Advancing the Profession Award
Julie Tague, Project Delivery Centre of Excellence, Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
Set up DCMS' first central project delivery team with distinct professional, portfolio, assurance and change functions. These teams worked at pace to upskill and professionalise the department in a wide range of project delivery areas, securing delivery for a range of high priority programmes. This improved the department’s project delivery maturity, led to more SROs completing the Major Projects Leadership Academy (MPLA) and ensured every DCMS project has exited the GMPP on green or amber/green.
Martina Blake, Head of PPM Centre of Excellence, UK Space Agency, BEIS
Martina has been the central pillar to creating and rapidly maturing the Project Delivery function, singularly developing and implementing a PPM Centre of Excellence, tenaciously advocating for the Profession, and demonstrating unrelenting commitment to supporting, mentoring, and advising colleagues across government. Her passion and dedication have burned brightly in developing a growing community of professionals to over 100 (one third of UKSA), and she has created a truly supportive culture across government.
Sarah Harris, Project Delivery Resourcing and Capability Team, UK Health Security Agency, DHSC
Built a fledgling community of practice (CoP) and a professional recruitment service fully aligned to the Project Delivery Capability Framework to improve the calibre of applicants and increase the standing of the profession in the organisation. This, in turn, provided strong leadership and a sense of belonging to the profession during a period of organisational change.
Defence Project of the Year Award
Maritime Multi-Link Programme, Royal Navy, MoD
The Royal Navy’s rapid delivery of Tactical Data Link (TDL) capabilities across complex warships, under considerable technical and operational pressures, and a demanding customer to enable the UK to be interoperable with UK Defence, NATO and Allied partners. Success achieved through strong leadership, learning and adapting quickly, and sustained loyalty from stakeholder across Defence to rapidly develop, integrate, test and prove First of Class installations.
Security and Data Protection Project Team, Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
The initial scope was to identify improvements to the previous Responsible for Information (RFI) training package, a mandatory piece of learning that everyone in the Civil Service, including contractors and temporary workers, must complete. The mandatory training provides a baseline of understanding of security procedures for all government workers and is used in audits to demonstrate the effectiveness of our strategic training, education and awareness plan.
Digital Change Project of the Year Award
Digital Planning Programme – Planning Software, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities
The programme's ambition is to enable a modern planning system that leverages value from data and digital technologies to provide better services for citizens. The team has demonstrated that innovative planning of software services - designed around users and data-led approaches - can be co-created with central government, Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) and the private sector.
Session Solution, NHS Blood and Transplant, Department of Health and Social Care
The project addressed a range of process and technology-based issues impacting its blood donation supply chain and workforce, with associated risks to donors and patients. Despite Covid-19 challenges, the project delivered a modern solution, within budget, in the form of a new IT infrastructure and donation management software, improving near-real-time session data flow and connectivity from collection teams to NHSBT centres and other systems.
Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) Reform Programme, Home Office and National Crime Agency
The SARs Reform programme is designed to transform the system used to report, analyse, and act on money laundering and terrorist financing intelligence. It includes uplifting staff capacity, legislative change, and transforming a legacy IT system used by 5,000+ private sector organisations, the UK Financial Intelligence Unit, and 72 law enforcement agencies and other government departments. The programme has already delivered major benefits to fighting serious and organised crime in the UK and is recognised for best practice in stakeholder engagement in a complex stakeholder landscape.
Diversity and Inclusion Award
Hannah Leggatt, Fairness, Inclusion and Respect Ambassador, HS2
Hannah worked to drive and lead forward the principles of Fairness, Inclusion and Respect (FIR) not just within HS2 but also within the wider construction industry. Hannah knows that challenging bias and creating fairness and equity for all is the key to future success, and that to be a leader you have to be prepared to fight for what you believe in.
Ministry of Defence LGBTQ+ Allies Programme
Volunteers from across the Ministry of Defence, operating in very different types of working environments, worked together above and beyond their normal job role to establish and embed a Defence-wide LGBTQ+ Allyship programme. The programme’s Recognised Authentic Allyship workshops were delivered to over 1000 colleagues across Defence and they showcased lived experiences of LGBTQ+ colleagues and the challenges they have faced, recommending tools that individuals can use to promote Allyship.
'Supporting Autistic Colleagues' Series, Cross Government Autism Network, CO
The Fast Stream Autism Spectrum Network, a volunteer team of Autistic Civil Servants initiated the creation and delivery of four workshops in April 2022 (Autism Acceptance Month) called 'Supporting Autistic Colleagues'. Their aim was to promote acceptance and understanding of Autism, boosting colleagues' and line managers' confidence in how to support and create inclusive workplaces for Autistic Civil Servants. Over 2,600 Civil Servants from 34 non/ministerial departments have attended sessions.
