Programme leadership of pre-Olympic West End traffic plans for TFL
- OverviewRead more
Increased competition for West End retailers from out of town shopping centres and eCommerce, as well as a desire to improve the central London environment prior to the Olympics in 2012, led to the initiation of a steering group to improve the pedestrian experience in and around Oxford Street. This included members from Westminster City Council, the New West End Company (representing retailers) and Transport for London, with an Action Plan to develop a surface transport solution among other key projects. The lack of an experienced leader and real focus, had led to little progress by their traffic working group. We provided a programme manager with the specialist tools and experience to deal with the challenges being faced by such a high profile steering group with inflexible deadlines. In doing so, were able to bring clarity, structure and stakeholder confidence back to the programme in a rapid amount of time.
- Our client's challengeRead more
A desire to improve the central London environment prior to the 2012 Olympics, and increased competition to West End retailers from out of town shopping centres and eCommerce, has led to the initiation of a steering group to improve the pedestrian experience in London's West End. .This group consists of members from Westminster City Council (WCC), the New West End Company and Transport for London (TfL).
The development of a surface transport solution is at the heart of the Action Plan. A traffic working group has been charged with the task of making short (under 2 years) and medium term (3-5 year) proposals. Since June 06 little progress had been made. The root cause of the blockage was lack of an experienced programme manager and real focus. The client team was used to delivering high volumes of traffic schemes in an operational environment, but did not have the tools and experience to deal with challenges presented by a high profile programme with inflexible deadlines and a complex stakeholder situation.
Our client lacked clarity on the need for change, the workstream objectives, overall approach, internal and external governance and lacked internal stakeholder engagement. We needed to resolve these issues before the programme could move forward.
- Our responseRead more
We provided an experienced specialist programme manager with a retail background to support the client team. The programme manager:
- Scoped and mobilised the large development and delivery programme
- Clarified the governance process and created programme initiation documentation
- The value to our clientRead more
The following benefits were quickly realised
- Clarity around the need for change and the aims of the action plan
- The engagement of stakeholders
- Capability transfer of key programme management skills
- Smooth transfer of quick wins to new client staff member and the controlled bringing together of 23 proposed schemes
- Clarified internal lines of governance for the programme
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