Waste water treatment works - Yorkshire Water, Leeds

Portfolio & Programme Management

Setting up for success and delivering outcomes

Consultancy

Services

Organisation and capability

The set up phase of any portfolio or programme is critical. Organisational structure and capability is a major enabler for success.

We work with our clients to specify capability requirements linked to organisational objectives. We design internal team structures and supply chain integration, supported by organisational systems, policies and processes.

We support our clients to retain a strategic organisational perspective, focusing on strong leadership, resilience, continuity and succession planning.

organisation-capability-hierarchy-diagram

Investment planning

We understand the complexities of prioritising interventions to balance affordability and short term quick wins with long term return on investment.

We support our clients to develop long term investment strategy and implement an appropriate framework for investment decision making. This includes, and often prioritises, ‘no build’ solutions that enable faster benefit realisation, ease affordability pressures, free up supply chain capacity and support sustainability drivers.

With an in depth understanding of regulatory environments and in-house data warehousing, application development and BI capability, we also provide advanced cost modelling to support business cases and inform investment decisions.

investment-planning-diagram

Change management

Portfolio and programme change can have organisational implications in addition to the direct effects on asset management operations and project delivery. Moreover, portfolio and programme change requires the buy in of the organisation’s leadership to be implemented successfully.

Effective change management processes are an essential ingredient when implementing a portfolio or programme. Our approach recognises that change both affects people, and also requires people, in order to be successful. We therefore work with our clients to focus on effective communication and stakeholder management, underpinned by comprehensive process documentation.

Risk management

A strategic focus on risks (and opportunities) is essential for successful portfolio or programme outcomes. We believe in a ‘no blame’ culture, with focus always on positive actions to mitigate risk, seize opportunities and enhance outcomes.

We start by establish cohesive, integrated frameworks for risk management that extend from organisation to project level. We then support our clients to identify and understand risk, and implement robust mitigation strategies, including scenario planning and post-mitigation impact assessment. We provide interactive BI dashboards to report on portfolio and programme risk in real time and enable stakeholders to make informed decisions.

portfolio-programme-risk-management-analysis
Mitigation and issue recovery

Effective mitigation and recovery is required when unacceptable variances occur against portfolio and programme baselines. Swift assessment and action is critical.

We promote open and honest conversations between stakeholders to identify and assess the root cause of issues and prepare recovery intervention recommendations. Once actions are agreed, we establish a recovery plan, including cost and schedule for implementation, along with associated enablers such as resourcing, capabilities and supply chain requirements.

We then support our clients to implement the recovery plan, maintaining good communications and reporting progress and results. Completion of the recovery plan is deemed to be achieved when the portfolio / programme returns to business as usual, with all necessary controls in place to monitor ongoing performance.

Review and reporting

Ongoing review of a portfolio or programmes performance is critical to maintaining trajectory towards the required outcomes.

Our approach to portfolio and programme review is data driven, assembling vast amounts of data from asset management operations and project delivery to inform performance metrics tailored to the needs of any given portfolio or programme. We typically classify performance metrics under six primary headings: Cost, Time, Quality, Scope, Risk and Benefit.

portfolio-programme-performance-review-reporting

We leverage huge amounts of value from our digital capability in data warehousing, application development and business intelligence reporting. This enables us to collect, store, analyse and understand portfolio and programme data and report this in formats tailored to the specific audience.

We focus on forecasting the future, not reporting the past, using data to intelligently predict risks and opportunities to portfolio or programme success. And learning lessons is a key aspect of this service, ensuring that future projects benefit from experiences gained from previous ones.

We design and implement mitigation and recovery plans where necessary / beneficial to optimise programme performance and maximise return on investment. These can range from targeted interventions on individual capital projects to major change initiatives at portfolio / programme level.

Benefits management

Portfolios and programmes can only be considered successful if they achieve the benefits they set out to deliver. Effective benefits management must be embedded throughout portfolio / programme delivery in order to realise the desired outcomes.

All of our portfolio and programme management services link back to stated benefits. We work with our clients to identify and carefully articulate the desired benefits. Review and reporting structures are tailored to benefits, enabling accurate measurement of progress and understanding of whether the portfolio or programme has fallen outside of key tolerances. This enables objective measurement of performance and, ultimately, success.

benefits-management-digital

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