1.1 What are the difficulties in developing strategic relationships? Peter Roberts was the head of assets for National Transmissions and Trading within Transco, which is part of the National Grid Transco Group.

Transco is a major player in the regulated industry and manages multi-million pound projects that create the infrastructure used to transport energy across the UK. Peter was responsible for the planning and construction, maintenance and ultimately decommissioning of the high-pressure gas pipelines and pumping stations within the UK.

Peter had some experience in developing strategic relationships:

A number of organisations want to move to having strategic relationships but they are struggling with how to do it. Strategic relationships call for a change in culture from an adversarial to a collaborative style. And that takes time – because it’s a trust issue and trust is earned, not switched on overnight, and it quickly unpicks when things go wrong. People default back to type when under pressure, and that’s a problem.