Client Situation

Our client was the management team responsible for delivery of one of the world’s most complex railway systems. Ahead of the point where they would be most stressed, our client asked for a comprehensive review of their critical project delivery processes. Aczel was tasked to assess whether these processes were fit for purpose and recommend:

  • If fit for purpose, how might roll-out be accelerated
  • If good but not complete, what additional work was needed
  • If not fit for purpose, the right way forward

Approach

We fielded a team with deep expertise from rail and related industries to ensure we had best practice. Over an 8 week period, we conducted reviews, recommendation working sessions and a final read-out to the leadership team in 6 key areas

  • Project controls
  • Change control
  • Risk management
  • Schedule management
  • Programme and project reporting
  • Programme management

Operating in a Covid environment, our team remotely accessed all necessary documentation, reports and detailed project information to conduct the analysis. Crucially we looked at the interdependencies between processes, eg the impact of risk and change management on schedule management

Results

The majority of processes fell into the category of “good but not complete”, and our team defined the necessary changes and agreed them with the process owners. Two additional, significant outcomes were

  1. Change control – critical to major project delivery. The current process, while comprehensive and logical, was not able to operate at the speed required by our client. We drew on best practice from related industries  to define a new process, optimised for our client’s requirements. The new process is able to keep pace with the rate of change and maintain crucial safety standards
  2. Risk management – yet to become fully active. The proposed approach would not be adequate for the nature and complexity of our client’s project. Again, we drew on best practice from related, large scale project industries to define the right way forward. The new process balances safety, delivery and financial impact to optimise delivery

Summary

The operating process assessment led to important changes in a number of processes and a more fundamental redesign in two critical areas. Without the assessment and subsequent recommendations, the critical areas of concern could potentially have exposed our client to future risk

“Aczel got quickly to the heart of the issues and your recommendations were both practical and could be easily implemented”

Client CFO

Your contact

Richard Green

Director

richard.green@aczel.org

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