RESOURCES & STRUCTURES FOR PFI PROJECTS

This paper describes each of the essential roles within the contractors' team. Each role is described in a standard format: function; team role and resourcing level relevant to the various stages in a PFI process.

Potential Structure

PROJECT / BID DIRECTOR

A senior person in the contractor organisation. Should be directly accountable for "winning" the business. Probably has line management responsibility for the service once sold. Could "own" most of the resources required throughout the bid cycle and will have the authority to access/acquire the right people.

This is primarily an internal political influencing role. It should not be a full-time activity.

The Project Director takes overall responsibility for:

• Liaison with the Country or Operating Unit Executive.
• He/She attends the Divisions Executive Board meetings to ensure that the other members are aware of progress and issues.
• He ensures that their overall strategy for the Division is reflected in the project strategy.
• He prepares the executive for ultimate sign-off of the proposal by making them aware of the potential P&L, the risk management plan and the resourcing requirements.
• Chairing the Project Review Meetings.
• His role is to provide leadership and steerage to the senior members of the Bid Team.
• He does not manage the day-to-day bid activities.
• He is the approver of any major cost and resource request.
• He is the approval and decision point for any area of conflict over bid strategy, technical design or service provision within the Bid Team.
• Attending, (where necessary,) customer meetings

Reporting

He reports to the Board

BID MANAGER

The Bid Manager manages, (through his direct reports,) the day-to-day project activities.

"The individual to whom authority, responsibility and accountability has been assigned for the overall management of resources (including technical, time and cost aspects) of a project, and the motivation of all those involved".

British Standards Institute BS 4335 : 1987

Deliverables are as follows:

EXTERNAL

Proposal

Contracts

Third Party Agreements

Demonstrations

Reference site visits

INTERNAL

Bid/Proposal plan

Business Approval

Solution description

Owned work packages

Resource estimates

Schedule

Implementation plan

Dependency agreements

Budgets, Timescales, Prices

Bid File, options, assumptions, risks

Responsibilities are as follows:

Achieve proposal submission on time

Achieve required proposal quality

Manage inputs from various contributors

Co-ordinate work from sub-contractors

Manage the bid team

Ensure all bid functions are resourced

Monitor progress

Report to management

Attending, (where necessary,) customer meetings

The Bid Manager requires:

Appropriate knowledge

Leadership Skills

Interpersonal skills

Sales awareness

Technical appreciation

Project Management skills

The Bid Managers functions include:

Proposal Related

Co-ordinate input from all contributors

Solution description

Proposal, standards, structure, planning, presentation, production etc.

Logistics and support

Assembling review (red) team

Not Proposal Related

Managing the bid team

Monitoring progress and management reporting

Maintains customer interface

Market intelligence

Project costing

Commercial terms & conditions

Contract(s) preparation

Maintain bid file

Obtain business approval

Reporting

He reports to the Project Director

SOLUTIONS ARCHITECT

This resource must be familiar with Company products and services together with having and indepth knowledge of current IT and desktop operating systems and communications protocols. He must be experienced in presenting his proposed solutions both internally and in the customers environment.

Solutions Architect is responsible for:

• Solution design

Taking the Requirements Specification he will produce the outline Solution Design based on input from his Technical Designers, (Authorities,) and agree this with the Bid Manager and Contracts/Service Delivery Manager.

• Work Packages Specification

Following agreement on the outline design he will determine and document the work packages. Each work package will:

Have a unique owner and deliverer organisation (these should be the same)

Be written in such a way as to be appropriate to sit as an attachment to the main back-to-back subcontractor agreement this being an adequate description and definition of the product / service being procured by the Prime Contractor.

Will state clearly who does what, when and how. (Each Module will have a unique Project Plan (Gantt) attached).

The cost / price spreadsheet accompanying the Module will be broken down into the following sections:

Any initial set-up values

Values associated with any transition period

Steady state values

Each module will contain a quality plan.

Each module will contain information on how audits will be conducted both of the work module description itself and of the service / product being delivered.

Each module will detail the roles and responsibilities and reporting structure of the individuals involved.

• Cost estimates
• Evaluation of third parties
• Dependencies
• Risks & Assumptions
• Technical proposal text creation
• Volumes / chapters approval
• Attending, (where necessary,) customer meetings.

Reporting

He reports to the Bid Manager.

SERVICE DELIVERY / CONTRACTS MANAGER

The Service Delivery or Contracts Manager is involved in the proposal production phase of this project only in as much as he provides the link between the bidding and delivery phases. He must give his approval to all outputs produced by the Technical Design Authority (as he will be responsible for delivery once the contract is won). Therefore his role is to:

• Approve all TDA outputs
• Participate in "Red Team Reviews"
• Contribute to the Technical Design (using his local knowledge and experience)
• Attend, (where necessary,) customer meetings.

Reporting

This resource reports to the Board.

PROJECT OFFICE MANAGER

He must have a knowledge of PRINCE and be familiar with project planning tools (Microsoft Project, PMW etc.)

He will have worked on similar scale Telecomms and IT related projects.

The Project Office Manager is responsible for:

• Maintenance of Project Plans and identification of resource conflicts
• Infrastructure acquisition and space / equipment / facilities allocation
• Documentation and publication of project standards and procedures
• Design and implementation of document control applications
• The documentation and chasing of internal actions
• Time and cost recording
• Management of the infrastructure support staff
• Management of the administrative support staff
• Internal meeting management, minuting and circulation

Reporting

The Project Office Manager reports to the Bid Manager.

