Cultural fit and communication proved crucial as London
Underground sought to standardise the management of some 1,700
projects across a diverse range of users and partners. Arif Mohamed
reports on the lessons learned along the line.
Managing the complexity of about 1,700 simultaneous projects is
no mean feat, especially when you are also working with a number of
partner organisations on each project.
This is the challenge that faced London Underground, and its
solution was to introduce a central project repository and
encourage its partners to adopt both the repository and its project
management platform.
The road was rocky at times, but the exercise has led to London
Underground standardising the way both its staff and the parent
companies work with project data, and will ultimately lead to
better and more accurate data.
This in turn will mean projects meet their deadlines, budgets,
compliance requirements and other metrics more smoothly.
London Underground said it has often faced criticism for the
inefficiency of its services, but argues that the sheer intricacy
of its operation and the number of projects it runs at any one time
can help to explain some of its shortcomings.
For example, three million passengers travel on the Tube on a
daily basis, and the network covers 253 miles of train routes. The
corporation manages 12,000 operational staff, engineering and
commercial assets, ticketing and the new Oyster card system, plus
power, radio, PA and CCTV systems.
Another level of complexity comes from London Underground having
to coordinate its operations with several organisations working
under private finance initiatives (PFI) and public private
partnerships (PPP). These infrastructure companies help to maintain
and upgrade the network.
London Underground itself is responsible for operating the
trains, but oversees the whole network, working with eight PPPs and
PFIs. The main PPP is Metronet Rail, which helps maintain
two-thirds of the London Underground network.
Tube Lines is another PPP, and maintains the Jubilee, Northern
and Piccadilly lines. Among the PFIs are Terminal 5, EDF Energy
Powerlink, and Citylink Telecommunications consortium.
One of London Underground’s major successes was getting these
organisations to implement the same project management system, from
supplier Primavera, and to use a single project database designed
and hosted by London Underground.
London Underground has been using Primavera’s software since
1989, and decided to adopt the system as its main planning and
management tool during the Jubilee Line extension in the mid-1990s
– the largest project London Underground has undertaken.
In 2002 and 2003 various infrastructure companies signed PPP
contracts and agreed to emulate London Underground’s Primavera
format for maintaining and transferring their programme
information. They did, however, require some way for a wider pool
of non-technical staff to access this information.
In response, London Underground’s Programme Assurance Office
designed and commissioned a central project database, which it was
keen to share with its employees and infrastructure partners.
The aim was to help coordinate the activities of all projects
and programmes taking place on the underground network, and to be
able to drill down to the details of each project.
London Underground considered its options, which included
building a system from scratch, using a commercial application, a
web-centric application, or an open source platform.
It chose to create a bespoke software system, called The Master
Project Database (MPD) that ran on a powerful Compaq Proliant DL740
datacentre server. This was based on the Primavera Enterprise 5.0
system and a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database and web browser
interface, so users could easily access and input project data in a
common format.
Mark Zehnder, director of London Underground’s Programme
Assurance Office, said, “Coordination is based on communication,
and if we could provide the added value of communicating project
information as a common language across all organisations, the
infrastructure companies would be compelled to buy into the new
system.”
In April 2003, London Underground was ready to introduce the MPD
system. But before it could convince its infrastructure partners to
use it, it first had to convince its own staff.
Users revolted over a pilot programme, with some staff deciding
not to cooperate. There was widespread anxiety regarding the new
system, and London Underground realised they had a cultural change
problem. The project leaders feared they would need to abandon the
central database idea altogether.
“The initial response was of significant pushback, particularly
from the top. There was an interest in understanding it more, but a
lack of clarity in what the information was going to be used for,”
said Zehnder.
On top of this, the infrastructure partners did not agree with
the process London Underground had chosen for recording and
managing project information. “[They] had issues regarding
transparency of detailed budgets and actual costs for project
activities,” said Zehnder.
London Underground decided to relaunch the database system,
after a long period of talking to staff and explaining the purpose
and benefits of the system. It brought in external IT consultants,
Stapleton International, to review both the system and London
Underground’s roll-out approach.
Then, to address the concerns of the infrastructure companies,
London Underground carried out an independent legal review with law
firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. This led to an agreement in
December 2003 over new guidelines for the provision of data, which
was signed and implemented by March 2004.
During this period, London Underground worked with project
staff, both internal and from the infrastructure companies, to make
sure they understood and were happy with the new processes.
MPD “desk reference” and website resources were produced, and
data providers were assured that the information would aid the
communication and successful delivery of projects. User meetings
were held every four weeks, to discuss new developments and listen
to requests.
The second attempt at implementation had a better reception,
said Zehnder, and staff and the infrastructure companies were more
cooperative. There was an informal launch in June 2004, and an
official launch at the end of March 2005.
One thing that helped the infrastructure companies adopt
Primavera and the bespoke database was London Underground’s
willingness to help them develop their systems, said Rory Hunt,
master projects database manager at London Underground.
“We share IT professionals on an open non-formal basis if they
are stuck,” said Hunt, adding that London Underground staff would
spend several days at a time on the partner’s premises, talking
them through technical issues.
Zehnder said, “The key to all of this has been very good
co-operation. We often meet face to face, and have e-mails flying
back and forth. At a technical level, there is lots of
interchange.
“We are very open and frank about problems. If Metronet has
problems with their system, it is our problem. Our collaboration is
non contractual.”
Since 2003, all projects from all the infrastructure partners
have been put into the MPD system, and there are 1,200 people using
it via the web. The database now contains more than 1,700 projects
at a total estimated value of £21bn. London Underground’s Primavera
system has 120 users.
“We are all coming into a unified system, all speaking the same
project language and we can view all the capital works on the
underground networks, from tracks to stations, trains to
signalling, radios to Oyster card readers,” said Hunt.
Much of the project data is commercially sensitive and so the
system has features that can control how the data comes into the
system and how it is used, he added.
Because London Underground manages the central database, it is
able to run a Business Objects business intelligence application
for ad-hoc interrogation of the data and to build review
charts.
London Underground recently upgraded its server system to run
Primavera and SQL Server 2003, and between 2004 and the end of
January 2006, helped the infrastructure companies move onto the
same version of Primavera.
London Underground designed a roadmap to help the organisations
upgrade to Enterprise version 5.0, which required close
communication and coordination and three months’ testing prior to
the roll-out.
The main driver behind getting all the partners to upgrade
together was to ensure that project data was as good as it could
be. “People’s confidence in [a project] is very much down to how
good the data is,” said Hunt.
“We are always working with [the other infrastructure companies]
to ensure that what they think they are sending is what they are
actually sending. We have to be assured the data sent is of the
highest quality,” said Zehnder.