Government Project Management Software

Cora for Government

Cora's solution for Government Project Management software requirements consolidates all information required to make better-informed decisions, budgetary adjustments, service changes and project prioritisation.

Both Central and National Government and other Public Sector Bodies have many key challenges when delivering a programme for government or a Local Regional Development Plan. They have a huge variance in the types of projects. Public capital projects are always intended to deliver a wide range of social and economic benefits from enhancing well-being and quality of life to improving and increasing the effectiveness of service delivery and/or enabling more environmentally sustainable development They have huge public scrutiny and are constantly under pressure to weigh up the quality of project deliverables against the pressure of demonstrating value for money.

Cora’s solution for Government Project Management software requirements provides central government departments and local authorities with a solution that manages their project portfolios, costs of projects and resourcing from a single web–based platform. It pulls together project information, real time financial information, spatial (GIS) data and can fully integrate with many other systems. By examining these components, the user can make informed business decisions around budgetary adjustments, service changes and even project prioritization.

Good Governance

Good governance processes throughout the lifecycle of capital project delivery are essential if cost overruns and delays to completion are to be avoided. Cora PPM is a centralised, proven, web-based Project Management & Control system used in Local and National Governments worldwide to ensure the correct steps are taken to plan, run and close public projects. Its governance over schedule, risk, issues, changes, milestones, resourcing, finances and other project health items in an easy-to-use interface shows why it is the number one choice for the public sector. However, the putting of such processes in place will only work effectively if the relevant information is captured in a central repository, synthesised into management reports and escalated appropriately to enable timely decision making. A centralised project management system is essential to provide an auditable trail, that remains accessible and readily retrievable, from start to finish, of all key decisions made and which will mitigate corporate memory loss over the lifecycle of the project from key personnel mobility.

Risk - Get the Full Picture, Instantly

The early identification of risks and issues and the analysis and evaluation of these and their potential to impact costs and the delivery schedule are essential steps in any public sector project. Using Cora PPM Public Sector Bodies can easily put in place measures to eliminate, manage or mitigate risks and issues and therefore minimise their impacts.

Business Case Development

Public bodies face challenges in developing robust business cases for capital and other projects where the benefits are not necessarily quantifiable in monetary terms. They need to be able to demonstrate that the best value for money is being achieved while meeting the project’s objectives. It contains several insights into how public sector bodies can develop a robust business case that remains valid throughout the delivery of the project.

Benefits Realisation

The Benefits Realisation module of Cora PPM, identifies upfront, all the benefits that a project will deliver. This with the Business Case Smartforms can be used to develop a robust business case that remains valid throughout the delivery of the project. The benefits are not always financial in nature – it could be a reduction in travel time of a commuter on a new rail system, an improvement in the quality of water for a water scheme. They look at a project long after its completion to ensure it delivered its benefits.

Change Management Control

How many times have you heard of a Public Body project, that has run out of control, is now overspent by twice the original budget and is still not under control? A lot of organisations have them, but struggle to control them. Cora PPM plugs its Change Module directly into the Costbook for the project. Its forecasting module show s the original estimate, plus a month-by-month forecast to the end of the project. No longer does a Public Sector body have to wait until the end of the project to find out there was a problem. With Cora PPM, users now have early-warning tools that give them time to correct the project before it reaches the end.

Project Prioritisation

Most public sector PMO’s are faced with the issue of too many projects to do, too many people lobbying to have their project done and no data-driven method to demonstrate transparency when choosing a portfolio of projects to implement Cora PPM removes many of the arguments, and the politics, from decisions by providing a decision-making framework around selecting and evaluating projects. It helps with the removal of “dogs” – projects that absorb money and unlikely to deliver value, identification of “Stars” – projects that will deliver over-and-above the expected benefits and save hours of arguments and political interference as all decisions are data-driven and auditable. Hunches and individual preferences are removed from the equation and the Public Sector Body is now focused on spending public taxpayer’s money to provide the best return possible.

