Diane Tibbles

We partnered with Convatec, a global medical products company, to unlock procurement savings and efficiency gains as part of its strategic business plan. With challenging targets to optimise external expenditure in a short timeframe, the project faced tight deadlines, decentralised decision-making, and limited internal resources. Procurement needed a fresh approach to deliver rapid, tangible impact.

Deploying an agile, data-driven strategy, running spend analysis, opportunity assessment, and sourcing execution in parallel. By leveraging direct negotiations, demand management, specification optimisation, and strategic sourcing, the team addressed over 15 indirect spend categories, including CapEx, recruitment, and employee transportation. Within 4 months only, savings far exceeded targets, delivering substantial financial benefits within the financial year.

Several key challenges had to be tackled head-on. Savings had to be realised within the current fiscal year, leaving no room for delays. Meanwhile, procurement teams were stretched thin across multiple strategic priorities. Adding to the complexity, decision-making was fragmented across business units and geographies, slowing execution. Overcoming these hurdles required a focused, results-driven approach to procurement transformation.

We conducted an Opportunity Assessment of external expenditure, engaged stakeholders, and rapidly implemented savings initiatives—balancing quick wins with long-term procurement strategies.

Our approach prioritised speed, execution, and impact. Savings opportunities were actioned immediately, avoiding delays from lengthy assessments. Securing stakeholder buy-in upfront ensured smooth execution and compliance. No category was off-limits—every spend area was rigorously challenged to unlock efficiencies. Beyond cost savings, procurement was positioned as a value driver, integrating sustainability and process optimisation for long-term benefits.This strategy covered approximately several hundreds of millions in external expenditure across thousands of suppliers, ensuring a fast yet sustainable transformation.

The project delivered significant cost savings across multiple categories. CapEx negotiations achieved ~25% cost reductions on a major manufacturing expansion project, despite supplier pre-selection. In the Dominican Republic, employee transportation costs dropped 22% through demand management, supplier market review, and specification optimisation. Meanwhile, UK recruitment expenses fell by 16% through direct MSP negotiations, agency consolidation, and tighter demand control. These targeted initiatives generated substantial financial benefits while reinforcing procurement’s role as a strategic business driver.

The project exceeded all initial objectives, delivering year-on-year cost savings well beyond targets. Strong in-year financial benefits surpassed expectations, creating immediate impact. Beyond financial gains, procurement was strengthened as a key strategic enabler, driving long-term value creation within the business.

Above and beyond savings, the project successfully delivered numerous qualitative benefits, including promoting sustainable behaviours by offering free coffee to all employees who brought in their own reusable cups, reduced the use of single-use items by 80% and food waste.

We positioned procurement as key partner to the business, opening the door to procurement transformation and increased mandate.International, with Sydney Airport – A procurement transformation at Sydney Airport redesigned the operating model, strengthened commercial capability, and improved supplier performance across key operational services. The programme embedded a culture of commercial discipline and collaboration, delivering sustainable operational improvements and long-term organisational capability.

Sydney Airport is Australia’s premier international gateway and one of the country’s most strategically important pieces of infrastructure, handling a significant proportion of the nation’s passenger traffic. Following a change in ownership, the airport’s leadership sought to improve performance and ensure that its commercial and procurement practices aligned with the organisation’s strategic pillars of efficiency, service and innovation.

Airport operations are highly complex. Hundreds of suppliers support critical services across terminals, airside operations, facilities maintenance, passenger services and security systems. Many of these services must operate continuously, and any changes must be carefully managed to ensure that safety and passenger experience are never compromised. Over time, supplier arrangements and procurement practices had evolved with different operational teams managing suppliers independently. Opportunities with the supply-chain were being missed and contracts often extended rather than strategically reviewed.

