The Importance of Global Partnerships in Building Resilience

Collaboration and partnerships are key to successful global projects, as supply chains and multinational companies are increasingly realizing. Our Associate in New Zealand, Tonkin + Taylor, were recently published in the New Zealand Herald highlighting how the Inogen Alliance global membership and structure contributes to their company and client project success. Read the full article here or excerpts below.

Local Insights for Global Collaboration

When Tonkin + Taylor’s New Zealand clients need help navigating through complex overseas business processes or transactions, the environmental and engineering consulting firm has a network of international consulting partners to call on.

Richard Hancy, Tonkin + Taylor’s executive leader, says his organisation’s membership of the Inogen Alliance gives the consultancy valuable insight into other markets and enables collaboration and learning. This is particularly useful in the context of responding to natural disasters and environmental sustainability.

“By being a member of the Alliance, Tonkin + Taylor can draw on expertise and experience from around the world and bring it back to New Zealand to help our clients and communities. At the same time, it gives us the ability to take the knowledge and experience that we have gained here and connect with our partners on the global stage. It means we can help with some of the issues the world is facing, including resilience. Resilience is not unique to New Zealand. It’s a global challenge. Communities across the world are grappling with the issues, we are able to help them while learning from those communities.”

While this is something multinational consulting firms might do internally, Hancy says the Inogen Alliance model is slightly different: “It is focused on organisations that have deep local knowledge and expertise. So Tonkin + Taylor is able to bring to the table an understanding of New Zealand and the way New Zealand operates, in a way which is very New Zealand-centric.

“Similarly, our partners can do the same thing. They could be in Mexico or the United Kingdom, or wherever they happen to be.”

Hancy says this gives clients a depth of knowledge that may not be available elsewhere. 

Tailoring Projects to Local Needs

Expertise, knowledge and experience may flow quickly between the companies that make up the Inogen Alliance, but beyond that there is a focus on local delivery. “We make sure that the work being done is appropriate and relevant for the local environment. We bring in the lesson, but not necessarily the exact way of doing things, we bring the lessons learned into the challenges we face and apply them here”.

The alliance model comes into its own when a New Zealand company needs specialist on-the-ground knowledge about complex matters in an overseas market. Hancy uses the example of dealing with European supply chains to illustrate: “European supply chain regulations are changing, and companies need to understand how they relate to sustainability.

“European legislation has a global impact because supply chains run across the world, not just within Europe. Through our European partners in the alliance, we can connect directly into their learnings and understandings of how that legislation plays out so we can help New Zealand clients who are either in a supply chain or have a supply chain of their own which interacts with Europe. We can help them understand the requirements under those regulations and what they need to be doing to be compliant and working within those regulations”.

Local Skills Knowledge Sharing

While much of the alliance activity takes place in the Northern Hemisphere, that part of the world dominates global trade, Hancy says it’s amazing how many businesses elsewhere have a business interest in New Zealand or look here for experience to help with their challenges: “We have skills and experience here which the rest of the world doesn’t encounter very often. Take seismic engineering; we have world-class seismic engineering expertise in New Zealand. This is very transferable into international marketplaces.”

“It gives us the ability to tap into that broader learning and the broader applications that are being worked through in a way that we would never have been able to do that as a company on our own.”

Around the Pacific Rim, New Zealand swaps seismic engineering expertise with Japan or Chile and there is demand from Italy, which faces significant earthquake risks. He says: “The expertise learned after the Christchurch earthquakes is highly relevant on the global stage and this is where resilience fits in.”

He also says that overseas partners are increasingly investing in working with nature and that means drawing down on knowledge held by indigenous communities. They look at nature-based solutions rather than traditional engineering-based solutions.

Check out our latest film on the value of Inogen Alliance to our Associate member companies:

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Inogen Alliance is a global network made up of dozens of independent local businesses and over 6,000 consultants around the world who can help make your project a success. Our Associates collaborate closely to serve multinational corporations, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations, and we share knowledge and industry experience to provide the highest quality service to our clients. If you want to learn more about how you can work with Inogen Alliance, you can explore our Associates or Contact Us. Watch for more News & Blog updates here and follow us on LinkedIn.