Steve Ltd’. If it was your money what would you do? That’s worked for every decision.”

And Capper didn’t keep this new empowerment and drive within IT quiet, but sent monthly newsletters to the business to make sure that everyone within Skanska understood that IT had changed. The wider business got to experience the improvement first-hand when Capper decided to roll out nearly 4,000 new iPhones across the business.

“We went from people having nine-year-old mobile phones, to everyone getting a new handset every two years for less than we were originally paying.”

The move was so successful, and the project so significant, that Apple asked Capper to give an “executive talk” in its flagship store in London’s Covent Garden – the first outside the US. Apple flew a 20-man film crew in to cover the talk.

“I didn’t think my project was that big,” says Capper, “but apparently rolling out that many phones was unheard of.”

And this desire to give people access to new and better technology extends to a willingness to accept “shadow IT” as a catalyst for innovation.

“The previous security manager stopped people using Gmail or DropBox from their desks. So people went home and sent work-related mails from Gmail, or went to the atrium in the building to connect to the guest wireless to get things onto DropBox. So he was another casualty. IT shouldn’t behave like the police, but must help the business to achieve its objectives,” Capper explains.

In addition to relaxing overly strict processes, he also found himself kick-starting delayed and stalled projects, like the migration to Microsoft Office 2007 – an initiative that had lain dormant for six years.

“Skanska bought Office 2007 in 2006 when it first came out, but they didn’t have it on a single computer until I joined in 2012. I asked why they didn’t roll it out, and they said because no one asked us to.

“So I got it moving, and they did it efficiently, with no problem. We’ve now also rolled out Microsoft Lync, are about to roll out Lync Plus, and are looking at SharePoint too.”

In an annual company survey that aims to score different departments at Skanska for staff engagement and efficiency, IT came 22nd in the year before Capper joined – that’s out of 22 departments. After he joined, the department jumped to number one.

“A lot of people asked what the hell are we doing down there [to improve so quickly]? We got number one for engagement within our team, due to all of our internal communications, and efforts to keep people motivated.

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Interview: Raising IT's profile at Skanska

Computing speaks to Steve Capper, director of IT at construction giant Skanska, about re-energising a stale IT environment

"The key is to enjoy coming to work and have fun. A good example is the recent flash mob the team performed to [internet sensation] Gangnam Style."

Building flexibility
He adds that it's also about being flexible with his team's working hours, as there used to be a culture of clock watching at Skanska. Today, he says that as long as his colleagues do their hours, he doesn't mind when they come and go.

And this flexible approach applies to location as well as hours, especially with the advent of smart metering, something Skanska is involved in delivering.

"The shape of the business will change when we get involved in smart metering - our workforce will need to visit 5,000 homes per day. So our systems need to accessible from anywhere, useable from mobile, and as intuitive as possible."

Capper and his team have looked at Cisco's AnyConnect secure mobility product to enable this mobile way of working.

"It's secure, cost effective, and cheaper than the previous solution we were using," he says. "And we've now got ISO270001 accreditation as of this year, which enables us to win government contracts, so the security is extremely important."

He has also been considering Microsoft Office 365 as a cloud-based productivity tool, but found that it lacked some of the instant communication offered by Lync Plus, and that it wasn't cost effective.

"Its cost was double what we can do internally, so it doesn't work for us right now. Generally we'll move things to the cloud, but only when it's cost effective."

Social engineering
Construction traditionally has been seen as an industry that is rather behind the curve. Capper admits that when he meets up with other CIOs from the industry, there is a shared feeling that there has in the past been a culture of just keeping the lights on. But, he claims, that is set to change.

"We're now realising that technology will play a major part in what we do," says Capper. "For example, BIM is revolutionising the whole of the construction industry. By producing a 3D model of the project in advance, we can make sure that every aspect of the design is right before we get on site. Everything can be tested in advance, leading to productivity gains, as well as cost and time savings for clients."

And social media is becoming increasingly important too.

"Twitter and other social media will be very important in one of the major contracts we're bidding on now, as we'll get paid based partly on customer feedback.

"So for instance if a major utility company outsources to us, they'll do random questionnaires to customers, then that feedback will drive how big a percentage of the profit we get. Then if someone on Twitter says Skanska dug a road up outside my house and ruined my washing, we need to be ready to just send them a £50 cheque. You don't want your reputation ruined, you don't want to branded as a bad company.

"You see the value when you see how powerful it is for customers to write what they like about us. You've got to be ready for that."

Although he has already achieved so much, as making the shortlist for the UK IT Industry Awards 2013 testifies, he acknowledges that there is still much to do.

"When I joined the CEO asked ‘How long will it take you to turn IT around?' I said 12 months, and he said three years, and he's right."

But if he can keep IT delivering, and keep it at the top of the firm's internal leaderboards, Capper could still beat that deadline.