Deciphering the Role of Project Control Groups in Accommodation Projects

Not all PCG members are equal and not all PCG members are selected by the CEO or Steering Committee because they are supportive of the change. Some PCG members are obvious choices and others not so obvious.  

The role of the PCG is pivotal to accommodation projects. The relationship that the PCG have with the work stream leads (the Project Working Group) needs to be transparent and supportive.

In some projects, PCG team structures are political and can be messy.  Messy comes to mind when there are PCG members who are Leaders from different parts of the business, including Functional teams, such as People & Culture, and IT, mixed with a consultant or two, perhaps an EA or two, and representation from  external parties, such as the Fitout Contractor, the Designer and their respective teams. Experience has shown these PCG structures to suffer by inertia and misalignment.

The best PCGs are those that have the strategic business owners in the room and those that have a good relationship with their peers and their teams.  PCGs are one of the most important stakeholder groups in a project.  They set the direction and ensure alignment  with the strategic objectives of the business. They can add some fun to a very long project with their support and enthusiasm and the Project Working Group and their Project Director are keen to meet their expectations.

If you are new to sitting on a PCG you may want to know what is expected of you and your role. PCG members who are new to projects will need to know what is expected of them and their role. Their role may include: 

·         Ratify change requests up to an agreed value of $500k when within the CEA budget

·         Address ‘extreme’ risk and issues derived from Project Director (PD)/Project Working Group (PWG)

·         Monitor agreed programme and budget

·         Endorse the Stakeholder Requirement findings

·         Endorse the Project Charter and Project Plan covering: authority, process, scope and program

·         Summarize discussions on project activities, progress and dependencies

 

What is Expected of the Role

If you are new to sitting on a PCG you may want to know what is expected of you and your role. PCG members who are new to projects will need to know what is expected of them and their role. Their role may include: 

·         Ratify change requests up to an agreed value of $500k when within the CEA budget

·         Address ‘extreme’ risk and issues derived from Project Director (PD)/Project Working Group (PWG)

·         Monitor agreed programme and budget

·         Endorse the Stakeholder Requirement findings

·         Endorse the Project Charter and Project Plan covering: authority, process, scope and program

·         Summarize discussions on project activities, progress and dependencies

 

Who will Provide Updates at the PCG Meetings?

The Project Director will.  What are their responsibilities?

·         Make decisions on risks and issues derived from the PWG

·         Monitor agreed programme and budget

·         Ratify project expenses when within approved project scope and budget

·         Consolidate and report on project activities, budget, progress, dependencies, risks and issues to PCG

 

PGC Responsibilities

The Project Director or perhaps the Project Sponsor will provide a roles and responsibilities document for the PCG. 

Purpose:

• To lead the change initiatives in each respective Business Unit to ensure required levels of involvement and commitment.
• To assess and adjudicate on business Change Requests up to $[enter figure]
• To steer and uphold the integrity of the strategy’s intent
• To make objective decisions on escalated issues from the Project Working Group (PWG)
• To review and endorse the Business Requirements, Concept Design and New Workplace Principles

Role and Responsibilities:

·         Support and promote the project delivery.

·         Share overall responsibility with the Project Team for the successful completion of the delivery.

·         Ensure required levels of business involvement and commitment are maintained.

·         Liaise with and manage the expectations of stakeholders.

·         Provide proactive engagement to maintain momentum and a sense of enthusiasm.

·         Ensure work is carried out in accordance with endorsed strategy.

·         Actively support the Business Unit GMs and Change Leads throughout the project’s delivery.

·         Participate in meetings, make decisions and manage the delivery of actions as required.

·         Monitor, track and escalate project issues, risks and concerns.

 

Who Prepares the Packs and Books the PCG Meetings?

The Project Chair will circulate the presentation or discussion Packs for the fortnightly or monthly PCG meetings. They will also get the meetings diarised for each month and if the PCG can't make quorum for any particular meeting; they would reschedule them. In some cases, and where there isn't too much happening, a meeting or two may go ahead without all members, but if the key topics for discussion include Change Management and specialist Control room strategies or large technology decisions, a quorum may be important.  The Project chair will find a day and most suitable time for rescheduling of any meeting and the PCG members.

The First PCG Meeting

The PCG will have a number of actions presented that the project team will be undertaking and how these will play out and what endorsement is required of them.  Possible actions may include:

·         The Real Estate/Property Manager to discuss Workshop findings. Perhaps there has been a number of workshops and engagement exercises to understand the workplace aspirations and review the business's culture.

·         Endorsement of the Project Plan and Charter Summary document that is developed by the Project Director.

·         The Project Director will provide the risk register for operational risk.

·         The Project Director will update on the development of the Change Management Strategy paper. The Change & Communications Strategy will identify actioning bodies and proposed timeframes that should be adhered to in the Change Program. The Change & Communication Strategy is one of the key success factor documents used to monitor the success of the organisations Change Program.

·         The Real Estate/Property Manager may develop an ELT briefing paper on the accommodation project. This Briefing Paper will detail the project and to garner any input the PCG have. This paper may also set out a probity management procedure to ensure that any potential client conflict matters are managed.

·         The Project Director in conjunction with the Technology Lead may go through any specialist technology requirements and speciality builds required, i.e. Control Room strategy and outline who is inputting to the IT/technology ’wants’ in your design brief.

 

Endorsement of the Project Charter

The Project Control Group (PCG) shall facilitate and monitor the development of the Project from inception to practical completion. They will endorse the Project Plan and Charter that the Project Director will develop and present to the Executive Leadership team and PCG at the commencement of the program.

