Challenge:
The Parliamentary Estate Directorate manages, maintains and develops the Parliamentary Estate to meet the accommodation needs of all who work on or visit the Estate and maintain the heritage for future generations. It looks after the maintenance of 28 Buildings,
several Grade I/II listed, incl. the Palace of Westminster (around 260,000 m2).
It delivers a wide variety of projects, incl. Estates & accommodation management, reactive and planned maintenance, Estates projects, Office moves, Interior design, Management of historic furniture collection and conservation.
Due to inefficient manual working processes and various organisational changes, the directorate was struggling to maintain visibility and control of all ongoing projects. It was struggling to manage risk and budget and deal with a complex stakeholder environment. Executive reports were weeks out of date by the time they were published, and there was a
lack of confidence in its project delivery capability leading to Government reviews calling for urgent improvement.
Our Microsoft PPM Solution:
Working with the directorate and hand in hand with Parliamentary ICT, Program Framework configured Microsoft Project Server to support a standard planning approach and key signoff stages. The solution helped to embed process through SharePoint collaboration, a shared project data model, templates and document standards. Automated reporting and self-service dashboards with standard KPI’s were put in place. Project leaders were given the facility to deliver status reporting to a common standard.
Benefit:
With the Microsoft PPM platform in place, working practices in the directorate were fundamentally transformed. The solution has delivered:
Improved accessibility and visibility
Improved programme co-ordination and inter-departmental working
Improved consistency of format and procedures
Improved governance including management of key project documents
Increased efficiency (time and cost).
It is a stable platform with potential to grow and change with its user community. It is now completely embedded as the backbone to all governance and reporting activities and is regarded as one of the most successful delivery of IT systems within Parliament.
