Alistair Godbold
Senior Programme Manager, NATS
Presentation Summary
A Journey to World Class Project Management
NATS ensures the safe passage of over 2 million aircraft through the UK’s busy skies every year. NATS’ project management teams are responsible for delivering a £1billion investment programme which will provide our air traffic controllers with the most up-to-date air traffic control systems and tools to deal with the increasing volumes of traffic.
NATS has tried a number of different approaches to improve its project management capability, but it is the most recent approach that has delivered the best results.
The key thing we have learned from our experience is the importance of driving long-term and sustainable change by using a road map to make gradual planned changes to the organisation, rather than taking one single leap, this has to be aligned with the development of the culture of the organisation. A key enabler for this is the sponsorship of projects and their governance.
As well as developing our project management capability NATS has integrated Executive sponsorship into all of its programmes through a number of mechanisms;
All of this has involved the training and education of the Executive, managers and project staff to make allow these to work together.
The presentation will explore NATS’ journey along this path to develop its Project Management capability and its governance by the Executive, highlighting key lessons and experiences.
