PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Managing government
Public sector project managers now have the opportunity to sharpen their skills to deal with the challenging times they face during a much heralded period of austerity. Richard Mackillican spoke to Local Partnerships’ David Locke to find out more
A
s the coalition government finds its feet and begins to make the cuts
needed to begin reducing Britain’s hugestructural deficit, the public sector is now waking up to the fact that it can no longer spend vast amounts of time or money on projects that are not managed as well as they could be.
As part of a drive to improve project management skills in the public sector, Local Partnerships has developed a Project Directors’ Development Programme, in conjunction with University College London which is aimed at developing the leadership skills, commercial acumen and procurement skills of those leading projects in local government.
“The aspiration is to eventually get people from both the public and private sectors on the 12 month course, which is covered over six modules, covering one every other month,” says David Locke of Local Partnerships, the joint venture between the Local Government Association and Partnerships UK which aims to enhance the quality of people’s lives by giving trusted, professional support to local public bodies to improve their ability to source and deliver high quality, cost-effective public services and infrastructure.
“The reason we want to have people from both sectors on the course is so that they can share experiences and really get a chance to grasp where their colleagues in the opposite
Jul/Aug 10
including academic, theory and practical.
“This seemed to be the next natural step, to humanise the guidance.”
Local Partnerships had identified the need for extra guidance, so did this mean that they had identified problems with the way in which projects were being directed?
“I suppose we did see a problem in project leadership and we see the project director’s role very much as the leader of that project and empowered to do so accordingly.”
It will cost public sector leaders around £7,000 each to attend the course but David believes that given the scale of value which the course could add to the official tasking it, this represents good value to both the public body paying for it and the taxpayer.
sector are coming from and the pressures which they face.
“Obviously, in a negotiation or bidding situation, the separate sides tend to be cloaked by confidentiality, whereas if you have both sides on a course together, there is a great opportunity to share thoughts and ideas between the sectors.”
The programme was conceived following the extensive work in which Local Partnerships has been engaged, in various guises,
with both PFI and PPP projects over the last decade.
“From this work we had identified that there was some need for guidance around the role of project director. It began by us producing the Project Director’s Guide and this inspired us to develop a course which covered all sides,
FOR MORE INFORMATION
For more information about the Project Directors’ Development programme, please visit
www.localpartnerships.org.uk
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“When you consider that the people on the course will be managing procurement budgets of between one and seven billion pounds, you can see that it is good value, given that it will give those leaders the skill sets to be properly empowered.
“This means that they will then in turn make much better use of their resources and deliver better value across the projects which they are leading.”
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