System Replacement in Planning and Building Control
| Be First were a relatively new organisation set up by the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham (LBBD) to become a market-leading provider of urban regeneration services.
The organisation wanted to build on strong foundations to become a more commercially focused organisation. In Planning and Building Control the team were keen to improve productivity and performance through better processes and a culture that emphasised accountability and individual responsibility. The service had a strong sense that they were limited by their system and wanted to explore options to move to a technology platform that enabled improved performance and productivity and enabled an agile working culture that focused on outcomes. |
The Role
We were asked by Planning and Building Control to carry out a strategic review of the service with a view to improving the resilience of the team, productivity of team members and the effectiveness of key systems and processes.
Following this review, Be First decided to explore options to replace their core system and to use the outcome of the process to relaunch their service. 31ten drew upon our System Migration Toolkit, completing each of the four stages in the cycle. This included:
Business Case and Governance: Developing and governing the business case for system replacement through the project lifecycle.
Procurement and supplier management: Horizon scanning, soft market testing and support to manage the procurement process. Contract management support of the current and new supplier including throughout data migration, testing and operational readiness.
Data migration and testing: Designing and delivering the data migration approach including scoping and implementing digitisation and archiving solutions within the statutory framework. Design of the testing approach and support to officers to ensure robust testing and bug fixing.
Staff engagement, functionality and configuration: Change management with staff to co-design new roles and ensure change readiness. Creation of ‘digital operating manuals’ to support organisational resilience. Support to enable functionality and configuration in a timely fashion.
Key Outcomes
Moving to a culture of performance and accountability based on openness and transparency was an enormous change for Be First. The impact has been:
- Improved staff morale and actively working culture values by the whole organisation
- Improved productivity, flexibility and resilience of staff
- Transformed the customer experience by enabling self-service
- Improved relationships with, and active management of, partners and suppliers
- Significant financial savings
31ten have been instrumental to the delivery of this project. We worked brilliantly together as a team and I have complete trust in every single person at 31ten. I really appreciated their proactivity and I don’t think we could have achieved this massive shift without them!
Caroline Harper
Chief Planning Director, Be First Regeneration