Tender Planning and Control

A badly run tendering process during the Pre-Construction phase, the Construction Phase or indeed the post-Construction phase can lead to costly delays, legal challenges or even a stopped project. Often such mistakes are made because the tendering process isn’t known fully by the person running it. Cora PPM allows the various tendering processes to be set up (e.g., different processes for different project values), workflow to ensure the correct people are taking the correct steps at the correct time. At all times data on each step of the process is gathered with solid governance. This helps either reduce or eliminate any legal challenges there may be to a tendering process, reducing delays with data-driven answers.

Statutory Process Management

The delivery of capital projects in compliance with planning and environmental legislation is quite challenging for public bodies in particular. Managing compliance with the various statutory processes that have to be complied with from inception through to completion of a capital project is a minefield to guide employees through. Cora PPM provides a framework so that public sector bodies can develop robust processes to manage statutory process compliance to avoid delays throughout the delivery of the project.

Freedom of Information, Ministerial/Parliamentary Questions

The stuff of nightmares for most Public Sector bodies! Such an enquiry can take six weeks to respond and has many potential trap doors. Was a similar question asked recently in a slightly different way? Will our answers be consistent? Are we correct in what we said? Did we follow the process correctly? What can we redact and what is OK to release? Cora PPM provides Smartforms that capture project data. Reporting by fields becomes very easy to do – filtering out the fields that are either not required or that can be easily redated. The big advantage Cora PPM brings when answering FOI and M/PQs is the consistency of data – one source with many ways of “slicing-and-dicing” the data to provide the required answers. All of this saves Public Sector Bodies significant time and effort – allowing them to concentrate on what they need to most.

Financial Control and Evaluation against original estimates

The Project Controls module in Cora PPM focuses on the Cost Book and everything that feeds into that cost plan from original estimates, to forecast, actuals and commitments, estimate at completion, Value of Work Done (VoWD), Accruals, Risk Cost, Early Warning costs, Change Request costs, Earned Value, Estimate At Completion and more. They provide robust governance throughout the project lifecycle, demonstrating that the best value for money is being achieved while meeting the project’s objectives.

The 7 Lenses of Transformation

Did you know that Cora PPM aligns with the UK Government’s “7 Lenses of Transformation”, – a practical guide for understanding complex transformations called which aims to assist departments and agencies in delivering the projects.

In a special report from Cora Systems’ Solutions Architect Tom Davies that looks at the alignment in more detail

Client Testimonials

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“The Cora system is so adaptable. We can get information effectively and easily, which allows us to intervene at an early stage if there’s a problem with delivery of the project.”

“The implementation and use of Cora PPM has been a significant step forward in enabling us to record, control and manage the portfolio of projects in Technology and Change. We now have several other area of the organisation interested in using it to manage their own projects.”

“We are happily using Cora to manage the portfolio of projects that makes up our £1.7bn Superfast Program, and our £294m Local Full Fibre Networks Program. It works well at a low level for project planning, risk and issues, change logs, benefits tracking, weekly reports, etc. Then the PMO can roll up and summarize that low-level data into a full program/portfolio view.”

Find Out More

Request a demo to find out how Cora PPM can help transform your organization

Our Cora PPM Brochure contains details about the functionality, success stories and more

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Awards

Cora receives Excellence in Project Management Solutions Award

Cora has been announced as the winner of the Excellence in Project Management Solutions Award by The Public Sector Magazine

August 27, 2019

Powering Best-Practice Enterprise PPM

Cora is a worldwide leader in providing enterprise project and portfolio management solutions to global organizations and government agencies. We give users from project management to C-level the control, governance and insight to make better decisions. Every day, over €20 billion worth of projects are managed on our platform, supporting hundreds of thousands of users around the globe. We’re headquartered in Ireland, with regional offices in Dublin (Ireland) Bedford (London, UK) and San Jose (California, USA).

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