APM Presents - Friend or enemy? Understand the basics of assurance
•Download as PPT, PDF•
1 like•3,082 views
This presentation was given by the Assurance SIG at APM Presents... project management in practice on 16th October 2014.
Recommended
More Related Content
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (20)
Similar to APM Presents - Friend or enemy? Understand the basics of assurance
Similar to APM Presents - Friend or enemy? Understand the basics of assurance (20)
More from Association for Project Management
More from Association for Project Management (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
APM Presents - Friend or enemy? Understand the basics of assurance
- 1. APM presents... Assurance Session led by Roy Millard, Senior Audit Manager, Transport for London, and Chairman of APM Specific Interest Group on Assurance & Mark Reilly, Auditor, Transport for London, and APM Specific Interest Group on Assurance
- 2. What will we do today? • Overview of assurance • Thinking time: – What do you know and think about assurance? • What can you take to your business? 18 Oct 06 2
- 3. Who am i? • Fellow of APM and Member of IET • Over 30 years experience of engineering projects in PPP, PFI, partnering, joint venture, consortia and conventional contracting environments. • Project engineering, risk management, project management and assurance. • 1983-2002 – Racal / Thales & subsidiaries. Military & civil radio communications systems. • 2002-2014 – Transport for London. Leading assurance over project, procurement and contract management. • 2007-2014 – APM Volunteer. Assurance SIG 18 Oct 06 and Audit Committee. 3
- 4. Who am I? • Chartered Civil Engineer • Nearly 20 years experience across a range of sectors and disciplines. • Advising and providing assurance to global companies and organisations on the deliverability of their capital programme portfolios • Worked for a FTSE-50 company, Big 4 consultancy and Major Public Sector Transport Authority 18 Oct 06 4
- 5. What is assurance? • P3 assurance The process of providing confidence to stakeholders assurance n. Emphatic declaration, guarantee; self-confidence, assertiveness; insurance esp. of life; certainty. (Source: The Pocket Oxford Dictionary.) "Glamour is assurance. It is a kind of knowing that you are all right in every way, mentally and physically and in appearance, and that, whatever the occasion or the situation, you are equal to it.” - Marlene Dietrich (actress, 1901-1992) that projects, programmes and portfolios will achieve their scope, time, cost and quality objectives, and realise their benefits. noun 1. the act of assuring “In God we trust. All others, bring data.” (2. Source: the state APM) of being assured; sureness; confidence; certainty 3. something said or done to inspire confidence, as a promise, positive “Assurance is two-t-h Wird sE oDf esmucincge s(sa.c”a -d Gemaeicli,c1 p90ro0v-e1r9b93) “One unerring mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.” - John Locke (philosopher, 1632-1704) statement, etc.; guarantee (Source: www.yourdictionary.com) 18 Oct 06 5
- 6. What we are often asked? • I need to know that everything is under control? • Is what I am being told is correct? • I am going to get what I want? • Will the project going to finish on time and within budget”. • If things are going horribly wrong and should I can the project!? 18 Oct 06 6
- 7. Who provides assurance Internal Audit External Audit Quality Assurance Health & Safety OGC GatewayTM Independent Assurance PMO/PMCoE Reviews Control Self Assurance NAO Standards Systems Project Audits Contract Audits Peer Reviews
- 8. And who receives this assurance? Internal Audit Project Boards / SROs Programme Boards Public & media External Audit Quality Assurance Health & Safety OGC GatewayTM Independent Assurance PMO/PMCoE Reviews Control Self Assurance NAO Standards Systems Project Audits Contract Audits Peer Reviews Audit Committees Sponsors MDs & Directors Governing Bodies Shareholders
- 9. Assurance information is only useful if it helps you to make sensible decisions! 18 Oct 06 9
- 10. Time for you to work 18 Oct 06 10
- 11. What do we want you to do? Consider the following 3 questions: • What is and what isn’t assurance? • What factors make assurance successful? • If you were writing or buying a guide to assurance, what would you expect to be in it? 1 December 2010 11
- 12. What is and what isn’t assurance? • Have you had any experience of assurance? • Who provided the assurance? • What form did it take? 1 December 2010 12
- 13. What factors make assurance successful? • What would you want to get from assurance? • What would the outputs be? • How would it engage with your project? • Who would undertake the assurance activity? 1 December 2010 13
- 14. If you were writing a guide to assurance, what would you include in it? 1 December 2010 14
- 15. Assurance where you work 18 Oct 06 15
- 16. 3 lines of defence model for assurance 18 Oct 06 16
- 17. Assurance map Assurance Map Sources of assurance Source 1 Source 2 Source 3 Source 4 Source 5 Source 6 Source 7 Source 8 Risk 1 ● ■ ● ■ ● ■ ● ■ Risk 2 ● ■ ● ■ Risk 3 ● ■ ● ■ ● ■ Risk 4 ● ■ ● ■ Risk 5 ● ■ ● ■ ● ■ Risk 6 ● ■ ● ■ ● ■
- 18. Remember: assurance is glamorous! 1 December 2010 18 "Glamour is assurance. It is a kind of knowing that you are all right in every way, mentally and physically and in appearance, and that, whatever the occasion or the situation, you are equal to it.” - Marlene Dietrich (actress, 1901- 1992)
- 19. Thank you 18 Oct 06 19
- 20. This presentation was delivered at an APM event To find out more about upcoming events please visit our website www.apm.org.uk/events
Editor's Notes
