Overview
Tauranga City Council (TCC), located in the Bay of Plenty region of New Zealand, works together for the benefit of Tauranga’s residents and ratepayers to represent and promote the communities social, economic, environmental and cultural wellbeing.
Over the next 10 years, the Tauranga city centre is set to transform into an exciting, vibrant place that the community can feel proud of, and where people from near and far will want to visit, live, work, learn and play.
With these aspirations and having a number of new and relatively inexperienced team members, TCC saw an opportunity to improve its internal project management expertise to embed existing processes, tools and templates and also gain and understanding of basic project management and how they do things at TCC.
So in late 2022, TCC turned to the team at Millpond.
Approach
TCC requested our assistance as they embarked on a change in their Project Delivery effectiveness.
TCC were looking for a partner to enhance their project management capability through the delivery of customised training. This encompassed Millpond consultants working closely with the Capital Programme Assurance Division (CPAD) and TCC subject matter experts to develop a blended course, mixing TCC methodology and tools with international best practice.
Spanning a diverse audience; ranging from experienced practitioners to accidental project managers to project team members, Millpond delivered Project Management Fundamentals training across seven cohorts over a period of one year.
During the research phase, we worked closely with CPAD to understand the existing project management maturity including:
- The tools, systems and templates TCC had in place. As part of this process, case studies and examples relevant to the TCC context were also developed to be included as part of the training.
- Through a combination of trainer expertise and TCC staff working together to understand each other’s perspectives, this led to an extremely successful engagement. Delegates received a good understanding of project management and how they do things at TCC, as per CPAD guidelines.
Getting senior people to work alongside and mentor junior people meant that senior staff were able to step up and show their knowledge:
- TCC had a new Project Management team, with the longest serving person only having been there for two years and some having only worked at TCC for less than 3 months. There was not only huge value in the training, but getting the TCC team together was an added benefit.
- Millpond’s lengthy experience in the local government sector, along with experience with asset management projects meant that a real partnership was formed. Rather than Millpond dictating to TCC what they needed, the development of the training was done together, and Millpond were flexible to TCC’s needs.
Space
“I’m really pleased with the course; I’ve had a couple of people contact me to say thanks and how happy they were to be involved. Lots of compliments for your teaching style, they really enjoyed the opportunity for discussion.”
Kellie Burton, CPAD Principal Advisor and HR.
Results
Identified and addressed gaps in processes and/or adoption of new processes
Embedding of common project management language and practices
Assisted in the removal of cross functional silos
Summary
By working closely with key stakeholders, Millpond was able to develop a completely bespoke training course. Beyond this, Millpond developed a strong relationship with TCC stakeholders and a continuing engagement.
TCC’s partnership with Millpond was successful as not only did participants enjoy themselves, but an inexperienced team was able to come together. Teams came together having never worked together before. Multiple teams now understand each other, whereas in the past they worked in silos.
When asked what they liked about working with us, TCC expressed how “grateful they were for the inclusion of TCC content in the training, I hadn’t realised how poorly these have been utilised! It’s good to know that though, and it means I know to emphasise the collateral in my conversations.”
