Improving project management capability at Remploy

Remploy now has a really credible project management capability, which is working to the highest professional standards. We now have what we need to meet the new challenges the company faces in its modernisation programme, including the building and development of successful businesses following the restructuring

Remploy needed to modernise its business and improve its project management capability in order to stay profitable and compete. This strategy meant that a significant number of factories would need to be closed – something that Remploy had never done before.

Because of the difficult political landscape within which Remploy works, the project sequencing was subject to complex negotiations, with the boundaries sometimes changing quite rapidly. Core elements of the scope, such as how many sites would be closed, how many employees would accept each of the different options available to them, and what level of funding would be necessary, often remained ambiguous long after the start of the initiative. This was accentuated by a number of events at a national political level, which has unexpected consequences for the nature of the proposed work.

For all these reasons, we worked closely with Remploy to adopt a programmatic approach. This gave Remploy the ability to manage the overall complexity at the programme level, while maintaining absolute clarity about what each individual project was required to do. Careful planning of stakeholder engagement was also crucial in making sure that “all the dots were joined”.

Remploy were able to effectively use all the input from CITI to put together a team of professional programme and project managers capable of managing their significant strategic change programme.