I spent a great morning with the Highways team at Chippenham last Friday - with Graeme, Steve and Nigel. They have been using systems thinking, or lean as it's sometimes called, to understand and redesign their pot hole repair service. This is a major priority for our customers and elected members alike. They showed me their current performance measures where they are now more than 100% more effective than before. They also told me about the positive effect on team morale because of the elimination of the large back log in work that they had - a back log that sometimes stretched right through the summer after a hard winter. It was very impressive stuff and a real reminder of how effective this approach is in driving up performance whilst reducing cost...
Scrutiny met this week to start to develop their forward work programme for Resources. As I have said before it is important to engage in high quality scrutiny to help the executive develop policy with us and to improve our implementation plans for that policy. Key areas for scrutiny over the next year or so will focus on customer access, HR and ICT amongst several others.
We held some meetings with partners from NHS Wiltshire and the Police this week to explore the budget situation over the next few years. We set out to start to identify areas where we can work more closely together to reduce cost whilst improving services and quality. It was surprising how close we were with our assumptions in terms of public spending contraction in the County moving forward, and also in terms of where the opportunities might be to collaborate on future work. This will be an important piece of work with some big rewards if together we can pull them off.
Have a great weekend and talk again next week.
Carlton
Friday, 25 September 2009
Friday, 18 September 2009
Friday 18 September 2009
Friday at last - the weeks seem to be flying by at the moment, and still England can't beat the Australians in the one day game. Last try on Sunday...
I am spending the bulk of today at the Chippenham depot with Graeme Hay and the team meeting staff and learning about the lean systems work that Highways have been undertaking during the last few months. They have completely redesigned the "pot hole" filling element of their work to make it faster in terms of filling holes that have appeared in our road system as well as filling more of them, increasing our capacity. This is very important for people in Wiltshire, indeed if you ask residents and members what their top issue is at present they often say the quality of our road surfaces. I'll let you know what I find next week.
My service directors and I spent half a day on Wednesday with the Scrutiny Management Committee - the group of members responsible for scrutinising the work we do in Resources and who will help us shape and develop policy moving forward. It was great to get to know some of the new members better and take them through our huge list of responsibilities, achievements and areas where we need to improve performance. They were very supportive of the efforts and results achieved to date by all staff within our team. I take scrutiny very seriously as I believe is adds tremendously to the robustness of our policies and actions plans and I encourage everybody in Resources to engage fully with this process. Councillors will be identifying their programme of scrutiny work next week and we'll share this with you in the coming weeks.
Thanks for reading and have a good weekend. Speak again next week.
Carlton
I am spending the bulk of today at the Chippenham depot with Graeme Hay and the team meeting staff and learning about the lean systems work that Highways have been undertaking during the last few months. They have completely redesigned the "pot hole" filling element of their work to make it faster in terms of filling holes that have appeared in our road system as well as filling more of them, increasing our capacity. This is very important for people in Wiltshire, indeed if you ask residents and members what their top issue is at present they often say the quality of our road surfaces. I'll let you know what I find next week.
My service directors and I spent half a day on Wednesday with the Scrutiny Management Committee - the group of members responsible for scrutinising the work we do in Resources and who will help us shape and develop policy moving forward. It was great to get to know some of the new members better and take them through our huge list of responsibilities, achievements and areas where we need to improve performance. They were very supportive of the efforts and results achieved to date by all staff within our team. I take scrutiny very seriously as I believe is adds tremendously to the robustness of our policies and actions plans and I encourage everybody in Resources to engage fully with this process. Councillors will be identifying their programme of scrutiny work next week and we'll share this with you in the coming weeks.
Thanks for reading and have a good weekend. Speak again next week.
Carlton
Friday, 11 September 2009
Friday 11 September 2009
This week saw the start of the Work Place Transformation Programme communications events - we held two sessions in Salisbury City Hall for all staff in the area who will be coming together in the new Bourne Hill facility next year. It was a good opportunity to explain where we are with the building project (topped out last week and ready to be handed over to us in March with staff moving in late next year), and the flexible working patterns that we will have to adopt to ensure we utilise that building to it's maximum capacity. There were many questions asked and answered and these will be posted on the internet shortly so that all staff can see them. Those questions that we couldn't answer yet will be subject to further work by the programme team to develop answers. I'd like to thank all those staff who attended both events. Further events are planned in Devizes, Chippenham and Trowbridge throughout the autumn. These sessions will focus on Phase 2 of the programme that addresses those three hub areas.
