With the end of 2017 fast approaching, we asked the UK's top civil servants to look back at the year, outline their goals for 2018 – and tell us what they cannot do Christmas without
What are you most proud of achieving in 2017?
Some of the country’s most complex projects are being delivered by a cadre of over 10,000 project delivery professionals in government.
In 2017 we supported this profession by publishing a new project delivery capability framework and project delivery standards. These tools provide a common language and perspective on jobs, grades and skills for the first time, and will help project delivery professionals manage their careers. It was a major milestone in our ambition to build project capability across government and one we are most proud of.
What was your most difficult decision in 2017?
It is widely accepted across government departments that there is a need to prioritise, particularly given the additional resource requirements that EU exit requires. This year the IPA has worked with departments to raise the importance of prioritisation of projects and programmes and help them to make some of these difficult decisions using our cross-government view of the project portfolio.
What are your organisation’s top priorities in the year ahead?
Improving the delivery and performance of major infrastructure projects will be a huge focus for the IPA next year. As the government continues to increase its investment in infrastructure, our ability to deliver projects more efficiently will become more important.
So far we have worked hard to establish strong working relationships with the construction industry and we will be furthering our efforts in 2018.
For you, no Christmas holiday is complete without...
Well, Christmas is of course a time for me to be with my family but it also wouldn’t be complete without falling into a few ‘project pitfalls’ of my own. Our lifelong project, renovating and restoring our house in Suffolk, always brings us some Christmas trials and tribulations that we will be sure to miss when the house is complete.