GRAHAM HOOPER assistant chief constable of the National Policing Improvement Agency

“Two years ago the national policing landscape was confusing and crowded with several different organisations. Local forces weren’t being supported as efficiently as possible, so we decided to create a single national agency that would make things more effective.

“Policing is complex and there are a number of stakeholders involved, so a new kind of project management was essential. We had to build a unique business model from scratch – one that addressed past problems.

“We worked very closely with consultants at Serco, who frequently paused to ask if they were going in the right direction. Taking apart the old problems allowed us to build something new and create a model we still use today.” MARK BASSETT the head of property at Northamptonshire County Council

“We were operating an old-style property team and struggling to demonstrate that our supply chain represented value for money – the design wasn’t fit for the purpose.

“Hedra worked alongside the corporate procurement team, using frameworks from the Office of Government Commerce to procure property services and minimise risk.

“We didn’t develop detailed specifications because we didn’t know what we needed or how much it would cost. Instead, we asked providers to make recommendations – using their expertise to tell us, for example, how often a building needed cleaning. That saved us considerable time. We did in months what some organisations take years to get right.” ARCHIE HUGHES chief executive of the Defence Aviation Repair Agency

“We brought in consultants to help us to transform the way we repair and maintain the RAF’s fleet of VC10s, for which we had just won a contract.

“Bourton put a team of three consultants into our maintenance hangar, giving them direct access to managers. We also appointed internal champions to help the change along.

“It was a very successful project. We used to take 107 days to do a major aircraft maintenance. Now it’s 90 days. We have made the process much more effective by reducing waste, making us more competitive.

“The consultants were good at transferring the skills to our staff and have now left the project. Our VC10 team is now recognised as a benchmark overhaul and repair provider.” JULIA TAYLOR priority programme director for the No Delays programme at the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement

“Cutting waiting times from referral to treatment down to 18 weeks is a transformational goal for the NHS in England. The Department of Health asked us to support hospitals in achieving this and the No Delays Achiever was the result: a web-based tool that analyses patient data to provide strategies for reducing waiting times.

“There are more than 45 million sets of patients’ data on the website and there are now more than 1,000 NHS managers using it, so No Delays has been a massive project.

“From the start we were impressed with Capita’s ideas. We worked together seven days a week and they consider their customer’s reputation as important as their own.”

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