Steve Barraclough

Leading change projects that make clients successful

My passion is automated warehousing. As a site General Manager, I’ve operated four automated sites with storage and retrieval solutions. Two of these were new site start-ups and I lead two projects delivering  replacement WMS/WMCS, re-engineered picking and goods in solutions and the implementation of an export operation

I then took a career change when I had the opportunity to move into project management to lead a design and build project for DHL Unilever delivering a £28M capex automated top-tier COMAH NDC for their home and personal care business. A £48M capex automated NDC for their foods business then followed. Both projects were delivered on time, in budget and improved service levels in their first year and we passed the MF1 Tests on Completion on the first attempt on the foods project, which was a company first

More recently I lead the delivery of Euro Car Parts £70M capex, 1M square foot semi-automated NDC, which included a TGW miniload, goods to person pick and robot despatch solution as well as a VNA and APR manual operation

I’m experienced with TUPE, having lead the NYK to DHL project for JLR and with site closures and dilapidations, most recently moving ECP’s e-Commerce operation from Wembley to Tamworth, closing two sites and re-engineering their old NDC from an APR to a VNA operation

I have gained a blend of operations, solution design, project and change management experience including working knowledge of MF1 contracts and CDM. Some key achievements include:

• Working with Unite at Sainsburys to implement work study based performance management, which improved productivity by 25% equating to a £1.5M annual saving
• Leading a 1,000 people TUPE change project for JLR with no production losses and receiving the JLR Quality Award for best improvement project
• Recovering a potential material breach of contract on the Dairy Crest NDC implementation, successfully delivering a first Xmas peak and leading the team through a TUPE to in-house operations
• H&S – awarded the British Safety Council Sword of Honour four times on the Mars contract and delivered the Unilever and ECP projects to best in class industry safety standards (zero LTIFR)
• I ran my own business for two years providing project management support to a UK 3PL on various projects including a WMS and Duty Management system upgrade project for Waitrose

I gained some invaluable international experience whilst working within a global 3PL’s Operations Excellence team in the EMEA Region, firstly leading a Diageo implementation across four African countries and then as Project Risk Director where I worked with cross functional/regional teams to harmonise sales, solutions design and project management processes, creating a project risk based methodology, which improved declared business case EBIT