Getting with the programme

ExCeL (London International Exhibition Centre) is a fast track £250m project currently being built on a derelict 40ha site on the northern side of Royal Victoria Dock in London's Docklands. Scheduled to open its doors late this autumn, it is destined to be a world class, state-of-the-art conference venue.

The project only had 21 months to transform the location into a harbour-side development including a range of hotels, cafes, restaurants, nightclubs, and the Royal Victoria Gardens.

Billed as the largest London venue on a single site, ExCeL aims to be Europe's first totally integrated Smart venue and will include mobile business centres, a dedicated media centre along with internet and intranet applications based on the latest technology.

With vast amounts of information flying around, ExCeL needed a sophisticated project management system.

"Project management is based on knowledge management and knowledge management is about empowering people at different levels within an organisation," says Michael Bowkis, ExCeL's chief information officer.

The project commissioned Programme Planning Professionals (Pcubed), based in London, to undertake the entire programme management.

A Premier Partner of Microsoft, Pcubed believes it is one of the most experienced users of Microsoft's project management software.

"More than five million people world-wide use Microsoft Project to help their businesses respond effectively to challenges," says Paul Driver, president of Pcubed's international operations.

To make ExCeL more manageable, the project has been broken down into four functional master plans. These comprise the master construction plan; the high level services plan, the event management plans and the human resources plan.

Two software tools installed by Pcubed are Project Central and Microsoft Project 2000.

Microsoft Project 2000 has a web-based companion called Microsoft Central, which Pcubed says has the ability to view the project information at a level which is intended to be appropriate to each use. Project Central allows information to be shared over the internet/intranet via a web browser, which means it is available to a wider audience than was available before.

"The level of complexity is phenomenal and as a consequence we require sophisticated software tools to underpin a pragmatic project management methodology," says Bowkis. "Microsoft Project 2000 and Project Central allow us to control the project portfolio and facilitate the delivery within our tight budgetary and time constraints."

With Project 2000 and Project Central, Pcubed claim senior management can access status reports and monitor project progress at high level plan detail.

"What I am looking for is what used to be called quick and dirty information, certainly the ability to play 'what if' games," says ExCeL's chief executive, Iain Shearer.

It is anticipated that 150 events will be held at the venue annually, each one with a planning lead-time of around 18 months. This means there can be 50 or so event organising companies operating within the planning process at any given time.

Additionally there are service companies and other stakeholders such as the local authorities involved in this process.



With Microsoft 2000 and Project Central the Pcubed management team can share information with all these stakeholders, allowing each of them customised views of their own data.

Added to which, with an undertaking the size of ExCeL, change is expected.

New opportunities arise which the venue will need to take advantage of, so Pcubed's project managers have had to incorporate changes throughout the project.

The ability to create customised groupings has enabled the project managers to simply 'slice and dice' information. Through Project Central each stakeholder has been defined as being part of a group and, based on the individual's requirements, this regulates access to the project information.

It is also possible to group tasks or resources in the same way and customise information and information summaries.

By integrating Project Central features with Outlook 2000 and the suite of Office 2000 applications, Pcubed believes the system can provide management information at the right level and on time. A digital dashboard has also been developed to provide a strategic management information system which Pcubed says meets the requirements of the executive management.

"Through Project Central, Project 2000 will interface back into Microsoft Outlook and the digital dashboard which makes it a complete tool set," says Alf Raju, Pcubed project manager.

Project 2000 also has the ability to customise fields. For example it is possible to define fields using criteria determined by the project managers.

Based on formulae, graphical indicators aim to provide easy identification of exception reporting. According to Pcubed, highlighting fields in this manner enables all users of Project 2000 and Project Central to clearly see when aspects of a project are not going as planned.

"Microsoft provides much more efficient tracking, which is important in such a complex project and it's done in a very graphical way," says Raju. "This has the benefit of allowing the project management team to locate any potential trouble spots very early on."

Keith Greetham believes that successful project management is essential to business efficiency. "Without project planning tools and professional project management we would not have been able to perform at the level we need to. We are ahead of schedule and under budget."

Pcubed believe the partnership between the project management professional and the software provider is essential to developing effective tools, and the company is in no doubt that the work carried out with Microsoft has contributed to the successful project management solutions at ExCeL.