Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF)
The DCSF set up Partnerships for Schools (PfS), an incorporated non-departmental public body, in 2004 to manage its major school building programme, Building Schools for the Future. It aimed to take a much more strategic and programmatic approach to school building, with the aim of renewing every secondary school in the country. Since April 2009, PfS has been responsible for managing the Department's entire school capital budget, including legacy PFI projects and its primary school programme.
All school spending is devolved either through Local Authorities or directly to Academies and Voluntary Aided schools. PfS provides national leadership to its schools programmes, and is able to carry out programme management activities which Local Authorities and schools could not carry out by themselves. This has helped to improve the delivery of school projects, including their speed and cost certainty. DCSF and PfS have also used this approach to challenge Local Authorities to be both strategic and radical in the ways they use capital investment to stimulate educational improvement.
Another advantage of this approach is the way PfS has exercised effective control over the scope, flow and cost of the programme in a way that could not be done by individual Local Authorities. This includes profiling projects and potential spending up to 2023 (when they hope to have finished every secondary school), and managing the introduction of new Local Authorities and projects into its programme.
Ministry of Defence (MoD)
The MoD has a strict culture of programme management disciplines across its procuring agencies. The MoD's Private Finance Unit oversees a diverse range of PFI projects managed by different teams. The projects include equipment, training and simulation, accommodation, and housing, water and sewage. The Unit's role is to provide corporate assurance on projects and support the teams managing these projects, whilst each project sits within its own home programme governance arrangements.
Yet the Private Finance Unit also takes a programme approach to its role, attempting to benefit from the synergies in the procurement and contract management processes and to develop the learning and links between projects. The Private Finance Unit monitors all of MoD's PFI deals against 12 key criteria (or critical success factors). The Unit sits on the individual project boards, providing value-added advice and assurance at key points. The Unit also has corporate responsibility for reporting information on its PFI programme to HM Treasury and others.