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A Campion Willcocks Associate advised on the set-up of a programme office at Surrey County Council, designed to standardise processes and provide essential management information across multimillion-pound change projects.
"Establishing a 'lite touch' Programme Office was designed to ensure the Programme Directing Board had a consistent picture of progress, issues and risks across these projects, and to enable resources to be better deployed," says Stephen Blythin, the Associate involved. "The objective was to provide an effective way for the Board to monitor and review progress, understand dependencies and priorities, manage development and support the drive for cost efficiencies - without going into the minutia."
Surrey's two-tier system comprises the County Council and 11 district/borough councils, while the annual cost of providing services to 1.1 million people is almost £1 billion. The reporting structure now in place provides an auditable trail of information, provides various projects with a framework to move forward, and delivers a methodological approach for essential programmes such as the Policy and Productivity Review , which aims to save £40m over three years.
Through the C21 Council initiative, designed to save over £6m each year, Surrey is looking to automate many of its business support systems. The activities comprising C21 now fall under the Strategic Programme Office. "C21 is our citizen-focused programme to create a Council fit for the 21st century," says Emma Searle, Project Manager. "For example, C21 Business covers our support processes and involves implementing a SAP system and Shared Services Centre." Other activities include the Office Project to consolidate the Council's property portfolio; e-Services to enable electronic transactions; C ustomer First to deliver what citizens really want in their one-to-one contacts; and the Impact 3 staff-focused project to support the huge change programme under way.
"The complexity and volume of change made it critical to have a proactive and structured capability for integration and co-ordination," continues Searle. "Without it, the risk was that individual projects may deliver but the overall change and associated benefits might not occur. To support set-up of the Programme Office we looked outside because we didn't have someone available quickly with the skills in-house. We wanted a focused resource. Campion Willcocks understood the nature of our work and what we wanted to achieve, and provided the right match. In particular, I could see Stephen would be able to handle the more sensitive issues associated with an assignment like this. His experience at Ealing made a big difference. It's always good to have someone who's set up something similar elsewhere - we didn't have to learn from our mistakes."
According to Nigel Hannam, Head of e-Service and Business Change, "Stephen provided valuable input and advice, and worked consistently and flexibly. I'd have no hesitation employing him in a similar role." Searle adds, "We've been so successful that the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is interested in what we've achieved - Surrey has been invited to participate in the reference group being set up by the ODPM to assess programme management across Local Authorities."
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