- As people attending an event of the British Quality Foundation, I’m sure that you do no need me to stand here and explain to you what assurance is about. However... If I asked you, I bet there would be a variety of answers. They wouldn’t contradict but neither would they quite agree. Here are some perspectives. <CLICK> Add to this the more colloquial use of the term to describe a particular activity in a particular organisation (e.g. intrusive project reviews), and it is easy to see how people can end up talking at cross purposes. One person’s “assurance” is another person’s “audit”. When one says “assurance”, another hears “trust”. The answer is to adopt a very broad understanding. In that way the risk of missing an important aspect is minimised. Adopting a broad definition brings another challenge, though: that of understanding their interactions. For major projects, and for organisations with major investment programmes, this challenge is a very significant one, even to the extent that satisfying all aspects of the assurance animal actually and ironically threatens project success. Within any organisation, one can identify all of the various providers of assurance. Doing this can be rather alarming and eye-opening. But it is an essential start to developing an integrated approach. <CLICK>
- Right, returning to the topic, one of the difficulties when talking about assurance is that people mean different things by the term. People know that they want assurance but what that actually means to each individual, depending on their role – or stake in the project – can differ appreciably. In essence, they are all really asking the same question: is the project going to successful? But they need the answer articulated and focussed in a way that is specific to them. For some, the technical and performance aspects of the project is all that they are interested in. For others, it is how much it is all going to cost that is paramount. They are all right, of course, and approaches to assurance need to make sure that all their needs are catered for. To use a much overused term, assurance provision needs to be done holistically. The trouble is, different assurance mechanisms tend to be set up to meet one specific group of stakeholders’ needs, like: engineering assurance looking at technical aspects; cost assurance looking at value for money; finance functions looking at financial controls; and operational assurance looking at fitness for purpose. All of these tend to work in silos, ignoring inefficient overlaps, and sometimes even conflicting with each other. There is generally very little that is holistic about it. What’s needed is some form of integration, led by a party that has no allegiance to any particular flavour of assurance. PMOs have a role to play in this, I think. In my experience, there is no standard way to achieve this integration. It will depend upon size of organisation, complexity of projects, characteristics of stakeholders, and many other factors. What’s needed is not a standard solution but a standard approach to developing tailored solutions. Before we can develop a solution, though, we need to fully understand the assurance picture. Let’s start with the word “assurance” itself. <CLICK>
- All of these you will probably recognise. Some of them are obviously involved in projects. But some of them are less so. For example, where does Internal Audit fit in? What has control self assurance got to do with projects? Furthermore, do processes provide assurance? And systems? Already the picture we are building is starting to get quite complex. Now, if we overlay on that the customers of assurance…<CLICK>
- …and the picture becomes even more complex. Add to that that some of these customers are themselves providers of assurance to others, and a nightmare picture can quickly emerge. A convenient example to reflect on is that of delivering the London2012 Games. According to the then Head of Risk assurance at LOCOG, there were 44 distinct bodies in the most independent area of their assurance map! Unless a way can be found to organise all this, <CLICK> the result is likely to be somewhat frustrating to anyone whose job it is to actually deliver stuff! Someone needs to take responsibility for doing that coordination, or at least for making sure that it happens. In most project organisations, an obvious contender would be the PMO, and I’d like now to present some thoughts on that to you. <CLICK>
- The model goes like this. An organisation undertakes activities and by doing so is subject to a number of risks. <CLICK> In order to control those risks, the organisation’s management introduce ‘controls’, such as management systems, polices & procedures, and standards, to try to ensure that things are done in a particular way. <CLICK> This is known as the organisation’s First Line of Defence against the risks. Having introduced these controls, management needs to ensure that people are following them properly. For this it introduces compliance functions, like Quality Assurance, Risk Management and PMOs. <CLICK> This is know as the organisation’s Second Line of Defence. There are usually then other functions that are imposed on management, such as Internal and External Audit, and in the case of Transport for London the Independent Investment Programme Advisory Group that I mentioned earlier. <CLICK> This the Third Line of Defence. Whereas the first two lines are sequential, the third line tends to oversee the whole picture of risks, control and management assurance. This is, I am sure you would agree!, an interesting model but in itself it does not help much. It is very important in helping us to understand the relationships between assurance providers, and where a particular function ‘fits in’ but something else is needed for it to be of practical use. That ‘something else’ is ‘assurance mapping’. <CLICK>