In relation to the project management actions, Peter Honeywell (Transformation Architecture Manager) introduced the section and highlighted the following points;

a)    Baseline standards would be introduced across all capital projects and transformation work;

b)    This would include ensuring that every project had an oversight board whose composition would include stakeholders and relevant asset audience/staff impacted by change;

c)    The board would communicate through a mechanism of escalation that resulted ultimately with the corporate management team, in terms of officers, and Cabinet, in terms of Councillors;

d)    This standard governance framework would be applied to all projects going forward as a baseline;

e)    Baseline standards were being communicated to all officers within all project and programme management teams within the Council;

f)     The minimum characteristics that must be recorded against any risk had been identified and a process had been created where risks had to be reviewed on a routine basis, and reviews included all stakeholders;

g)    The way project work was commissioned was also being reviewed with specific requirements being implemented into business cases such that the design, change or asset was properly reviewed so that whole-life costings were reflected, for example through a maintenance schedule;

h)    The current focus was on ensuring the new processes and fundamental standards were in place, as well as relevant training;

i)     The introduction of a corporate program management office whose responsibilities would include the review and support of new standards, recognising that teams with smaller scale work, may require more support as they would have less experience in project and programme management;

j)     Assurance would mean that when issues or risks arose on projects, there would be capability around the organisation to explore in detail and report back on these, as well as how the project was being managed;

k)    This worked interlinked with other areas of recommendations;

l)     Formal framework would be introduced to assess maturity moving forward.

In response to questions, with support from Glenn Caplin-Grey (Strategic Director for Growth), the following was discussed:

m)  Even when even the Council was contracting out large pieces of work, there was an expectation in the standards that there would be a risk log within the Council that showed PCC’s responsibilities and accountabilities to manage those risks;

n)    Approach to scrutiny would be reviewed as part of the governance actions;

o)    Part II discussions were available for meetings to allow Councillors to discuss commercially sensitive, and other sensitive information;

p)    Rather than employing a risk management officer, a community of experts from across the Council were being brought together;

q)    Recognition that the capital program needed to be affordable;

r)    Capacity had not been addressed directly, but the capital program would be reviewed, and when commissioning new work, the affordability of having capacity to deliver, or needing additional capacity to deliver, would be considered;

s)     Where projects were being delivered by existing staff, there would be visibility of that cost, but it would not be included as an outflow for the Council, as those staff were already employed in those roles.