Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB) in New Zealand cares for a population of 580,000+ with a workforce of just under 11,000.
CDHB's vision is to improve, promote and protect the health and well-being of the Canterbury community. In 2017 they embarked on a journey to improve the way they plan, prioritise, manage and report on projects across the organisation. KeyedIn Projects was selected as the Project Portfolio Management solution.
Situation
Canterbury DHB manages a portfolio of projects across multiple asset portfolios including facilities (construction, building and plant), Information and Communications Technology (ICT), Clinical Equipment, and various other change initiatives.
The challenge was to bring about structure and frameworks to promote consistency and best practice in project and portfolio management, while keeping things simple, adding value and transparency.
Solution
Canterbury DHB’s aim was to establish project management consistency across asset portfolios, transparency and enable progress reporting of those investments at portfolio level across the organisation.
Initially frameworks and processes were developed that would be able to meet varying requirements across:
• capital investments
• operational initiatives
• breadth, scale and complexity of projects
• and be project management methodology agnostic.
A software tool was then investigated to support project management, to increase the visibility of investments and to enable enterprise and asset portfolio views. The frameworks determined the requirements that then informed an open procurement process. Canterbury DHB evaluated multiple options, based on set criteria, which resulted in the selection of KeyedIn (via Montage NZ) as the preferred solution.
Canterbury DHB then undertook the configuration of KeyedIn with the assistance of Montage and KeyedIn implementation consultants, and care was taken to ensure alignment to the frameworks. KeyedIn provided an out-of-the-box product that also provided the options to customise configuration to align with their terminology and processes.
ICT capital investments were initially piloted in KeyedIn, followed by facilities projects to ensure configuration provided for the versatility across all projects.
Results
• Migrating from spreadsheets and various project document locations across the organisation to a software tool provided accessibility, transparency, and enabled on-demand project and enterprise-wide reporting.
• Transparency improved project management, reporting and accountability
• The Project Management frameworks, processes and KeyedIn were independently audited and positively contributed to an improved Investor Confidence Rating by NZ Treasury
• Ease of configuration continues to enable the product to meet varying reporting requirements (Dashboards, Reports, Exception Reporting etc.)
• Visibility of project health continues to prompt and guide decisions.
Future
The following functionality enhancements to the software are either underway, or planned:
• Automated integration with finance system for real-time financial reporting
• Enterprise and asset portfolio dashboards
• Enterprise level benefits and project delivery reporting
• Configuration and adaptation to remove paper-based plans and reports
• Automation of processes and workflows.