Background: By early 2005, Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council had secured significant funding from various sources for a number of major projects. The Council was in the process of planning to deliver these projects and turning “vision” into “reality”.

The individual projects were large and complex in size with many inter-dependencies and commonality between projects. Many were “leading edge” with few/no similar projects from whose experiences Solihull could learn. Total projected funding was in the region of £1bn with timescales of up to 15 years for delivery; budget management was complex as there was phased funding where each “pot of money” was dependent upon agreed outcomes being achieved before the next was released.

The Council recognised that the scale of these initiatives implied the need to manage these projects in a way that was different from how projects had been managed in the past and also recognised the need for a structured approach for managing these projects as a coherent programme.

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Solution/Process: Q. Learning undertook a “project health check” by meeting with key project staff within the Council and with the major support functions that had involvement with all/the majority of these projects. This focussed on individual projects to identify whether or not each was on track and the way in which it was being managed and also sought to identify the best way of managing these projects collectively.

As a result of the above study, a set of recommended actions was produced which focussed on what the Council would need to do to increase the likelihood of successful project delivery. This included recommendations for individual projects and for management of the portfolio of projects as one coherent programme and included the following;

• Suggestions for personnel changes within specific projects.
• The need for greater involvement from HR and Communications – as well as operational Service Heads - to effect the required cultural shift
• Appointment of a new Projects Director as a matrix management role (reporting directly to the Chief Executive and becoming a full member of the Corporate Management Team), not to manage each of the projects but to co-ordinate at a programme level.
• Temporarily calling a “halt” to the rollout of an in-house developed project management method which had not been developed by experienced Project Managers and already lacked credibility because of it. This would later be taken forward within the Corporate Programmes Office (see below).
• Establishment of a dual role for the Corporate Management Team of “Corporate Programme Board” to take ownership of the projects portfolio and to ensure consistent and regular reporting of the projects. This was also intended as a mechanism for (re-)prioritising projects cross-Council and to resolve conflicts between projects arising from inter-dependencies.
• Set-up of a Corporate Programmes Office managed by an experienced Project Manager who could maintain a “Programme Plan” on behalf of the Corporate Programme Board and support the Project Managers of individual projects in a mentoring capacity. This function was also designed to resource manage key resources common to most/all projects and, in some cases where there was a sufficiently high demand, staff from support functions could be seconded to the Programmes Office full-time. In this way, clear “peaks and troughs” of key resource usage can be identified and, if necessary, projects re-scheduled and/or additional resource brought in to meet project needs.
• Education and training programme, as appropriate, for staff involved with projects at various levels - from Project Sponsor to Project Manager and project team member.

“I was worried that we had not been able to define exactly what the problem was and it was a huge relief to receive Q. Learning’s report which identified the issues and gave recommended actions which showed clearly what needed to be done.”
Clive Whereat, Director of Resources.


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Outcomes: Using a selection panel approach which included Q. Learning, the Project Sponsor for the single most complex project – involving major re-engineering of both back office and front office functions with huge elements of new ICT solutions – was replaced by an external candidate. This enabled a fresh approach from an experienced, goal-focussed change agent.

Following minor modification, the Council’s in-house method was launched At the time of writing, Q. Learning are about to assist the Council in defining the scope of a project to implement a project/programme culture into the Council, including further development of the method.

Q. Learning is also working with the internal OD Manager to ensure that these projects are integrated into Business as Usual with staff’s hearts and minds being won through excellent leadership.

“Our project management function is now focussed and delivering results due to the excellent recommendations made by Q. Learning and they were key to us appointing the right candidate for the new Projects Director.“
Katherine Kerswell, Chief Executive




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