Back to the Basics: Establishing the Foundation for a Modern Capital PMO

The fiscal year is ending; time to begin the budget process for the next year. It starts with a call to the finance department, who provides the current budget for identified projects and how much has been spent to date. Next comes the planning department, who reviews the current capital plan, existing master plans, and project requests that have been made in the past year. Project Managers are contacted to determine the status of their projects, assess the originally proposed budgets, and see if more money needs to be allocated for ongoing projects. Each stakeholder involved in the process has their own tools for tracking their information; many times the information does not align across the different departments. Does this process sound familiar? Every year, utilities around the country face some version of the same three questions: 1.What is the status of the ongoing projects? 2.What projects are planned for next year? 3.How much money should be budgeted for next year? At its core, the Capital Improvement Planning process is centered around answering these questions as utilities prepare budgets and plan for future needs of their communities.. While the premise is simple enough, many organizations are stretched thin during the budget planning process as they scramble to collect all of the information required to put together their capital plan. Doing it effectively requires ownership and governance at all stages of the process to ensure accurate fund appropriation is in place for projects and that projects are completed as expected, according to schedule and budget. Enter the Project Management Office (PMO). This paper will explore Pinellas County Utilities Department's steps to develop their PMO from the ground-up. The project's ultimate goal was to develop a collaborative system that can be used in the future to manage active and planned capital projects while making the budgeting process easier in the long run. It will focus on three main points: - Reviewing the challenges that Pinellas County faced in their current business processes. - Collaborating with stakeholders to gather the data currently available or necessary for tracking in the future. - Implementing a system to improve these processes and integrate the data, while fostering adoption from the project managers. Business Process Review A core team from Pinellas County was identified to drive the business process review to begin the project. This team would later serve as a starting point for the PMO, but it was the driver for collecting all of the information required in the planning process in its early stages. Through a series of workshops, the team identified three major initiatives that the new system and PMO would strive to address: - General Limitations of the Current Systems — Pinellas County uses Oracle Financial and Project Management Modules to manage their project data. While the system contains adequate tools for tracking costs from an accounting perspective, it lacks the functional requirements to manage projects and users struggle with its use. -Completeness and Accuracy of CIP Data — Due to the system's limitations, some projects lacked the data required to make informed decisions in the planning process. Data in the system was either out of date or missing entirely, with many project managers using collections of spreadsheets as workarounds to the system; this also led to limitations in program-wide reporting and planning. -Collaboration Across Departments — While each department in the County is required to submit their own budget plan, there is significant coordination and collaboration needed to execute projects, notably between Utilities and Public Works. Each department has its own tools and processes, and there is little standardization across the County. These core challenges were set as the goals for the PMO to address with their new system. They also strived to reduce duplicative data entry, remove process redundancies, standardize tools and tracking of all Utilities Capital projects, and foster an environment of collaboration in the planning process. Stakeholder Collaboration To address these core challenges, the PMO team expanded its reach to the other stakeholders at all levels of the organization. Workshops were held with each group to inform them of the initiatives the PMO was trying to address, then identify complex challenges that drive the issues within their group. The table below outlines the four groups of stakeholders that are engaged and the high-level findings from their workshops: Table 1. Stakeholder Workshops During the workshops, surveys were conducted to take a data-driven approach for identifying the challenges and establishing a baseline moving forward. Some of the results are shown below. Figure 1. Project Manager Challenges Figure 2. Causes of Schedule Delays Figure 3. Project Performance Metric Assessment Implementation and Adoption Once all of the data was collected, the PMO began implementing a system to address the concerns. As part of the evaluation, the team also reviewed the current tools they were using or had available. This evaluation led to selecting a solution using the Microsoft toolset, including SharePoint, Project Online, Power Automate, and Power BI. The PMO team designed the system with the following functional requirements: - Cost and Schedule Tracking — Project Online is used to track Cost and Schedule data outside of the Oracle system. The new Project Management Information System (PMIS) would serve as the current plan for the project and be compared back to the Oracle system to identify potential variances on projects. - Project Documentation — SharePoint is used to track project documents and data associated with them. It also serves as a tool for collaboration on projects as they execute. - Process Integration — Power Automate is used to integrate the new system with existing business process that were identified during the evaluation. - Data Integration, Analysis and Reporting — Power BI is used to integrate data out of the existing Oracle System and the new PMIS system and provide stakeholders at all levels of the organization the information they need to make informed decisions. One of the major challenges faced during the implementation was adoption of the new system. Many of the project managers voiced their concerns that it was 'another location where they had to enter data'. To manage this significant change, the PMO team provided many touch points to stress the new system's value. The process began with a soft roll-out to familiarize users with the new system, before any requirements were made for data entry. Once the PMO was comfortable with the level of engagement, they shifted to a hard roll-out that required the Project Managers who were struggling with adopting the new system to enter their data. To track this rollout, performance metrics were tracked to identify the new system's engagement level. While the system is live, there are ongoing challenges getting users to keep their data up-to-date. Conclusions Ultimately, the PMO focused on breaking down their current processes to identify pain points in their planning systems; by taking this ground-up approach, they knew where their teams struggled and what strategies they needed to address in implementing a new system. They were also deeply involved in the new system's design, so they are familiar with its capabilities and serve as champions for driving its adoption. Now that it is in place, the PMO will serve as the organization for governance of the capital project data and strive to continue improving its systems and processes moving forward.