Severn Trent Water engaged Practicus to assist with its multi-million pound BRITE programme to increase data clarity across the business for AMP 5.
The Executive of Severn Trent Water knew that its multibillion-pound Corporate Business Plan for the AMP 5 submission would be subject to heavy scrutiny by OFWAT. Ongoing consultation with the regulator had shown that this AMP period would not be “business as usual”.
A signficant amount of Business plan funding was safeguarded as a result of Practicus’s successful delivery of this programme of work.In order to ensure appropriate, transparent customer service and value to customers, OFWAT was looking for data-driven clarity in very particular areas. This included:
- Infrastructure assets and deterioration metrics
- Reactive versus planned maintenance
- Effective utilisation of Capital to reflect “Lowest Cost / Highest Value”
- Spend on Non-asset expenditure (e.g. IT, Finance, Vehicles, Equipment)
- Application of Customer Serviceability Metrics against initiatives
- A customer-centric view of the Business Plan
Errors in the business plan submission for AMP 5 – even minor percentage differences – would have translated into a drastic reduction in the company’s strategic objectives.
It was for this reason that Trent initiated the BRITE Programme. Its objective: to implement asset investment planning tools and processes to drive data clarity right across the business.
The Business Planning Director Paul Sankey approached Practicus to see if it could help. Practicus spent considerable time and energy getting to understand the desired outcomes of the client. It evaluated the client’s culture in terms of decision cycles and how the current political atmosphere affected the programme and expectations.
To lead the programme, Practicus appointed one of its most trusted change practitioners, Samir, a highly experienced programme director.
Samir unearthed a number of potential pitfalls. Prime amongst them was a lack of engagement within the business. Many of the key stakeholders simply didn’t understand the value of the programme and he personally took ownership of rectifying this situation. “If you have a political complex project or programme which you must get delivered, Practicus will get it done. They made complex things simple and communicated well at all levels - a real skill!” - Purchasing & Supply Chain Director, Severn Trent Water
Ensuring ownership by the business
Stakeholder engagement and communications played an important part in the successful delivery of this business-critical programme of work by Practicus. A communications plan and schedule was developed and resources identified and appointed to manage the various communication channels. Channels included updates in business team meetings, global mail, one-to-one updates, road shows, posters and inclusion in newsletters.
Named resources were captured and managed in a RACI Matrix with actions / deliverables followed up to ensure accountability was understood. Lack of delivery was reported to the Steering committee and in extreme cases to the Board. This was to ensure full transparency of failed dependencies regardless of whether this came from third parties / modellers or business stakeholders. This programme was too important to fail.
Outcome Delivery
Samir had responsibility for 41 team members including project managers, predictive investment modellers, expert consultants, IT and data personnel.
In his role, Samir:
- Organised the programme and communicated roles and responsibilities
- Agreed timelines & scope of delivery components with the business stakeholders
- Aggressively chased down issues / risks and roadblocks
- Created and actively managed / communicated the Programme Plan
- Created the budget bottom up and tracked progress against spend
- Created and maintained a Project Office to ensure daily tracking of milestones
- Ensured key vendors expectations were reset to focus on delivery
- Re-negotiated supplier contracts as necessary to ensure client received value
- Identified skills gaps and negotiated access to key resources for deficits and terminated non-productive engagements
- Prepared and discussed executive reports into the delivery team and the Board
- Chaired Programme Board & Working Group forums with Executive Sponsor
He delivered the first and second of three phases to Live Implementation.
Tools and Techniques employed
A series of tools and techniques were deployed with the client and included:
Planning
- The complexity of the Programme required planning at different levels. For technical deliverables a full MPP was developed in MS Project and managed by the IT Partners with daily / weekly reporting. This Master plan automatically extracted milestones from each individual Project Manager plan to determine progress against the whole. The next level of planning was put together in a simple sheet showing timelines and deliverables and this was generated in order to drive the Predictive Modellers who needed clarity on target dates and deliverables. This was managed weekly and daily by exception. Finally, a carefully put together one page programme plan was developed for the Executive. This showed high level deliverables aligned to other Corporate activity to understand the dependencies cross functionally
Scope definition/confirmation
- The scope had been clearly defined by the Business Champion who reported to the Business Executive Sponsor. Doubling as the Strategic Architect, Samir worked very closely on a daily basis with her to understand changes to scope as new information emerged from the Regulator or changes in Business Strategy. Requests For Change (RFCs) were managed robustly at the Change Control Board.
- The Architect was responsible for promotion of the Programme across the business to gain understanding of what the Phase 1 deliverables achieved for the business plan but also what the Day 2, Day 3 potential was for shaping and driving the Monthly, quarterly and yearly management of Capital Programmes.
Strategic fit with other ongoing initiatives
- Dependencies, synergies and conflicts were managed through weekly stakeholder meetings at Programme Management level (i.e. Data Programme, BRITE Programme, Operations Team). Issues were presented to Monthly Board for resolution
Stakeholder engagement
- A good balance of informal and formal meetings were undertaken frequently to ensure that the stakeholders were aware of the progress and formally through monthly meetings to update / inform and seek support.
Third party management
- All third parties were required to attend weekly progress meetings, monthly account management meetings and to escalate issues to Programme Manager immediately. Change was managed and challenged robustly through the Change Control Board . Test results were reviewed formally and approved. Acceptance Gates were established and all agreed criteria to be met in order to proceed to the next phase
Risk management
- All critical Risks, Issues, Dependencies and decisions were documented in the Programme logs, monitored weekly and administered by the Programme Office
Contributing Practitioners
Additional team members included:
- Programme Coordinator, helping Samir keep control over finances and timescales
- Programme Manager, managing IT delivery and 3rd parties
- Business Change Manager who helped engage the business stakeholders and bring them onside and realise the importance of the programme.
- Technical Author to write the documentation around the new tools and processes.
Skills Transfer to the client
A full Knowledge Transfer schedule, with accompanying documentation was developed and delivered to the identified business resources. In addition, time on-site with third parties was created either to sit with business resources or to send business resources to their sites for deeper understanding of the programme management tools deployed.
Business Benefits and Outcomes Delivered
This Programme gave the board access to a startling array of data and the tools to understand how different funding strategies would benefit customers. A set of tools were designed, proven and delivered that enabled every business area up to Executive level to run scenarios of investment programmes to understand the effect on customer service, asset maintenance and operational efficiency. A capability was created for operational managers to gain clarity on the timing of their capital programmes and understand the most cost-efficient utilisation of their resources. This set of tools helped ensure annual business planning and June Returns can be managed and tailored against strategic AMP business plans.
Impact at a strategic level
This Programme provided the Board with greater control through access to a startling array of data and the tools to understand how different funding strategies would benefit customers. Until this programme was in place, there was a 50-60% dependency on Expert judgement, which is very difficult to manage and quantify. This Programme delivered 70-80% data-driven systemised evidence supplemented by expert judgement which gave the Executive much greater confidence in its decision making.
Quantifiable savings
A signficant amount of Business plan funding was safeguarded as a result of Practicus’s successful delivery of this programme of work.
