The award-winning team, Ian Cockram, Ken Jackson and Simon Taylor from BAE SYSTEMS Aircraft Services Group, replaced the traditional steel reaction blocks with tungsten blocks significantly reducing vibration during riveting.

We have highly talented people, on whom the company’s success depends. In leading our people, it is a high priority to provide clarity on the strategic direction and priorities of the company, to ensure that there is a high level of consistency across the group in order to maximise shareholder value. In managing the business, we seek to avoid unnecessary centralisation and we have clear, group-wide processes that avoid undue reliance on short term initiatives. These processes are contained in the BAE SYSTEMS Operational Framework, which sets out the requirements for business planning, regular contract and business reviews, as well as the implementation of Lifecycle Management (LCM).

During 2000, LCM was rolled out across the company and provides a rigorous template for assessing the performance of a contract at every stage of its maturity, from concept definition through to overall contract completion. Of particular importance is the initial bidding phase, where we have instituted a robust tender vet process to avoid contracts being accepted that do not meet the company’s target returns.

There is a strong focus on continuing to develop key skills, in particular for engineering, systems and software. The company requires that all employees have personal development reviews with their manager and agree plans where specific development needs are identified. We continue to develop group-wide opportunities for personal development and fast-track career progression.

Feedback is an important embedded principle within the company and regular employee surveys, together with 360º appraisal and peer recognition processes, are key to our development strategies. We use similar techniques in measuring performance with our customers.

We place considerable emphasis on the global recruitment of the world’s best people and cultivating in them an insatiable desire to learn, to stretch and to improve. Our early-career programmes, which around 1,400 people will join in 2001, start the process of continuing career development and are the key to our future success.

We aim to provide through-life learning which includes the use of on-site learning resource centres providing a wide variety of courses and material. These centres also offer access to the resources of our Virtual University (VU). Operating in partnership with academic and research centres world-wide, the VU provides an innovative approach to acquiring and deploying knowledge throughout our business.