Who?
NHS England and NHS Improvement work together as a single organisation to help improve care for patients and provide leadership and support to the wider NHS. They were jointly responsible for overseeing the Vaccine Deployment Programme (VDP) – a highly complex, multi-faceted programme that ran alongside the Vaccine Taskforce Programme. Mobilised in June 2020, the VDP was established to help manage the Coronavirus pandemic, minimising further health, economic and social impacts. The key programme objective was to safely deliver the COVID-19 vaccine as quicky as possible to all citizens as prioritised by The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).
The challenge
The operational delivery of approved COVID-19 Vaccines in England was the most ambitious vaccination programme in history. Whilst the NHS has a wealth of experience in successfully delivering mass vaccination programmes, the challenge posed by the Coronavirus pandemic was of unprecedented scale and complexity. There was no incident response blueprint, a crippling lack of resource due to the ongoing wider Health system COVID-19 response, and an ongoing tension between needing to move at speed and needing to take the time to shape and plan the optimum delivery approach. As such, the Vaccine Deployment Programme required a dedicated Programme Management Office (PMO) to provide robust programme governance, controls and assurance, as well as support in the delivery of the programme. In addition, a breadth of military support was used nationally, regionally and locally to provide logistic and delivery expertise to the deployment of the programme.
How we helped
Using our experience of complex, large-scale programme delivery, our team undertook a rapid programme assurance assessment, shared a series of change recommendations and established a Central PMO function.
We then supported the re-design of the programme (moving to a cross-Governmental model involving reporting directly to the Prime Minister, Health & Social Care Secretary of State, and Vaccine Deployment Minister) and provided capacity, expertise and dedicated support into various areas across the programme.
These included Delivery Models (Hospital Hubs, Vaccination Centres and Local Vaccination Services), within/ interlocking with workstreams (Supply Chain, Comms), as well as a governance and reporting (including running daily operational leadership briefings with the Vaccine Deployment Minister, and the Deployment Programme Board), risk and control, and planning function.
Our expertise included:
- Assessment and stand-up of Central PMO: we undertook a review of programme governance and architecture, implemented recommendations in stand-up of central PMO, and evolved with changing political landscape to encompass cross-Government delivery approach.
- Workstream interlocks: provided to bring additional capacity and drive operational efficiency.
- Governance and reporting: dedicated resource to support the core programme governance, internal and external reporting including: programme governance secretariat and coordination, routine programme reporting and briefings, supporting internal programme comms, reporting to Department of Health and Social Care, Cabinet Office and Secretary of State.
- Planning function: established to shape and drive an integrated programme plan, specifying workstream deliverables and their interdependencies across all areas of the programme, critical delivery path, key planning assumptions and new vaccine coming online.
- Programme assurance: building both the Integrated Assurance Strategy (IAS) and underpinning Integrated Assurance and Approvals Plan (IAAP) to ensure suitable governance across the programme as key decisions were made, and ensuring external audits were a success.
- Risk management control: dedicated function to define and monitor risk management standards, early identification of emerging risks, management of cross-workstream risk and the production of programme risk reporting.
- Embedded PMO support: provided across workstreams and delivery pillars, playing a crucial role in supporting activities including risk and issue management, planning and management of workstream products, routine reporting, decision tracking and escalations.
Outcomes
The Central PMO function brought stability and control to the vaccination programme as it evolved from planning through to delivery. The set-up of the programme pre-delivery was recognised in the IPA audit as excellent. The programme was then responsible for administering the first COVID-19 vaccines outside of clinical trials in December 2020. Over 80% of adults received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine within 6 months, and 75% their second dose.
The programme is now cited as one of the most successful vaccination programmes in history.
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