Month: October 2026

Curzon conducted a rapid commercial diagnostic and growth strategy across four areas:

Commercial Model Redesign — Previously uncharged services were identified and priced, including marshalling. Cancellation charges were introduced to drive improved pilot and broker behaviour and reduce unnecessary operational cost.

Customer Journey Redesign — The end-to-end customer experience was reviewed and redesigned to address the factors driving market share loss to competing airports, with facility improvements proposed to bring the lounge and transit experience up to a competitive standard.

Value Chain Extension — Affiliated third parties were identified to provide onward travel and concierge services, broadening the revenue base and capturing a greater share of the GA value chain. A discrete duty-free offering was also proposed to further enhance yield per customer.

Partnership Strategy — Existing partnerships and commercial arrangements were reviewed, with changes proposed to practices and third-party relationships to support the new commercial model.

Curzon was engaged to interpret and structure the client’s vision for its Project Performance Accelerator programme into clear deliverables, and to co-create and deliver two products: an Immersive Learning Experience and a Digital Project Management Guidebook.

Immersive Learning Experience — Designed to disrupt conventional programme delivery, the learner journey took project teams through 16 hours of pre-learning, a behavioural strengths assessment, personalised coaching, a five-day immersive learning week, and two bespoke checkpoint workshops to embed knowledge. The curriculum was built around the full project lifecycle and adapted to different learning styles, covering project controls, commercial acumen, contractor management, risk, and ways of working. When the Covid-19 pandemic made in-person delivery impossible, Curzon rapidly redesigned the entire programme for remote delivery — without compromising learning outcomes or pace of rollout — and successfully completed the full rollout to all 730 target participants.

Digital Project Management Guidebook — A fully interactive digital tool giving the entire project management community on-demand access to practical, hard-earned insight from experienced practitioners. Curzon led content creation alongside the client’s subject matter experts, adopting a divide-and-conquer approach to safeguard client ownership while ensuring consistency and relevance across programmes. The Guidebook deliberately avoided duplicating existing manuals — instead curating the best available material into a single, accessible resource validated with senior stakeholders across the organisation.

A “working better together” model underpinned both products, driving a fundamental shift in how individuals interact, take ownership of overlapping workstreams, and solve problems collaboratively — moving the focus from systems and processes to people.

Curzon adopted a red-team approach, drawing on senior executives with experience across multiple sectors to conduct a thorough, targeted review of the TOM and all underpinning artefacts. A series of immersive workshops and engagements with subject matter experts identified thematic areas for focus, which formed the basis of recommendations. Cross-sector benchmarks were used to enrich outputs and provide alternative approaches for TOM components. Bespoke case studies and models were generated to underpin recommendations and give the Executive team practical reference points for action.

Curzon delivered across four areas: Strategic Benchmarking — a comparative analysis of sustainability performance against peer UK and European airports established a baseline and identified gaps. Initiative Prioritisation — all 100+ initiatives were evaluated and prioritised using robust business cases detailing financial ROI, carbon savings, and operational implications. Sustainability Roadmap — a phased strategy was designed to meet 2030 and 2040 goals, with milestones aligned to sustainability targets and flexibility to incorporate emerging technologies (including hydrogen solutions post-2025). Implementation Plan — detailed plans were developed for all initiatives, covering timelines, dependencies, and required investments, underpinned by a unified governance framework to ensure stakeholder alignment and accountability. A lifecycle-based fleet transition strategy incorporating drop-in bio-fuel was implemented to enable phased vehicle replacement and immediate emissions reductions.

Curzon delivered a four-workstream transformation: Process Redesign — 100+ workflows were redesigned and implemented, unified across 50+ senior stakeholder requirements. Governance Framework — Robust decision-making structures, accountability mechanisms, and escalation pathways were implemented, improving cross-functional integration across cost, programme, and risk. Capability Uplift — High-Performing Teams (HPT) methodology and strengths-centric coaching were deployed to build PMO team capability, with 1-1 coaching accelerating individual development. Digital Strategy — A bespoke PMO intranet platform and digital suite were designed, built, and embedded, alongside a defined future-state digital strategy. A strategic transformation plan covering 74 initiatives across critical capability areas was created and delivered.