This Project Execution pack will detail - Project Charter, Project Governance structure including membership, High-level milestone program, Key internal gate approvals, High-level budget breakdown, Project Stream Roles, and Project Status Reporting.

The Project Governance Authority will define the four key governance groups such as Project Sponsor, Project Control Group (PCG), Project Director and Project Working Group (PWG) including their roles and responsibilities.

Taking Part in Engagement Exercises

As a business leader the PCG will take part in the Project Leadership and/or Executive Team interviews, visioning workshops, or functional interviews.  This has happened normally by the time the PCG forms, but the outcomes include:

·         Good dialogue of the internal and external environment that will determine the change in the physical environment.

·         Determine a formal Accommodation Brief for distribution to the market.

·         Make decisions on the direction for the design of the space and run through the key briefing activities both for the Leadership team and the wider employee community.

The conversations will centre on what the workplace looks like to support the organizations growth  and the aspirations for a transformed workplace from both a physical and cultural perspective.

Block Plan

The Project Chair will send out a reminder in the PCG pack with any reminders of milestones or decisions to be discussed/reached. In this pack the attachment includes the "block plan" which will outline how the space across the tenancy will be used. The block plan will be of great interest to the PCG as they will want to see how the floors are zoned. There will be no doubt questions about the stacking of who goes on what floor, and it is important that it is clear that the organisation are looking to use the space from a spatial perspective, not occupy from a people perspective. That piece of work will come soon after all adjacencies and affinities are reviewed and validated. The adjacencies and affinities are captured in the Business Requirements gathering exercise undertaken by the Change Manager and later validated by the Space planning team in the business. This Space Planning team have specific optimisation software to help them achieve this and will undertake many iterations of the Block and Stack before final signoff from the PCG.

 

Circulating the Design Development Pack to the PCG

This Pack is prepared and issued for the PCG. This Pack is issued from the Design Team and will include the vision objectives that define the goals for the project and the Workplace Design, and the developed palette for the proposed category of spaces, i.e. neighbourhoods, support facilities. This Pack is highly representative of the look/feel of the proposed workplace and is often an enjoyable part of the process seeing how the new workplace may come to life with design and colour.

This is part of the Design Process and occurs after the Workplace and Occupation Strategy, Building Assessment and engagement exercises have been undertaken.

 

PCG and Sponsor to Provide Feedback on the Block Plan

The PCG and Project Sponsor will be presented the concept block plans and detailed design. There  needs to be general agreement with the approach and why decisions have been made.

The PCG will keep in mind the key drivers of the project and this should be reflected in all comms released to the business. The stack will show the PCG where business units and teams are separate from each other or where they are integrated and dispersed. The PCG will provide their views on any approach to business units or teams being blocked together or on separate floors.

The PCG will consider where interest is high for any space, i.e. collaborative zones or town hall space. They should be keen to ensure that there is testing of the business to ensure unique requirements are known and addressed. E.g. larger desks for teams that use plans, storage for others.

The PCG will review the block and how teams are allocated desks and how to cater for them in the phase between the Concept Design and Detailed Design phase.

 

Taking New Working Principles to the PCG for Approval

Even once the Project Director and the PCG have travelled the path of staff engagement and have even spoken of how the new workplace is going agile, there will be the requirement to get final endorsement and approval. The PCG may have their own interpretation of what activity-based, flexible or agile working means for their organization. There is no one size fits all when it comes to working these ways and everyone has read something different on the benefits and negatives of activity-based, flexible or agile working, which essentially could be any of what you are possibly working towards. The Pack that the Project Director prepares for the PCG should give enough information of how your business got to this position.

The PCG will be looking for information on the design, and how the business got to this decision so far.  The Pack provided to the PCG should provide the high level summary of future state occupancy, and introduce the design intents which will drive all design decisions going forward. This is where it will be delivered on what occupancy model is being adopted and what this means for the organization. 

The Pack should also include the key elements such as the benefits of an activity-based, flexible or agile working workplace, instructions/guidelines on how it will work and the communications and education that will be required to get it right.

 After the PCG endorse the activity-based, flexible or agile working initiatives to be rolled out through the business, they will want to see the Project Director prepare Leaders packs that will explain the same story to the next level of leaders.

 

Regular things discussed at Meetings

What are the things the PCG will hear about, be involved in, directly make decisions for, and may just provide input to during the four phases of the project. These things are in no particular order and are not exhaustive, there’s loads more things that may pop up but these are the regular things the PCG will have sight of or oversight for.

Let’s take a look!

·         Initiation phase:

·         Workplace Strategy

·         Leadership and Employee Listening Exercises

·         Utilisation Study

·         Concept Design

·         Program & Budget Overview

·         Design and Fitout Direction Program and Timeline

·         Design Development

·         Change approach

·         Real Estate Strategy

·         Substantiation to obtain CEA (capital funds) approvals

·         Develop protocol for process to communicate the relatable concerns and adjustment methods back to staff

·         Pre-emptive discussions on any ‘sacred cow’/ issues to consider

·         Oversight of the Change campaign and Communications engagement plan

·         Oversight of aligning organizational objectives to the project

·         Site based tours to help develop experience of alternate working environments

 

Being on the PCG is a rewarding experience. The role of the PCG is pivotal to making a project a great experience for employees and to put the blueprint in place for the workplace to get the best out of the new ways of working, therefore  protecting the organizations return on investment. There is a great deal of fun in educating staff of the benefits. There is also hard work to do to address what has not worked well in the past and determine what the issues are.