Campion Willcocks Associate Dougie Barr knows how important it is to put people at their ease when trying to find out what is really happening in projects. He has been conducting Office of Government Commerce (OGC) Gateway™ reviews for four years, delivering peer assessments of projects to help organisations keep their goals on track.

Though Dougie is at the sharpest end of the process – he is a ‘Mission Critical’ review team leader who focuses on the most challenging projects - he knows from experience that it pays to adopt a softly-softly approach when broaching the thorny issue of change.

"The most important quality of a review team leader is the ability to convince others that we’re not there to test or to hand out marks," he says. "We set the tone of the whole review by telling everyone (at every opportunity) that we’re genuinely here to help and they can tell us what they think should be done, and if we’ve got evidence and we support it – then our report and recommendations might just be the thing that initiates the change."

He adds: "Gateway reviews are not a magic wand, but they should be seen as a real enabler to achieving success."

Dougie clearly relishes his role as an independent advisor with the remit to recommend far-reaching change. A former senior civil servant for the Ministry of Justice, he first carried out Gateway Reviews in that role and continued consulting after he left the Service. "Sometimes the right quality civil servants to conduct a review are not available at the right time and that’s when they call on external consultants like me."

Clearly independent consultants are best placed to deliver highly sensitive reports whose information in no way threatens their position, but their objectivity also enables them to dispel fears that others may have about change – and get to the core of the project.

It’s a process that involves a lot of listening, as well as talking, Dougie says. "We don’t demand extra information – we don’t do our own investigation.  Our report and recommendations are based on the project documents we ask for and, much more importantly, interviews we have with a wide range of people associated with the project. The interviews are critical because you could conduct an entire review on paper but never get to any underlying problems.

"The advantage of one-to-one interviews carried out in total confidentiality is what these reviews are actually about. Often you find that just by relaxing the interviewee, you sometimes get to the 'hornet’s nest' of what is going on in a project."

A skilful review leader, he says, will encourage interviewees to relax and embrace a process whose success, ultimately, will benefit them. The resulting report is passed to the Senior Responsible Officer (SRO), who is personally responsible for the success of the project and accountable to the Civil Service and Parliamentary Audit.

According to Dougie, one of commonest mistakes uncovered by the process is that projects have not identified the stakeholders correctly, putting the success of the project at risk. "Half the challenge is trying to identify who are the stakeholders: who are the clients, who are the customers and who are the users," he says.

One significant benefit of the Gateway system is that it encourages organisations to get a project off to the right start well before the review has begun. "A project doesn’t go wrong," he says, "it starts wrong”. When a project knows it’s going to be 'Gatewayed', it strives to get everything right from the beginning. "We’re like guests arriving for the weekend. Everyone wants things to be nice and tidy before we arrive."

He points out that civil servants reap the benefits of looking at other departments and bringing back the lessons they have learned. Most high risk teams include a consultant and two civil servants whose exposure to other departments encourages a ‘cross fertilisation’ of ideas.

And while statistics show that Gateway Reviews certainly do prevent projects from failing, Dougie singles out another aspect of his job. "It’s fascinating how quickly and how well the team gels," he says. "And after a few days you probably know more about the project than most people in the organisation."

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