The Government’s new Project Delivery Capability Framework webinar - Questions and answers APM Benefits Management Specific Interest Group (SIG) Thursday 30 November 2017 presented by Tony Seigel and Mark Sutherland, Infrastructure and Projects Authority hosted by Merv Wyeth, APM Benefits Management Secretary The link to the write up page and resources of this webinar https://www.apm.org.uk/news/the-government-s-new-project-delivery-capability-framework-webinar/ http://bit.ly/apmbenefits Twitter #apmbenefits @apmbmsig

1. Benefits Management
Specific Interest Group (SIG)
The Government’s new
Project Delivery Capability Framework
webinar
Questions and Answers
Thursday 30 November 2017
Speakers from Infrastructure and Projects Authority
Mark Sutherland Tony Seigel

2. Questions and Answers
Please note that the answers given here are the opinions of the people concerned,
who are experienced practitioners and they do not necessarily reflect the guidance
in the APM BoK or other text books.
1. Are there any plans to offer the GOST, under licence, to the Private Sector?
The GOST tool is hosted on an IBM tool which allows organisations to create their own capability
frameworks. We have adapted the tool to reflect our Project Delivery Capability Framework.

3. Questions and Answers
Please note that the answers given here are the opinions of the people concerned,
who are experienced practitioners and they do not necessarily reflect the guidance
in the APM BoK or other text books.
2. Recognising that the PDCF was developed by the UK government, to what extent can it be
used and applied by private companies not engaged on UK government work?
The PDCF is available online via the GOV.UK website. It can be used by private companies. All we
would appreciate is that it we are acknowledged if your company uses it. If you need support to
develop your own version we can provide contact details for consultant who helped us to develop it.

4. Questions and Answers
Please note that the answers given here are the opinions of the people concerned,
who are experienced practitioners and they do not necessarily reflect the guidance
in the APM BoK or other text books.
3. I noticed that "agile project management" is mentioned 56 times in the pathways document
- is this now a mainstream competency?
Agile is not one of our competencies but we capture 'agile' as one of our experience of types of
project worked on. We also offer agile project management courses through our training provider.
The Government Digital Service Academy (which supports the Digital Profession in Government) also
offers a range of agile training. Looking forward we are considering how we might integrate Agile and
more traditional methodologies to optimise project delivery.

5. Questions and Answers
Please note that the answers given here are the opinions of the people concerned,
who are experienced practitioners and they do not necessarily reflect the guidance
in the APM BoK or other text books.
4. Does IPA become involved in recruitment?
We manage large scale recruitment campaigns that span a number of Government Departments. In
addition Departments also run their own recruitment campaigns.

6. Questions and Answers
Please note that the answers given here are the opinions of the people concerned,
who are experienced practitioners and they do not necessarily reflect the guidance
in the APM BoK or other text books.
5. How are you planning to encourage and communicate with the smaller government
departments to follow this framework?
We have engaged with all the main Government Departments. They are responsible for the
implementation within Departments and any Arms Length Bodies. If any smaller Departments
agencies want to know if they are signed up then please email projectdeliveryprofession@ipa.gov.uk

7. Questions and Answers
Please note that the answers given here are the opinions of the people concerned,
who are experienced practitioners and they do not necessarily reflect the guidance
in the APM BoK or other text books.
6. Does this align to SFIA for grading?
SFIA uses 7 levels for grading, The PDCF and Skills Tool uses 4 (Awareness, Working, Practitioner,
Expert). These are common terms used across Government Professions. In addition we have
included a None (Awareness) level too.

8. Questions and Answers
Please note that the answers given here are the opinions of the people concerned,
who are experienced practitioners and they do not necessarily reflect the guidance
in the APM BoK or other text books.
7. How can people get access to the Skills portal?
The contract for the Skills Tool is managed by the Infrastructure and Projects Authority. We bulk
purchase licenses and transfer licences to individual Departments and Arms Length Bodies who want
to use the system. An annual license is required for each user. Unfortunately we can't make licenses
available to users outside of government through our contract.

9. Questions and Answers
Please note that the answers given here are the opinions of the people concerned,
who are experienced practitioners and they do not necessarily reflect the guidance
in the APM BoK or other text books.
8. Will the Framework develop future leaders and leadership to deal with the complexities of
public projects to help solve wicked problems?
The Framework signposts to the Leadership Programmes managed by the IPA; the Major Projects
Leadership Academy (run through Said Business School, Oxford University) and the Project
Leadership Programme (run through Cranfield University). In addition a number of individual
Departments are running (or in the process of developing) their own leadership programmes for staff
below those of the 2 IPA managed programmes.