Infrastructure Project of the Year Award
Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
A major programme, with a complex series of local, national and international stakeholders, which was delivered in a compressed time scale, against a fixed deadline and came in under budget. The event was successful commercially and it demonstrated our ability to deliver complex projects to an international audience. It also left a lasting legacy for the local community in Birmingham.
Project Jupiter, UK Health Security Agency, DHSC
Delivered the UK’s largest PCR testing laboratory, built at a record pace, to contribute in the future to the UK’s life sciences sector. At full capacity, the lab was capable of processing 200k samples every day. This was against capital and operational demands within challenging timescales to operate a facility.
Project Delivery Team of the Year Award
Contact Engagement Programme (CEP) Business Readiness Team, HM Revenue & Customs
The team built a business readiness model to be shared across departments. This enabled the delivery of a new telephony service to HMRC, VOA and the Adjudicator's Office. 23,000 staff across 11 business areas needed to be ready for the change to ensure the seamless transition of service handling 45 million calls.
Police Uplift Programme, Home Office, National Police Chiefs’ Council and College of Policing
The challenge to recruit 20,000 additional police officers in England and Wales has been met head-on by this comparatively small but dynamic project team. Their investment in building strong relationships across stakeholders has already paid back, both in terms of building trust and gaining insight, which is supporting the recruitment of police officers to protect the public now and in the future.
Second-Generation Search and Rescue Aviation Programme (UKSARG), Maritime and Coastguard Agency, DfT
The programme was established to replace current search and rescue aviation assets for the whole of UK. Rather than replace like for like, the Programme tasked itself to deliver ground-breaking change by innovatively using current service data to help form the new requirements, as well as drive savings and innovation by using novel technology, alongside preserving and enhancing lifesaving search and rescue capabilities.
Rising Star Award
Alicia Wilson, HM Prison and Probation Service, MoJ
Alicia is working as a Project Manager for the Rapid Deployment Cells project (RDCP), and although she joined the team with limited knowledge of project delivery has quickly grasped the role and ensured the timely and efficient delivery of the project. Alicia’s superb communication skills, stakeholder management, and collaborative approach are a credit to her, as well as her resilience and commitment to delivering the project. She has brought stability and direction in a time of uncertainty for the project.
Ashlea Boardman, HM Revenue & Customs
Joining as an EO during Covid, Ashlea has achieved incredible outcomes in only her first year at HMRC. Although working across multiple initiatives, in particular, she was tasked with leading a piece of work to design and implement a new framework to effectively manage a problematic security project. Engaging with multiple stakeholders including external contractors she designed and implemented a framework which implemented numerous new ways of working to automate several manual processes with multiple lessons learned, communications, reporting, and people engagement tools (e.g., surveys) ensuring the best use of IT, continuous improvement, and resource efficiencies.
Lula Cassell, HM Prison and Probation Service, MoJ
Lula has been working in her role as Project Support for the Small Secure Houseblocks Project, for just over six months. She has integrated into the team seamlessly and proven herself to be a talented project delivery professional in a short time. Lula has shown herself to be a confident communicator who builds strong working relationships with colleagues. Lula has provided excellent support to the project resulting in a Green rating during a recent Gateway 2 review.
Transformation Project of the Year Award
Contact Engagement Programme Business Readiness Team, HM Revenue & Customs
The programme is a major GMPP transformation programme made up of multiple phases, supporting HMRC’s ambition to become a Trusted and Modern Tax and Customs Authority. It delivers new ‘best in breed’ technology and processes to transform HMRC customer service processes. To date, the programme’s digital solutions have generated 4.8m webchats & 3.7m digital assistant interactions realising £5.3m in cost avoidance benefits.
Future Border and Immigration System Programme Management Unit, Home Office
The programme is an ambitious transformation programme, combining high complexity with delivering significant change for everyone who interacts with UK immigration or crosses the UK border. It enables a fully digital end-to-end experience for customers applying online for visas, going through proving their identity, border crossing status and any entitlements.
Sustainable Farming Incentive, Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
One of the new environmental land management schemes being introduced under the Agricultural Transition Plan designed to incentivise and reward farmers to manage land in a way that improves food production and is environmentally sustainable. The project adopted a user-centric approach, automating eligibility checks and validating user data to encourage take up, which reduced the application processing time from nine months to under two weeks.
