Management System at the Swedish Transport Administration

The case study describes the creation and implementation of a management system for 6000 employees during the construction of Sweden's biggest government agency - Trafikverket.

Background

The government decided in 2009 to strengthen the state's system management role within the transport area by establishing a new authority - Trafikverket (the Swedish Transport Administration). This meant, among other things, that Vägverket and Banverket (the Swedish National Road and Rail Administrations) would be incorporated into the new authority.

The Organisation

On 31st March 2010, Vägverket and Banverket merged and on 1st April 2010, Trafikverket was created as a merger of the two old authorities. The two organisations had 6000 employees altogether and their operations turned over around SEK 40 billion annually.

The Challenge

Despite the fact that Banverket and Vägverket were both infrastructure managers and government agencies, they were also essentially entirely different organisations, with different ways of working, cultures and values. In addition, Banverket was affected by more comprehensive legal requirements (safety authorisations) which to a certain extent had formed Banverket's organisation and decision management  approach. Over the years, collaboration had taken place between the two authorities, with work characterised by clear areas of responsibility with regard to traffic laws, roads and railways.

In addition, both authorities had for a long time had their own management system. These management systems were both characterised by different approaches, due to cultural differences and values in the organisations.

One of the many challenges for the project was to use the directive provided by the client to lay the foundations for a joint management system for Trafikverket prior to its start on 1st April 2010.

In brief, the project was to develop a number of critical deliveries, including operation-wide work flows (process mapping of the whole of Trafikverket on a general level), the structure for the whole management system on the intranet with associated responsibility, decision and work organisation for Trafikverket, and much more. Important legal requirements also had to be ensured by the project, such as the requirement for safety authorisations for railways, government regulations and risk management. The project's goal was to create the best possible conditions for Trafikverket to be able to construct a uniform and effective management system that would contribute to achieving goals and fulfilling all commitments.

Further challenges were that 20 other preparatory projects were in progress prior to the construction of Trafikverket, including IT-coordination, communication- and personnel coordination. In total there were approximately 500 project members spread across these 20 projects.

This was a project environment that set extreme demands on the project management team to coordinate, plan and delegate project work across the ex-authorities.

The challenges were many, and included resource provision, maintaining quality of project deliveries, boundaries with other projects, communication to employees and upper management about the project, and anchoring of the project results.

CANEA’s approach

A team from CANEA, together with two expert teams from Vägverket and Banverket, comprised a project management group. The group had the task of planning and guaranteeing the project's critical deliveries prior to the launch of Trafikverket in April 2010.

CANEA took on the project manager role and together with the expert teams developed a comprehensive and well-defined work breakdown structure (WBS). In total there were 26 sub-projects and to each sub project were linked a manager, a team and one or more milestones.

To lead and follow up the project from a project management perspective, adapted templates were developed so that each sub-project manager could produce a description of their subproject. The templates included:

1. Purpose, description and boundaries
2. Resource requirements and estimated work input
3. Dependencies on other sub-projectsand external projects
4. Milestones
5. Definition of part-deliveries including a description of the delivery, acceptance criteria for the delivery, completion date and recipient.

 

In addition, a joint production model (which came to be called the "GEL methodology") was also introduced in the project in order to:

• ensure that all project participants worked in similar ways
• facilitate follow up of quality in the results produced

 

The production model was implemented in all 26 sub-projects.

In accordance with the production model, each work package should deliver the following documents:

1. Requirement description – Contains details regarding the requirements set for the sub-project
2. Solution description – Contains a summary of the inventory, the solutions considered, the solutions chosen, those who have done the work, how and by whom the review has been done, and the final result.
3. Result – Depending on what was delivered (for example: routine, role description, process map, etc.)

 

With the assistance of the phases in the figure above and the work structure, the project management group could effectively follow up progress per sub-project and then illustrate this in an effective and easy to understand manner for the project's key interested parties.

Results

The project contributed to laying the foundations for an effective and userfriendly management system which is:

• Customer-oriented and effective.
• Usable in daily operations.
• Easy to understand for all Trafikverket employees.
• Clear and shows the whole of Trafikverket.
• Constantly developed to constantly improve Trafikverket.
• A model within the public sector.
• ISO certified within the areas of quality, the environment, occupational health and safety and information security.
• Integrated with, and an important part of, Trafikverket's intranet.
• Based on "best practice" from the respective authorities.

 

CANEA implemented this by ensuring more than 40 deliveries containing routines, role descriptions, process descriptions and more.

The project succeeded in delivering more than was initially required in the project directive, on time and within given cost frame.

One reason for this was that the project adapted work inputs based on the needs implied by the starting of Trafikverket.

Based on the 40 deliveries, there were one or two deliveries that were particularly important since they laid the foundation for continued quality and operational development work within Trafikverket:

• Structure and responsibility for all process and areas of knowledge within the management system – The structure was a condition for the construction of the whole intranet and based on that structure it was possible to distribute responsibility per area in the management system. This structure and clear division of responsibility is the foundation for continued work and management of Trafikverket's management system.
• Decision and work organisation for the whole of Trafikverket.
• Management control model – Based on the structure and responsibility per aspect of the management system.
• Operation-wide work flows – These work flows are described in a process map that summarises all customers and deliveries that are critical for Trafikverket.