Helping Coliban Water deliver water and waste water services to the region, now and into the future.

Coliban Water (CW) provides water and wastewater services to 130,000 retail urban and rural customers across 16,500 km2 of Central and Northern Victoria. Functions carried out include water harvesting and storage, urban water supply including water conservation and demand forecasting, wastewater collection, reclamation, and rural water supply.

CLIENT'S OBJECTIVES:

CW wanted to ensure its organisational investment priorities, services and processes continue to address changing customer needs and expectations. It identified the need to improve organisational decision-making regarding reporting, planning, forecasting and resourcing of its project portfolio. To enable this, ConnellGriffin was engaged to help CW update its Portfolio Management Office (PMO) processes as a platform to implement further changes in the future as part of its PMO development roadmap.

OUR ROLE:

ConnellGriffin’s role in achieving the first objective (Problem Definition and Benefit Management Plan) required the following steps:

A collaborative workshop was undertaken to identify key issues at the organisation which affected its ability to service customers as efficiently as possible. This involved developing a key issues register which was then used for theming of related issues in order to articulate a problem definition. Each problem was assigned a weighting.
A second collaborative workshop, involving a wider group of internal stakeholders, was undertaken in order to articulate the benefits which could be achieved should the issues/problems be addressed. This involved finding consensus on three main benefits, each with their own unique KPI and KPI weighting. Measures, baselines and targets were also identified for each benefit KPI. These were summarised in a benefit map.
The benefit map was used to develop a Benefit Management Plan. This provided additional detail to the benefit map, and included interim targets, identification of which data sources could be used to quantify targets, how the benefit KPIs will be reported, and who has responsibility for tracking the KPIs.

ConnellGriffin’s role in achieving the second objective (Power BI Dashboard) required the following steps:

An in-depth review was carried out of existing project data across Coliban Water’s entire project portfolio, in order to understand what project metrics were being used for regular project reporting, and identify any gaps in the data.
Ongoing engagement with Coliban Water’s PMO lead was necessary in order to agree what data sources were required to generate the new Power BI Dashboard. This involved prioritising the most important metrics where the most data was available, including scope, time, cost and risk status, as well as key financial data.
Using the available data, ConnellGriffin generated a concept layout for the Power BI Dashboard. Feedback and changes from the PMO lead were incorporated in an iterative manner. For the Power BI Dashboard this included refining project metrics and also visual layout.
A workshop with a wider range of internal stakeholders was used to test usability and obtain feedback on the Power BI Dashboard. Training was also provided on how the organisation’s key users can refresh the Power BI Dashboard monthly with new project data in order to generate reports for senior leaders.

KEY OUTCOMES AND VALUE ADDS:

Overall ConnellGriffin was successfully able to provide the deliverables required by Coliban Water in an accelerated timeframe. The success of the engagement relied on working in a highly collaborative environment with key client stakeholders, in order to obtain the necessary corporate knowledge and also bring the client on the ‘journey’.

ConnellGriffin helped Coliban Water identify and articulate the key issues in its portfolio management capability which were affecting its ability to service customers as efficiently as possible. Formal development of a Problem Definition statement and Benefit Management Plan will be useful baselines as Coliban Water evolves its PMO capability going forward.

The team delivered a Microsoft Power BI Dashboard to the client which reports key information regarding Coliban Water’s programs and portfolios including financial data, project health summaries, capital portfolio phasing, benefits, and risks. This will enable Coliban Water’s leaders to make informed decisions by having quick access to a wider project data.

In addition, ConnellGriffin was able to assist Coliban Water in defining a PMO development roadmap which identified future steps that the organisation should take to continually evolve its PMO capability in order to achieve its target benefits. This included ongoing testing and staff training for the Power BI Dashboard, refinement of the Capital Investment Framework, and development of a Portfolio Management Policy.