To address this, the airport partnered with Curzon Consulting to deliver a comprehensive procurement transformation programme. The objective was not simply to renegotiate contracts, but to strengthen the organisation’s overall commercial capability and embed procurement more deeply into operational decision-making. The programme focused on improving spend transparency, strengthening commercial performance, and equipping internal teams with the tools and skills required to manage suppliers more strategically.

The project began with a rapid diagnostic to understand how procurement activities were being delivered and where opportunities existed to improve efficiency and value. This involved analysing contracts, reviewing service specifications and working closely with operational teams to understand how services were delivered on the ground. From this assessment, a structured transformation programme was designed, combining commercial analysis, supplier engagement, operational improvement and negotiation and re-contracting.

Delivery focused on several key workstreams. These included building visibility of supplier performance and cost structures, upskilling staff and stakeholders, introducing structured sourcing and negotiation approaches, and redesigning elements of the procurement operating model to improve coordination across the organisation. A strong emphasis was placed on collaboration with both internal stakeholders and suppliers, recognising that sustainable improvements require shared commitment rather than purely transactional relationships.

A core element of the programme was capability development. Consultants worked with airport staff as ‘one team’, providing practical training and hands-on coaching in areas such as supplier management, commercial negotiation and contract governance. This ensured that the airport could continue to build on the programme’s momentum.

The transformation delivered cost-improvements across multiple operational areas, without sacrifice of standards. The work often focused on redesigning operations or improving the way services were specified and managed, enabling efficiency while maintaining service standards.

The programme also helped shift the organisational culture around procurement and supplier management. Procurement became more closely integrated into decision-making processes, and relationships with suppliers evolved towards longer-term, strategic partnerships.

By the end of the programme, Sydney Airport had strengthened its procurement capability, improved business performance and embedded a structured, high-performing approach to managing suppliers. The engagement demonstrated how procurement can play a strategic role in improving efficiency and resilience within complex infrastructure environments, while ensuring continued delivery of safe, reliable and high-quality services for passengers and airlines.

Curzon Consulting partnered with Rolls-Royce SMR (RR-SMR) during a critical phase in the organisation’s development, supporting its transition from an R&D programme into a commercial business capable of mobilising and delivering multiple early-stage nuclear programmes.

Curzon worked closely with Rolls-Royce SMR’s PMO to stabilise reporting and improve organisational visibility and control. Reporting capability was in-sourced, improving transparency, timeliness, and confidence, while simultaneously building sustainable internal capability within the PMO. This enables RR-SMR to engage its partners with greater confidence and grow a strong, trust-based relationship.

Building on this foundation, Curzon supported the development of the PMO into a more cohesive and scalable function capable of supporting a rapidly expanding organisation. Working collaboratively with the business, Curzon helped define a PMO vision, purpose, and management values, alongside a transformation roadmap informed by IPA guidance, P3M3, PMBoK, and lessons learnt from comparable major programme environments.

As customer contracts reached the horizon, Curzon supported leadership through the development of the Programme Directorate – a new executive-led function overseeing delivery of a portfolio of customer and R&D projects, PMO, and industrialisation. Working alongside leadership and HR teams, Curzon helped design, implement and track a successful phased organisational transition that maintained operational continuity and engagement during a period of significant growth and change.

As RR-SMR’s first deployments in the UK and Europe progressed through the bid phase, Curzon worked with the Project Directors and their leadership teams to help stand up scalable project delivery organisations capable of running major early stage nuclear contracts. This included designing organisational structures, governance frameworks, role definitions, interface plans, and integrated ways of working across functions. Leadership alignment and team effectiveness workshops helped establish shared behaviours, and delivery principles across newly formed teams.

A major focus was helping RR-SMR understand what ‘delivery-ready’ meant for the customer projects. Curzon worked closely with the business to develop practical frameworks and scoring systems aligned to industry best practice and the realities of major project delivery. The engagement contributed to the successful mobilisation and growth of two customer project teams from only a handful of individuals to almost 200 people, with both contracts in place and a ‘delivery-ready’ organisation established.