Collaborative Contagion

Collaboration is cited in every major infrastructure tender. It is also, consistently, where projects fail to deliver. Research by McKinsey & Company shows that large construction projects typically run up to 80% over budget and 20% longer than planned — and identifies fragmented supply chains and poor coordination as primary causes. These are not technical failures. They are collaboration failures, expressing themselves in programme and cost.

In this article, Sally Calverley — Director of Milestone and one of a small number of practitioners who has spent thirty years on both sides of major public sector procurement — argues that genuine collaboration is not a cultural aspiration. It is a capability. One that must be built on real programme data, practised under real conditions, and developed with the same rigour applied to any programme baseline.

Sally introduces the concept of collaborative contagion: the idea that when genuine collaboration takes hold in a team, it becomes self-reinforcing — spreading through the Collaborative Behavioural Assessment, into mobilisation, and across the programme. It changes how decisions get made, how disagreement is surfaced, and how knowledge moves across organisational boundaries.

The article sets out why Milestone combines rigorous pre-construction planning with deep behavioural and leadership development — and why the two disciplines are inseparable in high-stakes infrastructure procurement. It explains the double-duty principle: that CBA preparation based on real project scenarios does not just win the assessment. It builds the team as if mobilisation is already coming. The investment is made once. It pays back twice.

Written for Pre-Construction Directors, bid leaders and programme directors preparing for Collaborative Behavioural Assessments, alliance mobilisation, or major NEC4 procurement.