Programme Management in the transport sector - a TfL case study Webinar, 19th July 2016, resources available

Early into his presentation Arnab moved to establish that a methodology and process do not deliver a programme. A statement collaborated by the first poll of the session.

Currently Transport for London (TfL) has a multi-billion investment programme to deliver each year over a 20 to 30 year period across a broad range of functionalities and with several partners. The programme was to fulfil the 2012 pledge by the then TfL Commissioner Sir Peter Hendy to improve transport for all in London. Arnab working with a team of 3,000 people was charged with the responsibility of ensuring they all were clear on the requirements. The team established a customised TfL Pathway method with its own micro-website named PPMP i.e. Pathway, Product, Management, Plan. The plan was scoped to cover a period of 20 to 30 years.

Starting with an adapted Maslow hierarchy of needs they worked out the path to meet the delivery requirements to the Organisational Strategy in four steps. At the second level where the programmes and projects lifecycles were decided a further distinction was made. Each programme had four generic stages, however due to the complexity involved the stages of each programme were unique to the programme. The stages in each programme had multiple projects. In the case of projects which each had six generic stages it was possible to combine the stages of the various projects.

To create consistency Arnab and his team produced Pathway Handbooks to capture the interests of the various TfL stakeholder groups numbering over 300. Each delivery project item called a Product was mapped to a lifecycle on Product Description Sheets. This Pathway Product Management Plan (PPMP) was in turn linked to the Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed (RACI) with its own micro-website. The RACI was informed from completing the online F10 from the HSE (construction work = < 30 working days + more than 20 workers working simultaneously at any point in the project, or exceed 500 person days).

The Delivery Assurance in three steps and Assurance Planning was used to review the Product list. The three steps were the Pathway Reviews, Pathway Gates and Pathway Renewals.

Arnab and his team were able to deliver a transport system that was pivotal in the success of the 2012 Olympics. They are now looking at ways to improve transport for the wider population in London.

Vivianne Walters
Programme Management SIG committee member

Arnab has very kindly allowed for the webinar material to be made available for viewing.
The slides and recording are available in our APM resources area and also below for reference. The questions raised during the webinar have been added as an attachment below with his reponses.