As Programme Manager for the £40m per annum Capital Projects
portfolio on the Docklands Light Railway (DLR), GHD has supplied
two senior resources; one to undertake the Interim Programme
Manager role itself and the other as Senior Planner. The portfolio
currently includes around 20 projects that are identified as
Olympic Projects, vital for the provision of the revised intensive
timetable that will be in place for the London 2012 Olympics.
The Programme Manager is responsible for managing the full life
cycle of projects entering the capital projects portfolio.
Reporting to the Programme Manager are five project managers, a
commercial manager, a senior planner and an assurance manager.
Other resources are shared from within the programme office. The
nature of the projects is wide-ranging, from station infrastructure
such as buildings, M&E services, retail, lifts and escalators,
to vehicles, network-wide engineering systems such as customer
information, CCTV and PA, together with traction and LV power.
The DLR project lifecycle stages progress through Inception
(Stage A), Feasibility (Stage B), Development (Stage C), Delivery
(Stage D) and finally Close-out (Stage E). As Programme Manager,
GHD is responsible for ensuring that sufficient information and
support is provided to the Project Sponsor through Stage A to
enable authorisation to be obtained at the Gateway to allocate each
Project to proceed from the Inception into the Feasibility stage.
The work carried out to support Gateway A includes agreeing with
the Project Sponsor outline strategy on the following: -
- Key project stakeholders
- Project category (based upon magnitude of impact
on operations and safety criticality)
- Level of governance required
- Outline programme
- Budget estimate
- Potential procurement routes
- Maintenance responsibilities and obligations
- Key risks
- CDM arrangements
The ownership of the project remains with the promoting
department at DLR until Approval in Principle (AiP) is achieved.
Promotion of new projects can originate from a number of sources at
DLR, including the Engineering, Planning and Franchise &
Concessions departments. The benefit of the involvement of the
programme manager in the Inception stage is that the projects are
familiar and understood in advance of the handover to the programme
manager after AiP is authorised, and that consistency is achieved
with the inputs into the next project stage.
The Docklands Light Railway, in common with other project-based
organisations within Transport for London, utilises Primavera P6
for project planning. The GHD Senior Planner collates and
manipulates all programme information from the project managers to
produce a P6 based master programme for the Capital Projects
portfolio, and other portfolios in the DLR Investment Programme.
This has provided the opportunity for the cost-loading of major
projects within the portfolio, resource planning and automated
calculation of earned value measures such as SPI and CPI.
The key achievement of GHD in the period of
the commission so far, has been to rationalise the master
programme, so that it accurately models the portfolio of work in
terms of scope, schedule, dependencies and constraints within and
between projects, and against external requirements. This has
provided a realistic view of what is achievable, the timescales
involved and the resources required in this operational
environment. Workload for the Project Managers across the portfolio
has been smoothed and key targets identified in order to improve
performance of the team. The client has selected GHD to undertake
this work at a vital time for DLR, with the London 2012 Olympics
fast approaching and DLR set to play a key role in providing people
with efficient access to the venues at the Olympic Park, Greenwich,
Woolwich and Central London.