Delivering Public Projects – What is best practice?

Public Projects are best defined as those that fall within the responsibility of the Major Projects Authority and are generally those within the oversite of central government at both an individual and a portfolio level. Major Projects Authority is a relatively new collaboration, (circa April 2011), between the Cabinet Office, HM Treasury and Departments with the fundamental aim of significantly improving the delivery success rate of Major Projects across central government. Major Projects Authority is mandated to develop the Governments Major Projects Portfolio in collaboration with government departments to provide Integrated Assurance and Approval Plans for each Major Project or Programme and to carry out Starting Gate Review, or equivalent, for all new Projects/Programmes.

David Pitchford the Head of the Major Projects Authority (our Chair for the day) has four main responsibilities. Managing The Governments Major Projects Portfolio, Integrating Assurance and Approvals, Ensuring that Consequential Assurance and Intervention happens in a timely manner and providing Transparent Reporting. We are fortunate to have heard already from Ian Watmore at the beginning of 2011 ‘Identifying and Managing Project Success’ (the topic of an event Seminar No 161 is available on the website) when he outlined the journey for Major Projects Authority and in September 2011 – ‘Productivity Challenge for Trans-formational Change Programmes’ (the topic of our 29th Annual Conference is available on the website), when collectively we had an update from the Major Pro-jects Authority and Infrastructure UK.
Based on the requirements of Central Government Departments and the National Infrastructure Plan 2011, the Infrastructure Cost Review, and the influence of the 2012 Budget we will understand how the Pipeline and long-term ambitions for each sector are developing and how that will transfer through to the Major Projects Portfolio leading to successful and timely delivery. Underpinning this will be a clear understanding on the route to procurement and the necessary funding mechanisms that will have to be in place to make this happen.