Ministry Of Transport Business and Output Plan

What we did:

The Ministry of Transport contracted Allen + Clarke to lead the development of an Output Plan and a Business Plan for the 2011/12 financial year.  The form and shape of the Output Plan was designed to meet the expectations of the Minister of Transport, while allowing the Ministry to provide detailed information about the service performance for each output.  The Output Plan provided an overview of the work that would be undertaken in the 2011/12 year, how long it would take and how much it would cost.  This information was provided to the Minister in a succinct format that focused on key, high level information that would provide the Minister with a resource that could be used to undertake strategic discussions with the Ministry on progress against government priorities throughout the year.

The Business Plan expanded on the Output Plan and provided an overview of each individual programme of work.  The Business Plan was coordinated in a way that allowed it to be used as an internal business plan for the Ministry to track outputs against projections.  The layout provided the user with an overview of all work programmes assigned to a Ministerial priority, which team 'owned' each piece of work, how many hours it was forecast to take, the seniority of the staff required to undertake the work, and the budget for external expenses.

How we did it:

Allen + Clarke project managed the creation and collation of the information for the Plans, designed the layout of the Plans, and held the pen on the drafts and subsequent final copies.  We worked with the senior management team to ensure the final Plans met the Ministry's and the Minister's objectives, and collaborated with the communications team to ensure that the work met the Ministry's expectations for external documents.

Benefit for the client:

Using Allen + Clarke had two key benefits for the Ministry.  An external agency was better able to take a strategic view of the Ministry's outputs and organise these into a succinct format for external (Ministerial use).  In addition, using Allen + Clarke as external capacity allowed the Ministry to have staff dedicated to the project where otherwise they would have had internal staff juggling the work with a number of other projects.  The result was the creation of professional documents that received positive feedback from the Minister, senior management team and staff.