Culture of collaboration key to success at RAF Lakenheath

Key lessons learned from the collaborative approach are about to be put into practice as work transitions from completing the tranche 1 sub-programme to delivering tranche 2 projects in autumn 2025.

New demands

The £350M project to prepare the Suffolk airbase for the new F-35 fighter planes started in November 2018 and is expected to be completed in 2029. While the project still has several years left to run, the project team has already successfully achieved many challenging milestones in order to complete enough of the infrastructure needed for arrival of the first aircraft in December 2021. This was an immovable date and is why all collaborative efforts with key stakeholders were concentrated on meeting this date, which was successfully achieved.

However, it is not just the size and pace of the programme that is demanding – the design and delivery work required is a first for the UK too.

The F-35 Beddown sub-programme called for multiple new facilities, buildings and infrastructure with over 14 projects delivered in the first tranche

“Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter is cutting edge technology in the air and needs cutting edge technology on the ground to train pilots and crew, as well as prepare and maintain the aircraft themselves,” explains Mott MacDonald project director Matthew Clear. “The F-35 Beddown sub-programme called for multiple new facilities, buildings and infrastructure with over 14 projects delivered in the first tranche. Handover for that tranche has just been completed, with the remaining four due to be delivered in a second tranche.”

As well as this being the first integrated USVF F-35 campus in the UK, the stakeholder environment in which to successfully deliver the work was also complex. Under the long-standing Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), the DIO delivers this work on behalf of the USVF in conjunction with other stakeholders and, ultimately, the end users of the facilities, the US Air Force.

Mott MacDonald was appointed as delivery partner to DIO. The role includes managing this complex stakeholder relationship to deliver the contract. The business also undertook health and safety management and site supervision of work delivered by tranche 1 main contractor KVF35 – a joint venture between Kier Group and VolkerFitzpatrick – ensuring the work delivered met both UK and US regulations. “In addition, our role covered programme, project, commercial, design review and technical management on behalf of the DIO and to fulfil the duties of the NEC Construction Supervisor,” adds Matthew.

Creating a collaborative environment

According to Matthew, building a collaborative culture across the stakeholder environment for the F-35 work was identified as being critical to the success of the programme by the Mott MacDonald team at the outset. “It sounds simple but, in reality, it is not the way military projects have typically been run in the past,” he says.

Instead of having the more conventional chains of communication with single points of contact across multiple groups, Matthew’s team developed project groups which brought together the project managers from multiple stakeholders and other specialist disciplines to create a more collaborative connected thinking approach. “We are used to working in this way with other sectors in our own business and were able to bring our knowledge on how to effectively set up this approach and engage with the key stakeholders to replicate it here,” he says.

Each project group had a dedicated space to work together more cohesively to resolve issues as a collaborative team. Mott MacDonald also put delivery managers in place to oversee several project groups to ensure consistency in the approaches being developed across similar projects, such as the hangars, and allow learnings to be shared quickly across the wider programme.

“The approach meant that we could resolve problems more efficiently and effectively,” says Matthew.

Working alongside DIO’s project teams on NEC contracts also played a critical role in creating the collaborative culture and moving away from more competitive relationships that have previously been common in construction projects. “We ran some NEC familiarisation courses to support DIO’s staff in how to effectively administer and manage NEC contracts and work together to achieve alignment,” says Matthew.

As an example of the overall benefits the project groups brought, Matthew points to the design review process. “Instead of the review being sequential and project managers from key stakeholders raising the same issue but in a different way, the designs were reviewed by the project group and I saw it time and again, this allowed them to bounce ideas off each other and find workable and sometimes new solutions,” he adds. “One of these design reviews resulted in a change that delivered cost savings, as well as a significant reduction in potential carbon emissions.

Matthew says that the project group approach helped the teams build a rapport and good working relationships that brought them together with a focus on the end goal and understanding of each other’s strengths. When the pandemic started and some of the project teams had to switch to working on Microsoft Teams, this team spirit was key to the work remaining on track despite the switch to virtual working for a long period.

In total, the collaborative working approach has realised approximately £12M of savings across the programme and also secured the team the Collaboration in Defence Award with the Institute for Collaborative Working in 2022.

Mapping international standards

One of the key challenges each project group had to manage was building facilities to US regulations and ensuring these met with UK regulations too. “The work had to meet base design standards which are set in the US, as well as local authority Building Control regulations and UK MoD and DIO requirements,” says Matthew. “It’s not the first time that this challenge has had to be addressed, but the work on the F-35 programme at RAF Lakenheath is probably the largest project where this has needed to be resolved with many new facilities not previously captured.

“To avoid repeating the work across the different projects, we looked across many different design disciplines and plotted out the flow of information and where decisions needed to be made on whether we adopted the UK or US standards.

“We did some detailed analysis and flow charted out where the differences lie and captured what came out of the design review process by recording what decision was made and what the solution was. This has all been shared back with DIO and is now being used on other projects. It was a challenging process but really valuable for more than just the work at RAF Lakenheath.”

Getting ready for tranche 2

After the deadline of delivering the critical infrastructure needed for the arrival of the first F-35 aircraft in December 2021, the focus of the Mott MacDonald team turned to the completion of the remaining projects that made up tranche 1. These facilities were successfully handed over by summer 2025 and design work on the tranche 2 projects was already underway by this point.

“Tranche 2 of the F-35 programme is smaller with four new facilities to be delivered,” says Matthew. “The design and procurement of these is already benefitting from the learnings from tranche 1. We have a comprehensive library comprised of lessons learnt captured at both a project and programme level across the entire lifecycle and particularly pre-contract, design, delivery, construction and handover.  We will be embracing continuous improvement and continuing our collaborative approach through the procurement, design and construction of Tranche 2 with respective contractors also.”

The work on tranche 1 will also benefit other projects Mott MacDonald is delivering for DIO on other USVF bases. Now, instead of starting with a blank piece of paper, knowledge, experience and, where possible, specialist expertise can be shared to give similar projects a head start based on previous successful delivery. This benefits client in terms of efficiencies and consistent delivery and, ultimately, the USVF as the end user which receives high quality, state of the art, facilities.