Curzon delivered a digital productivity transformation across five workstreams: standardised productivity metrics and baselines were established for key assets; a custom productivity app and dashboard were built to collect, analyse, and visualise real-time data; a Productivity Improvement Plan (PIP) was developed to define strategic goals and scheme-level targets; Productivity Optimisation Groups were formed to align supply chain goals with client objectives; and training, coaching, and change management were delivered to embed the new tools and ways of working. AI was used to accelerate insight generation throughout. Structured data feedback loops facilitated continuous improvement and enhanced supplier engagement through actionable insight.

Curzon conducted a comprehensive statistical review of historical operational data to identify inefficiencies and establish evidence-based intervention points. Five workstreams were delivered:

Root Cause Analysis — Historical operational data was used to pinpoint the drivers of fault delays and long-duration outages. Resourcing Optimisation — Workforce distribution was rebalanced across shifts to address the highest-impact gaps. 24/7 Fault Management — Field assessment and reservoir development processes were streamlined for operational efficiency and accuracy. Process Automation — Emergency response protocols were redesigned and automated workflows introduced to reduce delays. Performance KPIs — Measurable KPIs were established to enhance accountability and track improvement over time.

Leadership buy-in was secured at executive level, ensuring alignment with strategic priorities, and continuous monitoring frameworks were embedded to sustain improvements.

Curzon deployed a two-phase approach over approximately 16 weeks:

Phase 1 — Spend Transparency and Opportunity Assessment (c.7 weeks): We mapped spend across all targeted categories, identified inefficiencies, and produced a strategic roadmap prioritising savings opportunities by impact and feasibility.

Phase 2 — Sourcing Strategy Execution (c.9 months): Five levers were deployed simultaneously: competitive strategic sourcing to identify best-in-class suppliers; specification optimisation to remove unnecessary requirements without compromising safety or quality; supplier consolidation to reduce fragmentation; demand management to challenge volume assumptions and eliminate unnecessary spend; and direct negotiations using spend insight to secure stronger commercial terms. A supplier conference brought together over 50 key supplier organisations to communicate the new strategy and vision, focused on service, efficiency, and innovation.

Targeted training and coaching ran throughout, upskilling contract managers to break established inertia and embed a culture of ongoing commercial accountability.

Curzon partnered with the client across four workstreams to take the engagement from market insight to commercial-ready propositions:

Market Intelligence and Client Insight — We conducted 35 interviews with senior stakeholders across Anglian, Thames, Southern, and Yorkshire Water to map client pain points, identify opportunity spaces, and understand how the client was genuinely perceived by its customers. AI tools were used to accelerate insight generation — summarising transcripts, clustering themes, and extracting recurring client needs at pace. Competitor offerings and regulatory positions were assessed to sharpen opportunity prioritisation.

Opportunity Identification and Validation — A structured scan of core-adjacent opportunities was conducted, with propositions assessed against four criteria: margin potential, readiness, scalability, and time to revenue. A wide longlist was refined to three high-impact, client-ready propositions aligned to AMP8 priorities.

Co-creation and Proposition Development — Joint Curzon-client workshops brought internal stakeholders together across divisions to stress-test and shape commercially viable propositions. Co-creation built internal ownership and accelerated validation — ensuring the final propositions reflected both client demand and the client’s genuine delivery capability.

Commercial Enablement and Playbook Delivery — Each proposition was supported by a full commercial toolkit: a proposition pack setting out the what, how, and why; a playbook translating proposition into route to market; a roadmap illustrating the path to commercial delivery; and a stakeholder map identifying the right decision-makers and budget holders at each target utility. A consolidated sales collateral deck was produced to support business development conversations and sharpen market positioning.

Curzon combined three workstreams to develop a grounded, practical resilience framework:

• Stakeholder Engagement and Diagnostic — We conducted senior stakeholder interviews across the airport ecosystem to surface the range of resilience definitions in use and understand where gaps, conflicts, and dependencies lay. This was combined with a current-state assessment of the airport’s resilience position against objective criteria.
• Resilience Definition and Framework Design — We synthesised the multiple definitions into a single, practical resilience framework tailored to the airport context. This included defining resilience factors — robustness, reliability, redundancy, and incident command — that could be applied consistently across operational, organisational, infrastructure, and technology dimensions.
• Workshops and Masterplan Translation — We ran a structured AWG12 resilience workshop with the client and its ecosystem partners to identify what would need to be true operationally, organisationally, and technologically to turn difficult flow days into good ones. These insights were then translated into resilience outcomes and requirements to inform and stress-test future masterplan options.
• Existing strengths — including the Airport Operations Centre (APOC), leadership commitment, and rapid organisational learning — were identified and built upon, rather than overlooked in pursuit of a purely new model.