10. Questions and Answers
Please note that the answers given here are the opinions of the people concerned,
who are experienced practitioners and they do not necessarily reflect the guidance
in the APM BoK or other text books.
9. How do you keep the judgement of competencies objective?
It is always harder to determine an objective level for a behavioural competence than a technical
competence. The behavioural competencies should be used as a guide and is something that we
hope will provoke constructive discussion between project staff and their line manager. We cover all
roles from Specialist through to top end Leadership roles. You will notice that behavioural skills
increase significantly in the high end Director level leadership roles and technical skills often top-out
at the upper level Management roles.

11. Questions and Answers
Please note that the answers given here are the opinions of the people concerned,
who are experienced practitioners and they do not necessarily reflect the guidance
in the APM BoK or other text books.
10. When you were rolling this out - how did you win and hearts and minds / engage people on
the competency framework to make people want to use it?
Our quote of the project came from someone who I spoke to in one of our departments. They said
'We don't want to be Civil Servants working on a project. We want to be Project Professionals
working in the Civil Service' This is a fundamental shift of mindset and about being valued, being
part of something bigger (the profession) and being able to see how you can develop a career in
project delivery. We hope we are getting there, time will tell. The most compelling part of this is that
every word in the PDCF was written by gov. project professionals for gov. project professionals. And
we have made it as simple as possible for people to engage with.

12. Questions and Answers
Please note that the answers given here are the opinions of the people concerned,
who are experienced practitioners and they do not necessarily reflect the guidance
in the APM BoK or other text books.
11. How does the framework improve the connection between policy and practical 'boots on
the ground' issues and the circumstances to deal with loose /tight arrangements to deal with
day to day issues?
The PDCF has given us a common currency across government and will help with recruitment and
movement of staff between departments and very importantly the development of specialist skills
such as, Planners, Benefits Managers etc. Alone it does not help bridge the divide or transition
between Policy and Delivery but we have programmes and other strategies for dealing with these
issues.

13. Questions and Answers
Please note that the answers given here are the opinions of the people concerned,
who are experienced practitioners and they do not necessarily reflect the guidance
in the APM BoK or other text books.
12. How will you keep this relevant and maintained?
Sustainability is key to the success of the tool being relevant and maintained. We have established
formal governance around both the PDCF and GOST to ensure changes/improvement are discussed
and agreed.

14. Questions and Answers
Please note that the answers given here are the opinions of the people concerned,
who are experienced practitioners and they do not necessarily reflect the guidance
in the APM BoK or other text books.
13. Will an organisation be able to draw reports from the assessment tool to gain an overview
of their staff's capability levels across the board (resilience of an organisation as a whole)?
Organisation reporting is a key element of the tool. It will enable us to get an overarching view of
capability across organisations. This can then help tailor learning interventions, identify new courses
for the curriculum, identify experts who can run masterclasses etc. The tool is hierarchical so a
manager can see the people who work for them, a PM can see the whole project team, a department
can view the whole department and we can see across the whole of government.

15. Questions and Answers
Please note that the answers given here are the opinions of the people concerned,
who are experienced practitioners and they do not necessarily reflect the guidance
in the APM BoK or other text books.
14. Will the development opportunities be financially resource or mandated against particular
roles?
The development opportunities are suggestions, none of them are mandatory against specific roles.
One of the points we are making that in addition to paid courses there is lots of development
opportunities which have low or no cost.

16. Questions and Answers
Please note that the answers given here are the opinions of the people concerned,
who are experienced practitioners and they do not necessarily reflect the guidance
in the APM BoK or other text books.
15. You mentioned 100 people involved with the development of this tool. How many person-
hours did that equate to?
We had a working group comprising of individuals from the seven largest Departments who devoted
a couple of days a month over a 12 month period. In addition other colleagues reviewed content,
tested the competencies and job roles and provided feedback.

17. Questions and Answers
Please note that the answers given here are the opinions of the people concerned,
who are experienced practitioners and they do not necessarily reflect the guidance
in the APM BoK or other text books.
16. What's your recommendation if your manager isn't a project professional and isn't clear
about how valuable (or not) the development learning suggested by GOST?
For most individuals their manager will be a project professional. Where they are not, the
endorsement of skills can be undertaken by a project professional instead.

18. Questions and Answers
Please note that the answers given here are the opinions of the people concerned,
who are experienced practitioners and they do not necessarily reflect the guidance
in the APM BoK or other text books.
17. Will government CS Project Delivery job specs be increasingly looking for evidence of
PDC framework competencies rather than the Civil Service Competency Framework
competencies in job applicants?
We have already started using the PDCF competencies in a number of our cross-Government
recruitment campaigns.

19. Thank you for your
engagement with this
webinar and
this QandA session.

20. These questions were raised
during a presentation delivered at
an APM webinar
To find out more about
upcoming webinars please visit
our website
www.apm.org.uk/events