Looking at why our clients hire us for project management services, it’s quite often because they need to replace a project manager when the project is already live and busy. This was true for our engineering client. When they first talked to us, they had secured a major contract with a utilities company to provide a range of electrical services for a large asset refurbishment project in the UK. Within the contract framework, they were being directed by the end-client’s engineering consultants who were integrating their designs with the other engineering works. The engineering consultant was managing the overall programme and a project structure which required continuous and clear communications. The collaboration across multiple contractors was intended to create flexibility and commercial resilience for the end-client to achieve their overall programme deliverables. However, the complexity of the relationships meant our client’s project team spent a disproportionate amount of time liaising with their external stakeholders to develop the project plans.
The nature of the contract meant our client had to submit proposals for the next stages to draw down work from the framework. This approach caused uncertainty for our client as they weren’t guaranteed to win these call-offs. It also took considerable integrated planning effort to forecast ahead while the engineers were still progressing with the design outputs for the live milestones. This led to frequent changes and meant our client’s project management office needed more time liaising internally with the engineering team to manage variations and report back to the leadership team to ensure all resources were focused on the priorities. So, the client began to seek ways to create additional planning capacity to support the project manager. They concluded that our project management services were exactly what they needed.
Their challenges were:
- Multiple lines of communication between the project office, client stakeholders and the engineering consultant
- Tracking design progress and reporting commercial performance for each contract phase
- Forecasting the engineering design outputs to draw down contract works
- Limits to the planning capacity of the Project Management Office (PMO)
Integrated Planning
Given our experience of integrated planning and project management services, our client hired us to bolster and support the project team. We immediately recognised some disconnects between the commercial reporting and the progress being made by the engineering team. Our goals were to improve the commercial connection internally for our client and raise the visibility of the integrated planning challenges, so we could solve them with the end-client’s programme management team. When the project manager unexpectedly left our client’s organisation, we were able to step into the lead project management role and cover the gap.
As our client’s trust in us has grown, we’ve been able to step in and manage any changes or roadblocks that could’ve caused contract disputes or delays. This led to an increase in the overall contract value for our client because we proved to the end-client that there was work that our client had completed that had not been claimed and that we were ready – with a robust plan – for the next stages of work.
Results with Coron Project Management Services
With our focus on developing great communications both internally for our client and externally with their programme stakeholders, we have gone into the second phase of the project with several positive outcomes already showing:
- We increased the visibility of the project plans with the internal stakeholders, offering assurance to the leadership that commercial aspects were being closely monitored.
- We improved the variation process to get change management under control with the engineering team.
- We provided confidence to the end-client that our client had the capability to manage their part in this programme, integrate with the wider planning function for all contractors and deliver the work.
- We grew the overall value of the contract by helping our client be ready to draw down more work ahead of other contractors.
If you’d like to achieve results like these, do come and talk to us about the challenges in your project management office. We offer a half-day consultation to advise on changes to help more project leaders manage the ever-shifting load of time, budget and resource.
