Programme and project management

Many public sector organisations are under pressure to meet improvement and development targets, or deliver major change programmes to high standards. The requirement to demonstrate significant improvement across all aspects of public sector businesses has driven our clients to recognise the benefits of improving their broader programme management capability.

PricewaterhouseCoopers are finding that for many clients there are also wide disparities in the ability to deliver individual projects successfully, with many organisations failing to realise the benefits of formal methods, which they regard as unwieldy or overly bureaucratic. Others use tried and tested methods such as PRINCE2, yet still struggle to realise the benefits they anticipated when commissioning the project.

In response, organisations increasingly recognise the benefit of improving their broad programme and project management capability by either supplementing their internal resource or bringing in external consultants to drive forward and deliver key programmes of work.

PricewaterhouseCoopers has extensive experience in working with public sector clients across many areas in programme and project management.

Potential issues

• Improving efficiency and effectiveness in response to targets and public sector reviews
• Improving and developing an organisation’s programme and project management capability
• Addressing a poor track record of delivery
• Response to Gershon/Efficiency reviews
• A need to meet improvement and development targets
• Disparities in the ability to deliver programmes & projects, and their expected benefits, successfully
• A failure to realise the anticipated benefits of using formal methodologies

PwC services

• Professional expertise and input to the SRO, project board and steering groups
• Provision of programme and project managers or specific project resources to ensure effective delivery
• Setting up programme offices and fulfilling programme manager or programme officer roles
• Advice and creation of project support offices
• Independent project assessments, for example, ahead of an OGC Gateway Review (OGC Gateway™ is a Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce)
• Helping to clarify the scale and scope of work, so that targets, objectives and benefits are clear
• Helping to build client capacity through coaching, facilitation of workshops and general support to managers, sponsors and stakeholders
• Developing tools and methodologies of programme and project management, delivery and reporting, either bespoke or based on existing methods such as PRINCE2
• Advising on suitable levels of planning and control, management reporting and appropriate governance to facilitate efficient project management and issue resolution
• Ensuring senior management has the necessary information to be able to make decisions and to align the programme of work with broader strategy
• Helping to ensure relevant communications with stakeholders through a variety of reporting techniques such as highlight reports, dashboard reports and project snapshots