Meeting documents

Purpose: The Committee will gain an insight into the Council’s current approach to Project and Programme Management.  This will be an opportunity for Members to explore the effectiveness of current methodologies, to consider whether there are sufficient dedicated resources to support project and programme management corporately and to assess any strategic risks around inconsistency of approach to project and programme management across the Council.

Contributors:

Mr John Chilver, Cabinet Member for Resources

Mr Stephen Rawlinson, Project Management Officer, Strategic Finance

Mr Richard Ambrose, Director of Finance and Assets

The Chairman welcomed Mr John Chilver, Cabinet Member for Resources, Mr Stephen Rawlinson, Programme Management Officer and Mr Richard Schmidt, Head of Strategic Finance to the meeting. Mr Rawlinson highlighted the key areas of his report on Project and Programme Management across the Council.

During the discussion and in answer to Member’s questions, the following points were noted:

• Each Business Unit organised their own projects and the Programme Management Officer focussed on providing tools and training to help develop skills to ensure the effective delivery of projects. To this end, a Project Management toolkit was developed which was available online and this had been refreshed this year. This is supported by an organisational-wide Lessons Learned Log, a Community of Practice and a new two day Project Management Enhanced Skills training course.
• Now that these resources were in place and had been promoted across the Council, the next step would be to evaluate their use and assess if improvements had been seen in Project Management as a result. 
• Mr Schmidt commented that there were a variety Project Management models and the Council had adopted a ‘hub and spoke’ model due to the diverse nature of its business. Each Business Unit would manage their projects, with Mr Rawlinson setting out the corporate best practice framework which should be used. 

• Members were keen to understand if Business Units (BUs) were adopting a consistent approach to project management in line with the corporate toolkit. The Programme Management Officer explained that this year he hoped to conduct a more formal quality assurance approach, which would help to evidence if the toolkit and the Community of Practice, where representatives from each BU shared their learning and promoted the training and toolkit to other staff in their own BU, were making an impact on the quality of projects.
• A Member asked if the toolkit was being effective and whether the staff using it found it helpful or bureaucratic. It was suggested that it would be useful to survey staff to ascertain how the toolkit and lessons learned log were being used and how this had informed practice and improved the quality of project outcomes.  Mr Rawlinson welcomed this suggestion.

ACTION: Mr S Rawlinson

• A Member noted that the report commented on a reduction in capital slippage, whilst at Regulatory and Audit Committee the previous week, it had been noted that there was currently significant slippage. The Cabinet Member assured the Committee that whilst slippage had been reported to Regulatory and Audit, this was mainly due to the Orchard House project which was no longer going ahead and on the whole, capital slippage had been much reduced in recent years, due to improved gateway processes at Asset Strategy Board.

• Mr Rawlinson was trying to establish how many Prince 2 qualified practitioners were currently employed by the Council.  A Member commented that it was important to know this information as qualified practitioners would be crucial in driving the framework into the culture of the organisation.
• There was a discussion about the pros and cons of Waterfall vs Agile project approaches.
• The Chairman asked if business cases include project methodologies as standard.  Mr Schmidt advised that this should be included as part of the drive to improve business cases.

• It was noted that large change projects with significant savings attached to them, such as Change for Children, were regularly reviewed by Senior Managers and delivery of financial savings was closely monitored, as was the delivery of any income targets.
• A Member noted that there had been an increase in visits to the Project Management Toolkit pages on the Intranet but asked if the specific figures were available. Mr Rawlinson advised that the number of page views have increased to nearly 8,000 by the end of September, which represented a threefold increase since the introduction of the revised toolkit.
• External contractors are expected to adhere to the organisational standards and follow the guidance in the Toolkit.
• With regards to monitoring the effectiveness of the training provided, Mr Rawlinson confirmed that initial course evaluations had been positive and he would now utilise the Community of Practice to ask those who had attended the revamped two day course for feedback focussing on what they had been able to implement practically in the work place.

The Chairman thanked Mr Chilver, Mr Rawlinson and Mr Schmidt for attending the meeting.