CLT met with the senior management team from NHS Wiltshire earlier in the week. You'll remember that we share a Joint Director for Public Health - Maggie Rae - between both organisations. The purpose was to explore how we could work together more closely in some service areas to improve performance in a joined up way and to reduce our costs. This is a key part of the councillors' vision - particularly the goal around working together with partners to support Wiltshire's communities. This is exciting and also supports the government's initiative on Total Place - where they want to see organisations such as councils, NHS, police, probation and the voluntary sector working much closer together to achieve better results for people and communities at lower costs. Wiltshire is at the front of some of this work, particularly in the areas of Children and Adults.
Have a great weekend, the weather should be good. I shall be watching England beat Australia in the cricket - in my dreams!
Talk again next week.
Carlton
CLT met with the senior management team from NHS Wiltshire earlier in the week. You'll remember that we share a Joint Director for Public Health - Maggie Rae - between both organisations. The purpose was to explore how we could work together more closely in some service areas to improve performance in a joined up way and to reduce our costs. This is a key part of the councillors' vision - particularly the goal around working together with partners to support Wiltshire's communities. This is exciting and also supports the government's initiative on Total Place - where they want to see organisations such as councils, NHS, police, probation and the voluntary sector working much closer together to achieve better results for people and communities at lower costs. Wiltshire is at the front of some of this work, particularly in the areas of Children and Adults.
Have a great weekend, the weather should be good. I shall be watching England beat Australia in the cricket - in my dreams!
Talk again next week.
Carlton
Friday, 4 September 2009
Friday 4 September 2009
This week has had the feel of a new term about it. The holidays are over and most people are back at work for Christmas term!
I'm feeling a little jaded this morning as some of us were working at the Southwick By-election last night. Caroline Rudland and the elections team did a great job (as always). My thanks go to all those who worked so hard last night. We received the ballot boxes by 10.30pm and had them verified and counted by around 11.40pm. As deputy returning officer I was then able to announce the results. Francis Moreland, an Independent candidate won, so congratulations to him. I always love working on elections as there is a real buzz of excitement. And of course the democratic process is so important to us working for a council. The next big election task will be the general election - with smart money currently on a May 6 date - so do please volunteer to get involved.
I chaired the board for the Work Place Transformation Programme this week. We reviewed where we are with the Bourne Hill build in Salisbury (on time and slightly under budget - a great performance by the property team) and also the follow-on phases for Trowbridge, Devizes and Chippenham. There are several communications events planned over the next couple of months so do please try and get along to whichever session covers your hub area. The Salisbury events are next week, Monday 7th and Wednesday 9th.
I met with the SAP shared services team this week to review where we are with the implementation, including budget monitoring, bank reconciliation, VAT, accounts receivable and the procurement issues; purchase order and invoice payment back log in some services. We're developing work plans to address these issues quickly and will communicate progress regularly. It's worth reflecting that almost all of the major programmes of this nature that I have experience of have these sort of issues after launch and the task for us as a team now is to get these understood and resolved quickly for our customers.
Talk again next week.
Carlton
I'm feeling a little jaded this morning as some of us were working at the Southwick By-election last night. Caroline Rudland and the elections team did a great job (as always). My thanks go to all those who worked so hard last night. We received the ballot boxes by 10.30pm and had them verified and counted by around 11.40pm. As deputy returning officer I was then able to announce the results. Francis Moreland, an Independent candidate won, so congratulations to him. I always love working on elections as there is a real buzz of excitement. And of course the democratic process is so important to us working for a council. The next big election task will be the general election - with smart money currently on a May 6 date - so do please volunteer to get involved.
I chaired the board for the Work Place Transformation Programme this week. We reviewed where we are with the Bourne Hill build in Salisbury (on time and slightly under budget - a great performance by the property team) and also the follow-on phases for Trowbridge, Devizes and Chippenham. There are several communications events planned over the next couple of months so do please try and get along to whichever session covers your hub area. The Salisbury events are next week, Monday 7th and Wednesday 9th.
I met with the SAP shared services team this week to review where we are with the implementation, including budget monitoring, bank reconciliation, VAT, accounts receivable and the procurement issues; purchase order and invoice payment back log in some services. We're developing work plans to address these issues quickly and will communicate progress regularly. It's worth reflecting that almost all of the major programmes of this nature that I have experience of have these sort of issues after launch and the task for us as a team now is to get these understood and resolved quickly for our customers.
Talk again next week.
Carlton
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