London North West University Healthcare

Address the inefficiencies and productivity challenges in our project management system by replacing manual processes with a centralised information library. This will ensure a single source of truth and establish common standards to promote and enable collaboration across the hospital network.

Supporting the healthcare needs of diverse communities requires constant focus. ICHT and LNWH manage hundreds of projects each year aimed at improving services and outcomes cost-effectively. However, as health issues became more challenging in recent years, project management operations were proving sub-optimal.

“We both had a heavy dependence on manual processes,” explains James Biggin-Lamming, Transformation Programme Director at LNWH. “Spreadsheets were filled in for each project, then passed on for other information to be added. They were both siloed systems, which made it difficult to understand what was happening across the portfolio and accurately assess costs and risks. The rework required was affecting staff productivity. With annual expenditure of around £2bn between us, improving our performance was imperative.”

With project portfolios increasing in scale and complexity each year to match the changing health environment, the trusts both believed they needed the power of an online cloud platform to replace the current manual system. The new solution must deliver an easily accessed, up-to-date version of the truth for all projects, enabling project outcomes to be tracked and accurately assessed.

“We both had specific objectives for improving our own project management systems, but we also recognised the growing importance of collaboration in the NHS, and the benefits we could get from standardising the way we do things,” says James Biggin-Lamming. “We both run huge hospitals within a few miles of each other. Many projects have an impact well beyond the boundaries of individual trusts, so it makes sense to have repeatable processes to help you easily share.”

ICHT began discussing its future project management requirements with CPS, a multi-award-winning Microsoft Gold Partner with project management as a core service.

The two trusts agreed to work with CPS to find a project management solution that could be managed separately by each trust but enabled easy collaboration between the organisations. “The key was to maintain our independent operations but establish common processes and a common ‘language’,” says James Biggin-Lamming.

Agreeing on the solution platform was made easier because both trusts used Microsoft technologies, meaning they could access a wide range of proven project management tools while leveraging their investment. The Microsoft platform would make it easier for users to get up to speed with new processes and avoid complications of additional sign-on arrangements.

CPS had the Microsoft expertise to propose an effective solution, and its wider role as a partner was also critical. “CPS listened to how we described what we wanted and played back our ideas in an intuitive, structured way,” says James Biggin-Lamming. “CPS was very important in getting our different views sorted out and giving us space during the uncertainty of Covid. I’m sure many other consultants would have walked away!”

The agreed solution was designed and delivered by CPS within a modest budget. Called TrakIT, the solution provides the trusts with a set of online project workflow processes, a comprehensive reporting system with Microsoft Power BI dashboards, and a document library that captures project information for sharing within and between organisations.

The solution is flexible. It enables organisations to tailor the system to their own ways of working but is designed so that each trust can see across its own boundaries to projects being managed by other trusts.

TrakIT has helped to accelerate project collaboration and is supporting consistent management information. Since April 2022, four hospital trusts, including Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and LNWH, have shared a chair, and in the Summer of 2022, they announced a common board.

Since TrakIT was implemented, three more London NHS organisations, North West London Integrated Care Board, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, have joined the partnership.