CASE STUDY

Taking Care of Business - Campbell Page

Determining a project schedule is a critical process, especially for service providers who take over operations from previous providers after winning a tender. This case study focuses on bench testing an existing project schedule for errors and omissions. The analysis includes identifying potential risks to the original plan and any opportunities that may arise from changes to existing operations.

It also involves identifying incomplete areas in the schedule and exploring alternative ways to streamline it. Once a new solution is approved, the updated schedule can be integrated into the project. The opportunity to provide contingency plans for the Campbell Page project arose during a project management training session at their facilities in Batemans Bay, New South Wales.

Taking control of project plan restoration.

Problem

In July 2020, Campbell Page was notified of their successful tender to provide Disability Employment Services (DES) on behalf of the Australian Government in four states: New South Wales (NSW), Victoria (Vic), Queensland (Qld), and South Australia (SA). The contract, which began on July 1, 2021, had an initial term of three years and required Campbell Page to establish fifty-three offices across the designated regions.

The aim of the Australian Government initiative was to assist people with disabilities in finding meaningful employment. The government provided funding for support services to help individuals with disabilities gain employment, establish relationships with employers, and provide information and support to those employers. This support would enable employers to access existing government schemes that subsidized the wages of new employees recruited under the DES scheme.

The DES contract required Campbell Page to establish 53 offices, including staffing and training, beginning on January ,1 2021, to ensure a complete handover from the existing provider by June 30, 2021. Upon receiving the successful tender, Campbell Page developed a project schedule consisting of two phases:

  1. The Design Phase, which entailed creating and endorsing all project blueprints from July 1, 2020, to December 2, 2020.
  2. The Implementation Phase, which entailed executing the endorsed blueprints from December 3, 2020, to June 30, 2021.

However, there were concerns within the project team that the existing proiect plan had primarily focused on the infrastructure components of the project and may have overlooked tasks related to fulfilling the requirements of the contract.

Solution

In order to ensure that all operational requirements for the project were functioning properly by the handover date, we re-planned all workforce and workstream deliverables using OverVue. These deliverables were categorized as Workforce and Workstreams. Workforce consisted of Administration, Equipment, Training, Recruitment, Marketing KPIs, and Position Descriptions. The Workstream sub-deliverables were Attraction, Connect, Support, and Sustain.

Using OverVue’s unique project flow diagram, the team determined that the end of the workstream Audits marked the end of the project since they occurred after the transition to operations. By working backwards from these points, the team identified 30 major tasks that had not been included in the original schedule and discovered over 8 0 cross-dependencies between deliverables that had gone unnoticed. Identifying these additional tasks and dependencies was crucial, as they could have caused significant delays to the project fi left undetected.

The new implementation plan was then integrated back into the original plan. The project ran according to schedule, with all deliverables being completed by their respective deadlines.

Results

All 53 offices were fully staffed and operational on the contract commencement date of 1 July 2021 despite conducting the entire project under Covid restrictions. In addition the identified beneficiaries of the Disability Employment Scheme were being trained and supported as they took up full and part time positions for which they were qualified.

Project manager, Richard Verhagen commented that “it was the smoothest project that he had ever run and the accuracy of the schedule was critical in its success”

Conclusions

  • OverVue presents a powerful yet simple to use graphical interface. The software’s unique Project Flow Diagram enabled the team to effectively analyse and re-create a more complete and accurate schedule while maintaining a challenging delivery deadline.
  • The original plan without OverVue had taken 4 months to build. Analysing that plan, locating the needed changes and restoring it took the team only 2 days with OverVue.
  • Akey challenge for the team was their physical location. The six members were spread out over 3 states: South Australia, Victoria and 2 separate offices in New South Wales. OverVue’s powerful virtual planning capabilities enabled the team to engage in training, consultation and planning without having toleave their respective offices.

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