Network Rail 
Arup 
Oxford Brookes University 
NHS 
SSE 
Future Shift 
The User
Provelio is a UK-based project management consultancy with expertise in strategic, capital-asset-intensive projects (often involving building, people and technological change). Specifically, they have a hard-won reputation for their successful management of many large-scale construction schemes. Founded in 2002, they have offices in London and Bristol and a team of thirty plus dedicated consultants. Their driving purpose is to help change organisations for the better; their client list includes public and private organizations – large and small.
Their Challenge
Of their own concession, construction-centric project management has a reputation for being somewhat stale and traditional. There is an anachronistic view that every new construction is completely unique: every new build is a prototype. Provelio reject this common view and have always sought to have a more systemised, repeatable approach to their work.
“People take refuge in the ‘nothing can be repeated’ mantra”, says MD Paul Wilson, “but, of course, this is nonsense – 80% of what we do is repeatable – clients know that – hence their frustration when their advisors start from scratch each time. At Provelio, we have systemised the 80%, so we can focus on helping our clients with the difficult, anomalous 20%; that is how we bring value to our clients.”
It is clear that this view has been long-held at Provelio – but the challenge was to move from their static, manual-based approach (two voluminous ring binders) to a dynamically-maintained central platform. As Paul points out, “… maintaining and updating our capital project delivery method was hard work, a version-control nightmare and – of course – no one, nowadays, is going to realistically walk around with ring-binders under their arms. We desperately needed a dynamic, central system – a place where we could easily store and continuously curate our approach … a system that all of our team would find easy to use.”
How Method Grid was used
With much of their approach already documented, it was really easy for Provelio to transition over to the Method Grid Platform. Alongside other grids (for example, a training programme for new staff), the priority was to transition over their capital project delivery methodology.
The stage-based structure was already there – this, largely based on the RIBA plan of work. The grid themes reference key project dimensions; for example, the client office, user group, project management, cost management and design management. Within this detailed grid framework, they then built out a rich toolbox of relevant control elements covering everything from the user brief and project execution plan through to asbestos management. There are now over 150 such control elements; of course, not all are needed on every project – rather it has become an invaluable go-to-resource for every project manager in their business.
Each element captures key templates and best practice examples (links to files in their Sharepoint system) alongside guidance notes, other related elements and tagged experts within Provelio.