NEGOTIATIONS TEAM MANAGER

Previous experience has shown that a dedicated head is required for this role.

The role is probably full-time depending on the customers meeting schedule.

He should have the following attributes:

• Selling, interpersonal and negotiating skills
• Strong administration and Project Management abilities
• Tenacity in driving completion of customer generated actions
• Knowledge of IT, comms, general procurement and PFI
• Experience of working with this Company on similar projects

The Negotiation Team Manager is responsible for:

• Scheduling customer meetings and ensuring the availability / attendance of Bid Team staff
• Rehearsing customer meeting attendees and defining their roles and limits of authority during the meetings.
• Tracking customer generated actions and ensuring responses are of a high quality
• Controlling, (via the document management database,) the customer correspondence section of the Bid File.
• Managing site / reference visits

Reporting

This person reports to the Bid Manager

SALES ACCOUNT MANAGER

The whole of the time from issue of the OJEC advert through to BAFO is not about in-depth commercial, or legal negotiation, (if recent history repeats itself). It is all about selling. The risk here is that commercial and legal considerations can, if allowed to, take over the primary customer interface. This risk should be recognised from the outset and plans put in place to prevent it. The sales role is of paramount importance and as a consequence the sales interface should be as strong, skilled and experienced as possible.

The Sales Account Manager is responsible for:

• Production of the Win Strategy
• Determination of Win Price
• Generation of the sales messages and Win Themes
• Understanding and mapping our solution onto the customers Basis of Decision
• Generation of the political plan
• Mapping our senior execs onto customer and Government staff to influence them
• Understanding the risks and generate the Sales section of the Project Risk Register
• Attending, (at all times,) customer meetings

"The most common cause of losing bids is inadequate competitive analysis".

Collection and publication of Market and Competitor intelligence will be gained from:

• The customer
• Consultants
• Industry & professional contacts
• Interviewing / recruiting competitors staff
• Internal marketing dept
• Our own staff

Reporting

The Sales Account Manager reports to the Bid Manager.

LEGAL MANAGER

The Legal Manager is responsible for ensuring that the overall, end-state T’s & C’s together with any supporting schedules are acceptable to Group Contracts. He is a gatekeeper. His advice and guidance to the Bid Team is essential and can only be ignored or over-ruled by the Project Director after due consideration. He does not have the right of veto over any project decision.

The legal resource will be required:

• To approve any capability statement submitted prior to the response to the Output Base Specification.
• To vet and approve the Proposal as part of the Red Team
• To attend customer meetings, (when approved by the Customer Meetings Manager and the Sales Account Manager) during the period between proposal submission and BAFO.
• To review all Commercially or Legally sensitive correspondence, (including Schedules) on receipt from and prior to submission to customer.
• To attend customer meetings, (when approved by the Customer Meetings Manager and the Contracts / Service Delivery Manager) during the period between BAFO submission and Award of Contract.
• Generate the Legal section of the Project Risk Register

Reporting

He reports to the Bid Manager

FINANCE MANAGER

The Finance Manager is responsible for:

• All cost build activities both internal and from sub-contractors.
• Production of appropriate financial / investment case data for submission to approvals board.
• Identification of risks and issues and proposal of a plan / alternatives to address these
• Tracking and reporting of bid costs via a control system

Reporting

The Finance Manager reports to the Bid Manager.

SUPPLIER RELATIONSHIP MANAGER

This role does not come into full-time operation until Award of Contract. The role of the Supplier Manager is to manage all sub-contractors and ensure, with the help of the:

• TDA, (who defined the requirement against which they quoted,)
• Contracts / Service Delivery Manager, (who determined the SLAs,)
• Finance Manager, (who agreed the prices,)
• Legal Manager, (who agreed the T’s & C’s) and
• Quality Manager, (who defined the processes and procedures against which the sub-contractor operates) to ensure that the suppliers are managing their activities to a recognised quality and technical standard according to our agreement, to cost.

He manages the Vendor appraisal procedure by:

• Issuing reference assignments to validate capabilities
• Investigates reputations
• Completes commercial investigations
• Investigates capacity capabilities
• Assesses potential commitment
• Obtains conformance statements
• Makes recommendations on choice of sub-contractors
• He manages the sub-contractors section of the project Risk Register and reports on performance and issues.

Reporting

He reports to the Bid Manager.

PERSONNEL MANAGER

The Personnel Management role will be required to manage any TUPE of customer staff and also to ensure adequate resourcing of internal project requirements.

The role requires and in-depth knowledge of current employment law and experience of TUPE and Union negotiation.

Reporting

The Personnel Manager reports to the Bid Manager

PROJECT ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF

Ideally these resources (2) will be sourced from within the Company. They should have an in-depth knowledge of existing Company people and procedures. Their standard of output, (letters, documents, admin control procedures etc. ) should be excellent. Timekeeping is extremely important. Any history of illness, (especially stress related incidents,) should rule out selection. Operating in this area, at the beck and call of almost all team members for long hours can be extremely stressful.

Two resources are required:

• a secretary / PA with experience on all elements of the current version of Microsoft Office plus scanner and text retrieval software. He/she will work directly for the Bid Manager as his assistant but will support the output generation requirements of all other team members.
• a more technically capable person working as the Project Office Assistant who will take responsibility for answering other project team members requests for IT support and controlling both incoming and outgoing documents via the database and physical store.

Their tasks and responsibilities will be further expanded by the Project Office Manager and Bid Manager on appointment.

Reporting

These two resources will report as detailed above.