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Lawson is referring to a demand which was made by him and his colleagues in design services at an away day in February 2002. They were sick to death of their grotty fourth-floor offices. They were being asked to behave like an outside consultancy, to deliver excellent results to their clients but their surroundings just didn't reflect that.

Why did a bunch of overworked and underpaid civil servants get so emotional about change? Because they were given the chance to speak up about what was right and wrong about their department. Head of design services Stephen Stokoe needed to get his team to decide and buy into the changes they were going through without the private sector motivator of money to help him do that.

The system he used is called The Middlesbrough Driver – the orange brochure is part of it - and it is the main reason the council won its beacon award. In October Stokoe will launch a revised version to help local authorities and private companies work out what they need to change in order to adopt Rethinking Construction principles. It's called the Rethinking Construction Driver. Stokoe also hopes to offer a consultancy service to train others how to use it.

What the driver does
The Driver contains a series of questions relating to what a business does and the results it gets. The questions are designed to open discussions to determine strengths and weaknesses in different areas, leading the whole team to reach a consensus on priorities for improvment in the coming year.

The Driver's roots are in the private sector. Back in 1992, consultant BQC Performance Management started producing similar systems for private companies, based on something called the European Foundation for Quality Management Excellence Model (EFQM). But it wasn't until 1995, when the government started addressing the issue of how to rate quality over price, that such things made it into the public sector.

Now the majority of central government departments, including heavy hitters like the Foreign Office and the Department of Work and Pensions use BQC-produced versions of the EFQM, all of which are branded as Drivers. Middlesbrough, one of several local authorities who also have them, started piloting theirs in nine different business units, one of them design services, in 2000. Two units have already produced their bespoke versions, ahead of construction.

In July, a working group made up of people from the local authority, contractors and others spent two days trying to angle the driver towards Rethinking Construction, under the guidance of BQC. Llewellyn commercial manager Derek Haynes was one who attended. His firm is now on its fourth successive tower block refurbishment contract for the council. The idea is that because he has had experience in partnering he can help advise on what questions an organisation should ask as it tries to Eganise. For example does the local authority have the right skills to attempt partnering?

Public sells to private
The driver should work at project level too, and Haynes has volunteered his current refurbishment job as one of the pilots. BQC likes to test the driver in as many different situations as it can to be sure it works.

Stokoe hopes that private firms will also want to use the Rethinking Construction Driver. But many do have similar systems in place, albeit not modelled on EFQM. "If you have been in the partnering arena, if you have been through various workshops and had that type of management input, then you will probably be used to this sort of thing," says Haynes.

However he thinks that anyone wanting to work for local authorities should find out about it. "If it's couched in the right ways, then the local authority should end up picking the right contractors. And if you know what they are thinking, it gives you the right approach when you are putting in for a bid," says Haynes, who adds that the two-day session has already helped him shape a bid for another local authority he hopes to work for.

But how does a driver work? Once a year, Stephen Stokoe, the head of design services, takes all his staff away from the office. The most popular venue yet has been a nearby hotel. There has to be an independent person there as well to guide the whole process.

Each person then works through the question sets grouped under five 'enabler' categories and four 'results' categories. For example, under 'People Results' the marker is invited to rate from Level 5 (poor) to Level 1 (great) on 'Does the council set and meet targets for levels of employee satisfaction and motivation?'.

Then they break off into groups, pool answers and then each group contributes to two lists: strengths and weaknesses or 'areas for improvement' as they are known in business speak. Finally, each employee gets five votes to give to the improvement areas which they think are the most important. Stokoe then creates an action plan to address these.

Recognition and reward
On the first away day, staff were somewhat bemused by some of the questions. "We looked at them and thought 'how do they relate to our business?'" remembers Lawson. But that does make people ask questions. Do we record that? Does the council have a policy on this? Do we ask clients that? And it does throw up areas of weakness, says Lawson, such as how the department deals with the public, the client or financial issues.

By the third away day, the staff felt they needed something more. "I threw it on the floor and said it should be changed because it's got to be tailored to our needs," remembers Lawson. Enter the Rethinking Construction Driver.

Though Stokoe has delivered some of the improvements his team identified, such as the improved working environment, better IT, and different ways of doing things, others have been rather more problematic. Remuneration remains a problem: "One of the biggest things that comes out of the Driver as areas for improvement is our rewards," says Lawson. "A lot of us have said that we don't get rewarded adequately for what we do. As far as I am concerned I come to work for money."

Stokoe is well-aware of this issue. "You can't turn round and give them a pay rise. You have to look at other forms of recognition and reward," he says.

It is a common problem, one which all department heads in local government must face, and perhaps illustrates why getting people on board with changes is so crucial.