The Client

The client is a local council’s capital department that is responsible for the acquisition, construction and maintenance of the entire council estate.

The local council was engaged in a multiple billion pound capital programme to construct and maintain its entire estate.  They had in place some governance processes to control the major programme but needed to improve monitoring, reporting and ultimately budgetary control to ensure they delivered value for money for their constituents. In addition, they had identified a need to restructure their organisation and required support to design and implement that change.

Sisua was engaged to review the existing portfolio controls and processes to create a plan of improvement based on industry best practice and real world experiences.  We ran a PMO maturity assessment to identify areas for improvement and developed an outline how the council could improve their controls.  Subsequently we helped define and implement these controls to give both the theoretical governance approach and crucially to implement pragmatic controls the council could run themselves.  

We brought in experienced PMO resources to drive the governance practices, regular reporting, risk and issues management cycles, providing quality assurance and management of tools and templates, whilst building a culture of continuous improvement.  As the client worked through their restructure and began building their team, we worked with their senior leadership and their project management teams to cement best practice and transfer our knowledge and skills.

• Clear maturity assessment of the PMO with practical recommendations and quick wins.

• Successful implementation of improved reporting processes and timelines to ensure information is current and accurate by recipients (reduction in reporting lag by a month was a key success).

• Streamlined governance practices that could be operated across all areas of the capital programme.

• Strong PMO oversight and support in place across multiple levels with appropriate controls and reporting.

• Clear operating procedures for the council plans to break any dependency on external consultants.

• Successful realisation of key goals for restructure and team changes.

• Successful transition of key areas of the PMO service to council staff including PMO leadership to leave change that lasts