Success Stories

Helmsman's single-minded focus on supporting organisations to achieve better project and program outcomes is illustrated in these typical success stories and client feedback.

Major Project Recovery

• ARH Tiger Helicopter Project:
  Review of the Tiger Attack helicopter project. A $2.2b project to manufacture and deliver 22 attack helicopters to the Army for initial deployment in Afghanistan. Helmsman was engaged jointly by the Defence Materiel Organisation and by Australian Aerospace to review and improve the delivery operations and provide recommendations to recover the project which was running ~18 months behind schedule. Helmsman was successful in reducing the delivery forecast by at least twelve months (33%) and ensuring no additional slippage. The project is now holding ground and achieving the key milestones required by the Army.
• ANZ global rollout:
  ANZ was rolling out a new banking system across 28 countries, but the implementation timeline had blown out and it was not clear how integrity would be maintained across countries and sites. Developed a new approach with the project team that reduced time to deliver by more than 40% and was based on implementing a fully defined and supported operating model.
• FFG Upgrade Project
  Review of the FFG upgrade project. A $1.2b project to upgrade the missile and warfare capability on the Adelaide class frigates. Helmsman was engaged to review and reset the project to accelerate delivery to meet the re-baselined schedule, and to realise benefits in line with the vendor’s objectives. Assisted the vendor to identify and resolve the key issues impacting the schedule. Reviewed and redesigned the project delivery approach to accelerate project completion by 12 months. Advised and coached senior project management around the new delivery approach. Reset the engineering change management and commercial approach of the vendor.

Governance and Portfolio Assessments

• Woolworths – portfolio governance
  Developed a benchmark of Woolworth’s governance mechanisms to oversee their project portfolio. The report has resulted in the request to assist with the roll out of the recommendations. Critical to the success was Helmsman’s ability to align senior stakeholders and demonstrate value contributing to the bottom line.
• Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO) – procurement portfolio complexity assessment
  Review of project complexity across the DMO's $8b pa asset procurement portfolio. Benchmarking against other industry sectors enabled the relative complexity of the DMO portfolio to be quantified. The review also identified important project complexity drivers that are not addressed by traditional project management approaches.

Project Health Checks

• RailCorp
  Helmsman is an approved project health check review panel member and has provided a number of diagnostic reviews for RailCorp, which focus on project performance improvement. These reviews are based on a quick turnaround and the engagement of key people in understanding the findings and developing the recommendations. The reviews therefore result in commitment to specific actions rather than producing lengthy documents that become yet more "shelfware."
• Tenix
  Helmsman conducted a series of project health checks for a major systems integration project being undertaken for a State Government. The initial health check identified the need for a major reset of the project and a subsequent health check was used to track the progress of the reset. The Helmsman methodology supported by online Navigator tools provided the rigour and consistency needed to accurately measure changes over time. The framework also provided insights and structure which enabled key Executives to engage in the reset and mobilise the required resources.

Capability Development

• ING Australia - portfolio governance system
  Developed a new project portfolio governance system for INGA’s most complex projects to increase transparency - resulting in less surprises and better results. The engagement included design of a holistic operating model including behaviours, processes, methodology and templates.
• Suncorp – governance and execution capability
  Reviewed Suncorp’s governance, project management and business analysis capability to provide recommendations to move to best practice. Helmsman has also been engaged to design and implement the revised governance and capability frameworks.
• Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO) – sustainment complexity assessment tool
  Following a Helmsman review of the complexity of the DMO's sustainment portfolio - maintaining the capability and availability of Defence assets - Helmsman developed and deployed a web-based sustainment complexity assessment tool for the DMO. This self-service tool enables the DMO to regularly measure and analyse sustainment complexity across some 80 different asset pools. This assessment is a critical input to on-going efforts to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of sustainment activities across the DMO.

Client feedback

86% of Helmsman Clients have given an engagement score of 7 or above on a scale of 1-10.

63% score Helmsman as an 8 or above.

“Refreshing the way Helmsman came across, very focused”

“Although a highly complicated and technical issue, it became obvious what was needed (based on Helmsman’s work)”

“(The) best aspect was the Helmsman capacity compared to other organisations”

"We had a very large project that was at risk. They were the key to our turnaround"

"The combination of experience and a strong methodology was very compelling"