Project Description

Numerous bids and projects relating to telecoms for the UK rail industry.

Roles and Responsibilities

Part of two-man team responsible for planning & control of all projects in southern Britain, including Earned Value reporting, tracking actual spend at detailed activity level, and resource utilisation forecasts to inform strategic manpower decisions.

Center of Excellence for UK-wide planning function: Raising profile for and gaining buy-in to best practice planning & control procedures, developing & rolling out revised procedures to streamline the planning function and enable efficiency savings, trialing and initiating roll-out of Primavera P6 UK-wide.

Lessons Learned

Overcoming the inherent inertia and resistance to change can be a big challenger when trying to implement new and improved project control processes.

 A useful tactic has proved to be identifying a real example of a recent project that has had some nasty surprises, and take the team members through step by step how the new system would have helped.

Another good idea is to focus on working with the 10% most keen on the chance and the 10% most against it. The former can be supported and inspired to act as "ambassadors of change" and spread the good word. The latter will probably never be truly convinced, but spending time discussing their concerns and working with them to help resolve them will minimize the frequency and amplitude of vociferous disruption and at worst outright refusal to comply.

Finally, strong support from senior management is critical. -If you can't get that, just give up.