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5 June 2002
OGC's Successful Delivery Toolkit
By Mike Acaster, OGC
The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) has launched the Successful Delivery Toolkit, which brings together best practice principles and practice in a single electronic point of reference. The Toolkit is available on the internet and on CD-ROM. It helps the public sector to effectively procure goods and services by advising on every step of the acquisition process, from the initial business need throughout the lifespan of the contract. The best practice principles are generic; they can be applied to business change, IT, property and construction projects. All the material in the Toolkit is available free of charge and is intended to be used as part of organisations' own internal standards.
The advice in the Toolkit helps public sector organisations to achieve successful outcomes through:
| | · | Reducing risk and uncertainty | |
| | · | Ensuring that everyone involved in project delivery understands their roles and responsibilities | |
| | · | Providing checklists for thinking through the implications of plans | |
| | · | Providing a framework of the whole life of the service, helping to take a long term view | |
| | · | Describing repeatable processes that help learning and improving | |
| | · | Enabling learning from relevant real-world experiences of others. | |
OGC's Chief Executive Peter Gershon explained the Toolkit's purpose: "By distilling current best practice and value for money guidance into a single body of knowledge, central government departments, local authorities and NDPBs can now access the procurement guidance they need both quickly and effectively… it provides for the first time a real breakthrough in providing ease of access to this huge body of accumulated wisdom and experience that is reflected in our best practice and in all our operational advice and documentation".
Andrew Smith, formerly Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said: "This development is a major step forward in ensuring public sector departments and organisations spend taxpayers money wisely. It should greatly reduce the risk of major, complex or high-risk government procurement projects failing through insufficient use of established best practice".
The guidance in the Toolkit has been developed in close collaboration with central policy units to ensure that it supports current government initiatives. For example, the NAO is working with OGC to ensure that best practice principles used throughout a project's lifecycle are consistent with the requirements of audit. The NAO emphasises that best practice in the Toolkit helps departments to work together in innovative ways
Feedback from departments and other public sector organisations is an essential part of the Toolkit's development, to ensure that the principles address the real-world issues faced by the public sector. Sir Andrew Turnbull, in his role as Senior Responsible Owner for the refurbishment of the Treasury GOGGS building explained how best practice principles enabled customer and contractor to come in on time and to budget.
He said: "There are many places in the public sector where you find yourself responsible for a project that you have never encountered before and for many years will never encounter again. You can try to learn as you go along but you make mistakes. The alternative is to use this best practice material in the Toolkit and you get access to proven principles that other people have worked through. You learn from their mistakes and you can accelerate your progress up the learning curve. Now that is what we have done with this project. We couldn't have done it without access to that kind of guidance".
The guidance in the Toolkit helps organisations to ask the critical questions about capability and project delivery; and it gives practical advice on how to improve.
Information is presented in the following sections:
| | · | The Key issues section outlines the questions that senior management should ask about their organisation's chances of successful project delivery | |
| | · | The annotated Gateway workbooks provide quick reference to best practice to support Gateway review teams and project teams | |
| | · | For specific roles, the Toolkit sets out appropriate routemaps for Senior Responsible Owners, programme/project managers, procurement professionals, risk managers and contract managers | |
| | · | The Business change lifecycle provides a comprehensive set of briefings on key activities such as risk management. These cover the complete procurement lifecycle from strategy development through to programme/project management, service management and review | |
| | · | Definitive descriptions of key documents, skills and techniques can be used as the basis for internal organisational standards | |
| | · | The OGC Library contains OGC's freely available guidance, information about more detailed practitioner guidance and related central sources of advice. | |
OGC's Toolkit identifies common principles and practices; it describes what needs to be done. How those principles and practices are applied will vary according to the individual department's objectives and individual project needs as well. The material in the Toolkit is provided in a simple electronic format that is easily customisable in order to support that need.
Further development of the Toolkit is underway and will be released in the autumn. It will reflect feedback from departments as they adopt it for their own internal use; it will also take account of recent lessons learned from Gateway Reviews and will incorporate OPSR's evolving work on programme management for senior managers.
Departments and the wider public sector are encouraged to participate in the development of the Toolkit, to help address emerging issues and share experiences of proven good practice.
For more information, please email Mike Acaster at OGC: Mike.Acaster@ogc.gsi.gov.uk or call the OGC Service Desk on 0845 000 4999
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