Our innovation history
These days, we are known as Ramboll UK and are part of the wider Ramboll Group but the story of the practice goes back more than 25 years. When we started, we set out to challenge the conventional role of the engineer. We sought to capture and build on the strengths of the emerging generation of computer-literate engineers who care about the world we live in.
Since then we have undertaken significant research and development and delivered a consistently outstanding product. We have been innovative in how we have organised ourselves, in how we have worked with others and in what we have been able to deliver.
The following text is adapted from our award submission for the Queen's Award for Enterprise: Innovation 2006.
How we have organised ourselves
We set out with a fresh, positive approach that has captured and brought together a diverse range of engineering skills. We take ideas through to delivery with rigour, creating in the process a buzz that enthuses everyone in the organisation and helps us attract and retain high quality engineers.
We have worked to create an invigorating and sustaining workplace environment: with relatively flat management structures, open-plan offices and a full range of social activities. We take a task group approach to much of the decision-making, using vertical team groupings that mix junior and senior staff. Our dress code was seen to be so far ahead of its time that it featured in a TV programme on offices of the future.
Looking for ways to streamline the process of design, management and delivery led us to early, pioneering adoption of 3D modelling. It offered us: better productivity, more time focusing on the delight of engineering rather than the drudgery, and better and more accurate knowledge exchange with the trades. While we are no longer unusual in offering 3D modelling, we are still distinct in having it as a core skill for every one of our engineering teams.
Dissatisfied with the available methods of managing projects internally, we developed our own computerised job management system (called JMS). This records staff time against projects and feeds our billing systems. However, the real potential of JMS was unlocked when we developed it into an office-wide, integrated management and reporting system. It has proven so useful that we have successfully marketed it to the industry and are now taking it to the next generation with a new software partner. This activity, completely outside our core area of work, is indicative of our innovation-led culture.
How we work with others
Construction is a team activity involving a number of professionals — designers, architects and engineers, contractors and specialist trades. Opportunities for innovation can occur anywhere in the process, within or between the different areas of expertise. Being able to capitalise on the opportunities as they occur is possible when the relationships are built on trust and mutual respect. We go to considerable lengths to create this sort of relationship. We use an open-book approach, constant communication with the design team, the co-hosting of trades in our offices and we try to involve everyone we can in office social and sporting activities.
What we deliver
From the outset we have been recognised as innovative engineers, winning hundreds of awards. In 2005, we were named NCE Consultant of the Year (medium-sized firm) and won several other major national awards, including an IStructE Special Award, a Brick Award (Best Building of the Year) and Bulding magazine's Low Energy Building of the Year. We have won numerous design awards, Civic Trust Awards, RIBA Awards and national awards for brickwork, concrete, timber and steel.
Engineering innovations
A visual idea of the projects that link to form our history of engineering innovation can be gained from this innovation timeline diagram ... a PDF download of 160k.