Exco Partners was engaged by Cladding Safety Victoria (CSV) to help establish the program strategy, prioritisation framework and assessment of the preliminary feasibility options for the $600M Cladding Rectification Program. The purpose of CSV is to replace combustible cladding on higher risk residential buildings and now includes government buildings as well. CSV was established as a business unit under the Victorian Building Authority with an intent to position the CSV as a stand-alone entity in July 2020.
Complexities associated with stakeholder and policy alignment, limited legislative powers, competing roles of support provider (CSV) and regulator (VBA) and speed of delivery created further complexity in the options considered in the establishment of a concise and robust business delivery model. The inclusion of the Government building program within CSV required alignment of controls and reporting across two different program types.
Exco Partners along with the CSV Executive leadership team agreed to an approach to deliver both the PMO outcomes and the proposed delivery framework for the Pathfinder Projects. The engagement was delivered using the following approach:
The Due Diligence and Delivery Model for the Pathefinder Projects was established considering the stretgic needs to the program and the intedned learnings from the first 15 buildings using the following approach.
- Concept – Develop the requirement response to a conceptual level. Test the concept with key stakeholder and align expectations.
- Prototype – Develop a sample of the process, low tech tool and or function with an expectation of testing the outcome on a moderately small set of projects and / or data
- Test and Learn – Use the Prototype to confirm the intended approach
- Adapt and Implement – Implement the control for interim use including policy, process, tools and change management
The approach enabled CSV to Test and Learn from the First 15 buildings and adapt the method with a forecast plan to halve the initiate to commencement of building timeframe for all buildings.
The identified skills utilised on this engagement:
- Strategic needs analysis;
- Identification and prioritisation of service needs, risks and options;
- Development of service reform implementation plans;
- Assessment of preliminary project delivery options,
- Development and evaluation of project delivery options and options analysis;
- Preliminary project costing, whole of life costing (including benchmarking and risk
- valuation);
- Risk management identification and mitigation strategies.
The outcomes of this engagement were:
- A revised Delivery Model informed by the leanrings of the initial delivery model that will enable CSV to reduce the delivery timeframe for Due Diligence, Design and Tendering from 66 weeks to 33 weeks on average. This in turn informed the associated changes in powers and legislation required in parallel to establishing CSV as an indepdendant entity.
- The revised truncated delivery model was assessed for the impact it may have on Whole of Government Risk, CSV’s required powers, legislation and CSV’s future entity type. The revised model was also tested using preliminary market analysis including market soundings across a small number of builders and fire safety engineers.
- A Prioritisation framework to guide the initiation of buildings as well as a Cost Assurance framework for management of grants to Owners Corporates.
- An operating governance framework with the ability to report into the CSV CEO, the Program Control Board and the CSV Board (CRC).
- An operating PMO supporting CSV with key program delivery functions of schedule management and reporting, risk and issues management, change control, and reporting.
Exco Partners helped to identify a Permanent PMO Manager and structured a handover process to enable the PMO to continue to test, learn and mature.
The overall performance of the engagment resulted in a strong result for CSV. The performance of the engagement could have been stronger in a environment where the approach was more stable and less subject to incremental change.