As the Chairman of the City of London Corporation’s Projects and Procurement Sub-Committee, I had the pleasure of attending the ‘go-live’ event at Guildhall this week.
Our P3 framework – which encompasses projects, programmes and portfolios – brings together two years of design, consultation and delivery, transforming the way which the City Corporation manages its £2.2bn of live projects.
This has included process re-engineering, data cleansing, governance consolidation and cultural change to ensure that the golden thread of our strategic ambitions is truly driving prioritisation, risk management and resource allocation.
In an organisation as complex at the City Corporation – often running nationally and internationally important programmes of work – we have set a clear ‘adapt, not adopt’ framework, which has been embedded in policy, governance and individual performance objectives.
The framework has also introduced a new enterprise project management system (EPMO), which has standardised data models, introduced workflow management, and enhanced audit trails and stakeholder oversight at every step. It has also automated reporting which meets the many different standards required of our partner agencies.
We now have 360 projects live, 130 Project Managers and 55 Senior Responsible Officers (SROs) actively using the framework and, since April 2025, 175,532 actions have been processed directly in our EPMO system.
This new framework has allowed Members to delegate more responsibility to Officers, which releases a number of benefits, both in the administration and governance. It enables our paid professions to get on and do the job effectively and efficiently, whilst still allowing Members oversight and scrutiny based on pre-agreed risk tolerances, viability of delivery of identified benefits, and alignment to our strategic vision. With the establishment of the training academy, it also means we will continue to upskill our people sustainably.
This really has been a herculean effort by many hands and a true example of corporate collaboration. My heartfelt thanks to all of the teams involved.
Of course, this is really just stage one of the journey drawing to a close. Our focus now pivots to building upon these solid foundations (or “brilliant basics” as our Corporate Plan describes it), to enhance our commercial maturity in all that we do to achieve the highest possible return on investment or value for money. This includes the transformation of our procurement division, which I have already outlined here.
Thanks to to all of our partners for participating in the launch event in break-out sessions, from tech teams to training and development partners. Particular thanks to Kerry Bangle, a Major Projects Director at WSP and previously High Risk Projects Reviewer at the UK Government’s Infrastructure and Projects Authority. Kerry spoke about the huge range of projects she has been involved in over her career and the importance of knowing when to make difficult decisions – whether that be renegotiating benefits to respond to change management or when to pull the plug and accept that the project is no longer viable.
My favourite part of the day, especially as a leader in an organisation which seeks to be digitally enabled in all we do, was the use of slido to provide real-time feedback from Project Managers and SROs. It was great to see we are so well aligned now and all pulling in the same direction as we move forward. A great outcome!
