Context

During late 2013 the shareholders of the Ogier legal group, at the time 800 staff operating in 10 jurisdictions, sought to carve out the fiduciary aspects of the business. The total deal value was published as £180m, and a fixed period of 18 months to separate the companies was contractually established.

The Head of IT at Ogier engaged CBO with a requirement for an independent Programme Manager to manage the entire IT separation, a programme that consisted of 37 projects.

CBO’s Approach

Our work included the following key deliverables:

• Developing the required programme governance, including a Steering Committee with both vendor and buyer representation;
• Developing and managing the 18-month separation plan;
• Programme budget development and management;
• Managing programme risks;
• Managing programme resources;
• Creating the appropriate Project Framework to enable project managers to successfully deliver the 37 projects within the programme.

On programme inception CBO worked to consolidate the programme and establish a team of project managers and business analysts to deliver the 37 related projects. Project management standards were established and published, with a particularly strong emphasis on the governance surrounding sign-off of each Project Initiation Document (PID).

It was essential that project specifications, PIDs, budget and resource plans were captured in detail before being signed off by the two nominated representatives from the companies. This resulted in a very well-defined programme from a relatively early point, with less than a handful of change controls across the entire programme.

Resource planning was managed at a detailed level by CBO to ensure that internal resources would be available during specific periods when the large volumes of off-island suppliers were on-site.

CBO’s Impact

CBO were engaged by Ogier, not only as best-in-class local suppliers of project and programme management expertise but also thanks to the successful delivery of other similar M&A programmes in recent years.

CBO assisted Ogier in identifying the key programme risks and means of mitigating them, prior to the signing of the deal documentation. Once this initial exercise was considered complete and mitigations had been captured in the deal documentation, CBO set about establishing a full Programme Delivery Framework within a matter of weeks.

CBO drew upon their experience and well-established toolset to drive the programme through its initial phases ahead of schedule, working in close conjunction with the project managers to ensure quality remained high at this critical point within the programme lifecycle.

The programme was delivered successfully and also five months early against the original timeline of 18 months for separation.

It was also delivered at more than 5% under budget. This as primarily down to the strong programme governance established by CBO from the outset, including consistent project management standards used across all 37 projects.