Ariaconsult Limited offers consultancy support to all Lcrig public and private highway maintenance leaders, focusing on three key areas: Business Development, Work Winning, and being a Critical Friend. 

Our support is instrumental in helping local authorities plan and prepare for the future of their highway maintenance services, providing them with the necessary tools and strategies for effective organisation, operation, and procurement. 

We specialise in assisting local authorities in transitioning from outsourcing to an in-house mixed-economy operating model. Additionally, we help local authority service directors manage the demobilisation from the private sector and mobilise local direct delivery of highway maintenance operations. 

Our expertise also extends to businesses aiming to grow and improve in the local authority highway maintenance sector. We collaborate with local authorities, contractors, and consultants to develop valuable solutions and support them in achieving their local service priorities.

As an active member of the highways community, Ariaconsult is eager to be part of the excitement generated by the Local Council Roads Innovation Group (LCRIG) and contribute to improving collaboration, communication, and innovation in our industry.

LCRIG will provide Ariaconsult with a unique platform to engage with central and local government, suppliers and the broader highways community on our favourite subjects. LCRIG offers a micro business like mine a fantastic opportunity to learn from best practices and contribute to fresh thinking in innovation and collaboration.

Ariaconsult will continue to help and support existing and new clients in driving change and improvement across the highway maintenance industry. The Local Council Roads Innovation Group is a fantastic platform for achieving this.  

Ariaconsult is proud to join LCRIG as an associate member. We will proactively support like-minded local authorities, organisations, and individuals in making a case for local roads, driving innovation forward, and delivering value by sharing the Bourne Identity and the Bourne trilogy of business development, work winning and critical friend experience, knowledge, and skills.

 https://lcrig.org.uk/associate/ariaconsult-limited                     

Leaving school at 16, Des Bourne, the owner and founder of Ariaconsult Limited, knew nothing of becoming a Strategic Business Development consultant.   

Des became a road worker with Shropshire’s Roads and Bridges Department. Whilst gaining practical experience and skills on-site, attending a City and Guilds course through day release at his local college provided the technical aspects of Civil Engineering and Construction. Des worked alongside designers, engineers, laboratory technicians, site office staff, and even quarrymen through this apprenticeship. Councillors and Officers recognised his passion and talent for supervision and management. 

By age 26, Des had become a local authority principal officer working on a business plan advisory group. He was part of the team shaping how SCC would deliver highway maintenance in the future.

Des accepted that he would need further professional qualifications to match his career ambitions. After completing an HND in 2001, he became The Open University Business School’s 10,000th MBA graduate. 

He moved out of operational management and into winning work as both a successful bid manager and then a business development manager, adding competitive advantage, value proposition and strategic planning to his portfolio of knowledge. Beginning a decade of winning work in the form of major projects and long-term contract wins for Accord, Alfred McAlpine, Atkins, and other infrastructure contractors.

Promoted to Atkins Business Development Director in 2006, Des was appointed Managing Director of Atkins Highway Services in 2011. After leading the business through an intense stage of commercial recovery, Des steered its sale and transferred to Skanska in 2013.

Des joined Skanska’s senior management team to create strategic development as an enabling function in the UK. He established a formalised structure for customer account management whilst building a strategic pipeline that enabled Skanska to identify and position long-term growth opportunities in its target sectors, markets, and geographies. 

High Speed Two (HS2) became the prime example of this new approach. Des was Skanska’s UK representative on a global expert group for market-making, working with Skanska business units in the USA, the Nordics, and Eastern Europe to share innovation and develop market maker better practices.

After Skanska, Des worked for a flourishing and philanthropic entrepreneur to create an Energy-from-Waste facility within Birmingham’s Tyseley Environmental Enterprise District. Des advised the business owners on strategy, development, and winning new work. In the background, he continued to nurture a burning desire to go it alone.

Des created Ariaconsult Limited in late 2020, a Strategic Business Development consultancy combining a passion for strategy, energy for business development, and skill for winning work. Des is a proud member of The Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP), a trusted international community of bid and proposal experts. 

Three years on, Ariaconsult has gained clients in construction, highway maintenance, and transport infrastructure in the UK. As Director and entrepreneur of this small business start-up, Des has relished the chance to nurture big-picture thinking for clients. To frame their strategy and value-based proposition to win, enhance business development strategic partnerships, and, most exciting of all, improve tender winning success rates. 

Des is an inspirational leader who brings experience, impartiality, and integrity to command confidence at the highest level in any role or setting. Be assured his bespoke support to assist you and your teams in achieving your ambition and business goals will be focused, driven, and different – because sometimes, the talent you need is outside your ecosystem!    Follow me on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/comm/mynetwork/discovery-see-all?usecase=PEOPLE_FOLLOWS&followMember=desbourne-ariaconsult    

Back in July 2001, The Office had its UK premiere on our television screens, and there was no winner of the Tour de France due to Lance Armstrong's disqualification. And this month, 20 years ago, also saw Des Bourne from the West Midlands (pictured above) named the OU's 10,000th MBA graduate! There are now more than 27,300 MBA alumni worldwide.

Des had left school at 16 and returned to study years later by combining full-time work, family life and social commitments with his MBA. He was responsible for 120 people as a divisional manager for a highways maintenance and service provision group when he graduated and said: "I would not be where I am now if it wasn't for the MBA".

Two decades later, he has taken the plunge and fulfilled an entrepreneurial desire to go it alone and start his own strategic business development consultancy business. In a self-penned article, Des outlines how his studies have helped him throughout his business development manager career in the construction sector. He said: "The qualification broadened my horizons and changed the course of my career. An MBA transformed how employers viewed my potential and put me on an equal footing in a business world dominated by executives and managers who had formal academic qualifications." Read the full article 

 The Bourne Legacy – there's more to come from MBA alumnus Des – The Open University (fblperspectives.com)