How do you increase staff agility and business processes across 8 organisational organisations serving 8 different industry sectors?

The AMRC is a UK not-for-profit (HVMC) high value manufacturing catapult centre, providing resource, skills and research-based process and efficiency solutions from Blue Chip to SME commercial engineering and manufacturing organisations. Wholly owned by Sheffield University, the AMRC’s purpose is to bring leading-edge research to practical production lines, de-risking innovation, increasing turnover and generating profit.  

With large numbers of projects on the go at the same time, across a wide variety of manufacturing sectors, some include the aerospace, construction and digital sectors, the AMRC has complex requirements for PPM. 

Angus Williams, the AMRC’s Head of Project Management has the unenviable task of navigating the PMO requirements of 8 different delivery teams, each serving a different sector of the manufacturing industry. 

“I genuinely think that AMRC has probably the most complex set of requirements for Project Management integrations of any organisation I know,” says Angus. 

“…we are multi-funded, through commercial contracts, network membership fees and subscriptions and various grant-based models. This poses a challenging business model to map to a single process.” 

“Add into the mix the fact that we are not-for-profit, and under justifiable scrutiny from external auditors on how we maximise effort for the funding we receive, the usual metrics for organisational Project Management success do not always apply.” 

Highlighting the specific problems that the AMRC were facing Angus says: “Prior to Harbour being developed, every part of the business was managing in different ways. It was proving impossible to understand the bigger picture of everything that was going on in the AMRC as a whole”. 

“It was also very difficult to move people around the business between groups prior to one unified system, with every group using their own methodology and system, the learning curve to transfer from one project environment to another was a challenge.” 

Solution 

Describing how AMRC came to work with Program Framework Angus says: “We had been using Microsoft server through a different company, but we weren’t very happy with that solution. So, we decided to go back to Microsoft and find a Project Management Gold Partner. 

“We were given a few references but as soon as we started talking to Program Framework they understood quite quickly where we were coming from. We engaged them in 2021 and they’ve been supporting us ever since.” 

The AMRC were looking for an end solution for project management, including utilising some CRM functionality to guard against customer data duplication and inconsistencies. 

“What we now have is internally called Harbour, an analogy which illustrates how our projects are conducted consistently within the virtual harbour walls, everything in one space including the PMO approach, financing, risk management, project planning, forecasting and lessons learned.” 

The solution comprises Project Online for planning, costing, and resourcing; reporting through Power BI; document control and approvals through SharePoint and CRM through Microsoft Dynamics. 

“Fitting it all together and making it interact seamlessly is Power Framework’s speciality,” says Angus. 

“Power Framework have been influential in getting the senior leadership on board. Our CEO is always asking for information out of Harbour to back up business decisions, and this is key in driving adoption,” says Angus. 

“Meanwhile I’ve been nominating Superusers across each of the 8 groups, and they are training people in quick and efficient ways of using the platform. This is a trickle effect in terms of adoption, but with the senior sponsorship we have I know it’s going in the right direction and people will all come on board eventually.”