PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

In July 2004 Sir Peter Gershon recommended that the Criminal Justice Departments realise total annual efficiencies of at least £2.3 billion by 2007-08.

“Efficiency in the public sector involves making best use of the resources available for the provision of public services. Efficiencies are defined as those reforms to delivery processes and resource utilisation that achieve:

• Reduced numbers of inputs, whilst maintaining the same level of service provision; or
• Lower prices for the resources needed to provide public services; or
• Additional outputs, such as enhanced quality or quantity of service, for the same level of inputs; or
• Improved ratios of output per unit cost of input; or
• Changing the balance between different outputs aimed at delivering a similar overall objective in a way which achieves a greater overall output for the same inputs”. Gershon Report July 2004.

Performance Management is the best way of reaching these objectives by providing a clear visualisation of your organisations performance.

At Black & Veatch we have formed a unique partnership with Performancesoft, a market place leader in Performance Management to provide a complete package of consultation, implementation and support and software, to review, monitor and report on any aspect of your organisations performance.

Performance Management can help your organisation by:

• Providing transparency within your organisation with clearly identified measures and targets;
• Leverage any Performance Management framework;
• World class implementation and support from performancesoft’s industry leading expertise;
• Link daily tasks to overall organisational strategy with pbviews' (Performance Management and balance scorecard software solution) exclusive Performance Maps;
• Measure and manage only what is important for you using Briefing Books and
• Create customisable reports, updated with the most up-to-date information, to share within your organisation.

Performance for Our Clients

Founded in 1993, Performancesoft are leading suppliers of Performance Management Software in the UK and globally. Through our partnership we are able to offer a complete Performance Management package to enable your organisation to measure performance, manage all areas of business, and meet annual efficiencies through more effective decision-making, efficient management reporting and increased accountability.

Collaborative Working

We use collaborative workspace software ‘Business Collaborator’. It provides a working environment that can be accessed by a range of parties, perhaps including Client, Project Manager, Contractor and other project stakeholders. Within this environment, files, that may include documents, drawings, maps and other data, can be authored, corrected, reviewed and published. The software provides an environment that allows maintenance of an audited workflow, and access and edit rights to be controlled for each organisation and user.

Business Collaborator provides a workspace where 'virtual teams' can collaborate on producing documents, store them and exchange exactly the information that the team members need:

• Includes version control to guarantee that a user reads or copies the most recent version of the document;
• Provides threaded discussion of articles on the same subject;
• Allows net meeting, with planning, preparing and documenting functions;
• Informs all members of a shared folder that something has happened within the workspace.

We also have experience is using Union Square and Buzzsaw.

Helpdesk and Support

We provide a comprehensive e-helpdesk service for reporting and tracking of faults. The e-helpdesk solution is accessed via Internet technology and provides an excellent alternative to conventional telephone support. It is fully auditable and transparent to end users, management and suppliers, and centrally tracks and manages multi-channel requests - email, the web, live chat, and wireless devices.

The e-helpdesk is popular with users and provides the focal point for user groups, since it can also be used to undertake satisfaction surveys, prioritise enhancement requests and support chat rooms.

If required, the e-helpdesk database can store and provide on-line tools to administer a central register of all hardware and software.

It has a scalable and flexible architecture, underpinned by SQL (Oracle or SQL Server) and XML. The IP technology means that the e-helpdesk could be located anywhere in the world.

In addition to e-helpdesk services, telephone support is available from 8.00 a.m. – 5.00 p.m, Monday to Friday and can be used in the event that the electronic helpdesk is unavailable or when users feel that they need to speak to support staff directly. All issues raised through front-line support will be entered into the e-helpdesk and the caller will be given the reference number so that they can if they wish track the processing of the fault on-line.

Project Management

We serve clients in more than 100 countries on five continents, and currently manage >33,000 projects for 6,500 clients with revenues of £1,556 million. As a company we believe that our business is to deliver projects on time, to budget and to our clients' satisfaction. As such, we have strong project management and quality assurance systems embodying a commitment to attain these goals.

BV has always recognised the importance of project management skills, and appoints and trains quality managers. The company is a corporate member of the Association for Project Management (APM). We have a specialist Major Projects Group, which comprises managers specially selected and trained to deal with large, complex and challenging schemes.

From our extensive experience in project management of a wide range of projects, the key issues to success are:

• To establish a clear plan of action;
• To ensure that everyone is aware of what is expected of them and when it is required;
• To keep in touch so that people are informed if programme requirements change and to monitor progress
• Positive leadership, open communication and the development of a good team spirit within the project team and with stakeholders.

BV have a proprietary methodology for managing our projects. Our project management system is ISO9001 accredited. We appreciate that many public sector organisations require application development work to managed using the project management methodology known as PRINCE (Project in Controlled Environments). We currently have 8 PRINCE2 registered practitioners, who are all senior project managers.

Training Services

As part of our services to clients we are often called upon to provide training as part of a wider contract or project. We also carry out regular training for internal staff both to bring new joiners up to our standards and also to extend the knowledge of more experienced staff. This training may be on a number of things including the following:

• IT concepts;
• Ue of applications written for clients of proprietary software;
• Mintenance and operation of computer hardware; and
• Analysis and use of data.

In all cases it is necessary to tailor the content of the course and the manner in which it is taught as trainee knowledge can vary from having basic knowledge of Windows based PC applications to more advanced knowledge of applications.

BV recognises the importance of individual learning and cognitive styles in effective learning and skills transfer. Our Learning and Development Team provide 'Train the Trainer' and presentation skills courses for our staff to assist with skills transfer to our staff and Clients.

We have undertaken skills transfer in a number of ways:

• Direct secondment of Client's staff into our offices to learn the skills directly from our staff;
• P rovide shadowing and mentoring in the Client's own offices; and
• Cnstruct appropriate structured training courses / workshops.
• More specifically, for application development we ensure skills and knowledge transfer through:
• Etensive Client participation in the system development life-cycle;
• Apropriate application training;
• Ue of industry standard development tools;
• Spport and maintenance agreements (we currently support over 50 users of application we have developed under S&M agreements);
• God quality documentation that has been tested and approved by the end-users and system administrators (all our systems include hypertext help files and details operation manuals);
• Application User groups and establishing and mentoring Client 'super-users' and/or champions who can take on complete ownership for the scheme or application.

BV learning and development staff have specialist qualifications in the management of training and human resources development from the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development, the Chartered Institute of Management and MBA specialist electives in Knowledge Management, Strategic Human Resources Management, Creativity Innovation and Change and Strategy.