Innovative London road works co-ordination programme at TFL
- OverviewRead more
You may have seen the TV beer advert that shows how, in an ideal world, utility companies and road work programmes would be working together to minimise disruption. The living embodiment of this is the 'London Works' programme that looks to comply with legislation through the design and implementation of an enabling Information Management platform, which will work in parallel with new working practices to co-ordinate road works across London's Boroughs and utilities in real-time. The programme had stalled due to unique technical challenges and the need for cooperation from TfL, 33 Boroughs and up to 50 utility companies against a very demanding timetable. Our urgent intervention was requested via the careful placement of an expert programme director to regain control of the programme. His involvement successfully 'turned around' London Works to ensure the delivered solution met the expectations of the programme board and broke down any barriers to cooperation from the diverse stakeholder community.
- Our client's challengeRead more
The programme involved significant systems integration challenges (both IT related and organisational) – requiring the cooperation of TfL, 33 Boroughs and up to 50 utility companies and was also set against a very demanding timetable. The picture was further complicated by the myriad of key stakeholders - all with competing expectations and requirements.
At the time when support was requested from us, the project had stalled due to technical challenges. It was identified that there were more fundamental issues underlying the technical ones, namely lack of focus and leadership, lack of agreement and clarity around the programme objectives and governance. We recognised that this programme was a 'mission critical' component of the client's delivery strategy with very high schedule risk relative to the fixed legislative milestones; the chances of successful delivery had dropped to c.5-10%. Clearly, 'turn-around' intervention was required. The inherent challenges (multi-parties, technical complexity, new legislation, cultural change, etc), coupled with the immutable delivery dates, would ensure the risk profile was never 'comfortable'.
- Our responseRead more
We placed a carefully selected programme director to regain control of an 'off-course', static programme. He was originally tasked with 'turning around' London Works and latterly with guiding the programme through complex legislative, IT and process change. It was vitally important that the solution should be defined by the key stakeholders (TfL, the Boroughs and the utility companies) so that it could be seen as a solution for London and actively used by those stakeholders in carrying out their day to day tasks – breaking down barriers to cooperation.
- The value to our clientRead more
London Works was successfully 'turned around'; whilst future releases are in abeyance awaiting clarity in relation to future legislation, the delivered solution met the expectations of the programme board and the diverse stakeholder community.
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