Skanska has won the Global Project Controls Transformation project of the year at the 2025 Global Project Controls Expo Awards. The award is for the Integrated Project Controls Framework (IPCF) used on the A428 Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet highways improvement scheme.
The team developed and launched the framework on the scheme in 2023. It is designed to create a single, trusted view of performance and allow cross-sector sharing of knowledge. Backed by senior leadership, the IPCF brings clarity and consistency by unifying our approach to planning, cost, risk and change, providing a cohesive, strategic system.
The judges said: "This project showcases Skanska’s commitment to lasting change, transforming project delivery by empowering teams and aligning people, processes, and technology.
With its people-centric change management and blend of cutting-edge technology, IPCF represents a new gold standard in project controls recognised across the industry by clients and peers. The framework is being used on our rail and highways projects with further enhancements planned.
Commenting on the award win, Skanska’s Senior Project Controls & Analytics Engineer, Shinan Zhang said: “We are so pleased to have been recognised for our achievement. Transforming the behaviour of our own teams across disciplines was the key objective. We were asking people to fundamentally change how they work, shifting from familiar, often personal ways of reporting to a shared, standardised approach. It meant putting data and process first, even when it challenged long-held habits and comfort zones.
“We knew that for IPCF to succeed, people had to believe in its purpose. We built trust through transparency, mentorship and support, creating space for people to ask questions, raise concerns and feel ownership of the change. It took persistence, empathy and a shared belief that we could do better together.”
Tomasz Marcinkowski added: “Receiving this award from Project Controls Expo, one of the leading global platforms for advancing project controls practice, is an important validation of the approach the team has developed. It recognises Skanska’s discipline and commitment shown by an amazing team in building and applying the framework, and the steady leadership that ensured it could take root and deliver tangible results.
The next step is to continue advancing the framework, ensuring it remains responsive, robust and consistently applied across our programmes.”
Dan Trathen, Project Director for the A428 talked about the benefits: “The IPCF provides a unified suite of reports that we review collaboratively with our customer, National Highways. We all have access to the same live 'single source of truth' data that is displayed on visual user-friendly dashboards. The time saved has been huge as it has eliminated the need to gather and validate multiple disparate reports.
“Congratulations to the projects control team for winning this very well-deserved award.”
An independent audit by the Controls and Skills Authority (CaSA) concluded that the IPCF is “one of the best” frameworks benchmarked across the industry. Customer-facing interfaces are enhanced through tailored reports and collaboratively developed KPIs. Customer, National Highways, has recognised the IPCF as the ‘gold standard’ for their Regional Development Programme (RDP) reporting. This puts Skanska on the map where big consultants usually rule.