Delivering autonomous & digitised Project Controls reporting

What did you do? Who did you involve in finding a solution? Were other BECBC members involved?

Delivering an Agile PMO (Including Project Management and Planning)

As the TfL reporting team were spending significant times to produce Periodic Reports with significant manual interventions the key requirement was for them to be transformed to an Agile PMO. DADA/G&T added significant value by defining consistent reporting templates at the Project and Programme levels, advising the various Project Team on how to use and manage these reports as well as collating all the inputs required for Balanced Scorecard reporting. This reporting data allowed Senior Management to be proactive rather than reactive in their management.

The deliverables involved in this approach includes:

• PowerBi interactive visual dashboards with drill down reporting and Row Level Security.
• Automatic feed-in of batch data extracts from P6, PRISM and ARM to reduce double-entry and allow synchronicity between project systems repositories.
• SharePoint site structure to supply Project Commentary into Periodic reports, to provide Senior Management the project context on what this mass of data was saying.
• Use Power Query Editor to connect, clean, transform, and join data from multiple data sources (e.g., SharePoint, P6, PRISM, ARM) to allow the controlled transfer of data between project systems.
• Formalisation of Periodic Reporting Calendar so that Contractors and Project Teams understood the timescales for their updates and report availability.
• Efficient reporting with richer visuals with drill-down capability in a common reporting format.
• Provided a gateway for Delivery Teams to provide updates to Periodic reports on a Self-Service basis without the need for Central Reporting team intervention.
• Removing the manual re-keying of data by automating repetitive tasks and workflows, such as notifying teams of new issues via integration with O365 applications.
• Creation of an accessible historical databases and online versions of past Period Reports, with customisable views so that Project Teams only saw the information relevant to them.

What happened as a result?

Detailed contract description:

• Used Power Platform to create an autonomous Project Controls office on their £3bn Piccadilly Line Upgrade programme within a 6-month implementation window.
• Delivery of a SharePoint / PowerPlatform reporting for Transport for London (TfL), together with associated training, change management and drop-in sessions.
• Combined SharePoint and Power Platform reporting solutions to reduce central reporting overhead and FTE without increasing licensing costs.
• Integrated SharePoint with MS Teams and wider O365 Applications to digitise and automate Project Controls reporting.
• Removed the manual re-keying of data by automating repetitive tasks and workflows, such as notifying teams of new issues via integration with O365 applications.

Planning to enable TfL to move to cloud software and/or hosting services

• Developed a clear migration strategy and transition strategy to ease the transition of End Users to move from one reporting system to new SharePoint reporting landscape.
• Definition of Business Rhythm to lock-down period activities to manage data flows.
• Formalisation of Periodic Reporting Calendar between TfL and their Contractors.
• Creation of SharePoint structure with embedded Web Parts and AI bots.
• SharePoint site structure to supply Project Commentary into Periodic reports.

Setup and Migration services

• Harmonisation of data structures across systems landscape.
• Clear Migration and Transitions strategy involving drop-in training sessions.
• Resource planning for Data migration, cleansing and transformation activities.
• Use Power Query Editor to connect, clean, transform, and join data from multiple data sources (e.g., SharePoint, P6, PRISM, ARM) to allow the controlled transfer of data between project systems to create a Common Data Environment.

In which way did this tie in with BECBC’s core Values around Energy, Collaboration and Inclusion?

Key importance is to take project teams with you. And so, DADA/G&T developed a clear migration strategy and transition strategy to ease the transition of End Users to move from one reporting system to the next.

• Definition of Business Rhythm to lock-down period activities to manage data flows.
• Clear Migration and Transitions strategy involving drop-in training sessions.
• Resource planning for Data migration, cleansing and transformation activities.
• Harmonisation of data structures across systems landscape.
• Getting stakeholder buy-in, especially from Database Administrators to get systems access.
• Transition support through drop-in sessions, end user instructions and PoCs.
• Creating a rolling-wave of development to define solution, and ease transition.

The challenges posed by the introduction of any new technologies is that their sheer novelty means that a clear up-front set of Client requirements is difficult to obtain. Often this means that any introduction of new technology is still born as Project Teams find it difficult to articulate their needs by not understanding the potential solutions. To resolve this DADA/G&T:

• Developed multiple Proof of Concepts (PoCs) to illustrate potential solutions and novel technology to help articulate TfL’s requirements.
• High volume and highly complex trial projects we used to trial solutions at a Project and Sub-Programme level, to demonstrate robustness of the solution to inspire confidence.
• Shortened the development timescales from PoC stage to Production, so that requirements were defined on an iterative basis to create a rolling-wave of successful deliveries.
• Integrated data between project systems (ARM/PRISM/P6) to map different data structures.