David Wood

Wednesday October 15th

The head of PPI has looked at my CMB paper and added comments. While there are a lot of them I understand why. I fell down the trap of being too brief in the report for CMB. It is a fine balance when writing for CMB between too much and too little. I complete the changes and the report is sent out to CMB. I do further research into CAA – after the head of PPI says I am going to be a guru on CAA I feel in it is important I am – CAA dictionary.

Tuesday October 14th

I am in work for 8am two days running this is definitely a first – I love my bed but also my life so 8.30 is normally the earliest I am in. This allows me to leave reasonably early but while still having enough time to enjoy my bed – I am definitely not an early bird! I get in and work on the CMB report. It should be a quick job but as often happens Microsoft Word does not see it that way. I have to spend time mucking around with the layout and trying to get tables to behave!! I leave approx 9am to see my external mentor – A director of Cambridgeshire County Council. Although I have notice the train times have changed I am going to be late. I hate being late. I call him up to inform him I am running late. I get there but unfortunately will have about 40 minutes only as he has an important meeting after. That will teach me to be late. Although it is the most productive 40 minute meeting in my life. I have only met my external mentor twice but each time I learn a lot. I walk back to train station – there is no train for about an hour. That is the only problem with being environmentally friendly -it costs you time. It takes half an hour longer each way plus any waiting time. I get back to work at 2pm. I catch up on some further reading relating to CAA and update my placement co-ordinator on training I would like. Write my NMT blog then it is time to go for a drink with the new NMTs and some former NMTs.

Monday October 13th

I am in work early 8am (I am normally not in until at least 8.30). I continue work on CMB paper until 9.30 am when I got to meet the two new NMT’s. We have a quick chat before moving to a room booked for the day. Each new NMT at our council has two days of meeting managers from the council. Over the two days they meet approximately 10 managers from across the council (most are senior managers). I help out with induction till after lunch when I complete my CMB report. I emailed a version of CMB paper to my boss – but explain an updated version will be sent to him before 9am in the morning. I could have stayed later but I normally play football on Mondays and have not been for several weeks due to work and sometimes other reasons. But I am determined to make football this week and I do!!! I finish at about 5.30pm.

Friday October 10th

I am still working on the CMB report and making good progress. But it needs to be done by the close of play on Monday. This does not give me much time as our new NMT’s are starting on Monday and I am helping with their induction. I leave the office after 5pm. I am now too frequently breaking my religion of never leaving work after 4pm on a Friday.

Thursday October 9th

Another day another dollar or should that be pound? Today I was given a new task, This involved writing a paper for the councils Corporate Management Board (CMB). Specifically there was an improvement plan as part of the last CPA assessment. My task was to find our progress and write a report to update this progress. The report needs to be short as the audience is the CMB. The majority of the areas in the report required me to find out who was the correct person to get an update on progress. This was not easy but as you work in the council you build up networks and this was an ideal opportunity to use these networks.

Wednesday October 8th

After completing a lot of reading it was time to get down to my first proper task. This was drafting a letter to Suffolk’s Chief executives Forum. This would explain briefly about CAA and the next steps. This is because unlike CPA CAA has an area assessment component. This is where an area such as Suffolk is assessed against a number of different measures such as how safe the area is. CAA also contains an organisational assessment for public bodies such as councils. The assessment of CAA does not take place until April 09 and there needs to be work done prior to this to collect evidence and raise awareness of CAA. In addition to this task, my boss explained that I will be involved in conducting a workshop for Assistant Directors from the council, and another separate workshop for the Chief Executives Panel.

Tuesday October 7th

My first day in my new placement – Planning and Performance Improvement (PPI). I am working on Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA, replaces current assessment system, CPA).It was going to be nice to meet new people. But I was also lucky that I knew a lot of people from my first placement. After a restructure a lot of people moved to strategic centre which is focused around different departments that support service offices such as children and young people. Most of today was spent reading documents that the head of PPI had sent me.

Monday October 6th

Today I am going to Harrow for the London PPM forum. And while the council I work at is not in London the forum is sharing the love. In all honesty the reason I am there is because I am a facilitator for the Programme and Project Management (PPM) communities of Practise (CoP). Today’s focus is on structuring programmes for success. It was interesting learning about the maturity levels of different PPM departments in organisations. I was not aware that there was work done in this area. Another lecture I found interesting was about how effective project management can be in generating savings and capabilities. It was even more interesting because the council acted like the FBI stating the importance of keeping the slides secret. I am yet to find anything sufficiently interesting on the slides to be worried about. After the forum had finished we had a meeting with PPM CoP facilitators. We talked about how we would take the PPM CoP forward and increase member participation. We currently have over 300 members; the PPM CoP facilitators are responsible for developing the CoP, approving new members etc. The PPM CoP has a newsletter and forthcoming hotseat, document library and discussion area. After finishing our meeting I made my way home. It had been a good day and it was nice to catch up with a fellow NMT who is also a facilitator for the PPM CoP. I decided to get the tube to Stratford and get my train back to Ipswich from there. Big mistake it took an hour to get to Stratford from Harrow and just missed a train which meant I had to go back to Liverpool Street. C’est la vie I knew I should have got the train to Euston – the earliest train is not always the quickest train. Got back to Ipswich 7.30 pm roughly 30 minutes later than if I had court the other train, 20 minute walk to my flat and I was back.

Thursday/Friday 2nd/3rd October

I had two flexi days for the rest of the week. This is one of the best things about the council, getting all your hard work back in time off. And I needed it as I was moving flats!! I also got a call to tell me whether I had made the development centre. Unfortunately I did not get in but I was told that I was first reserve if anyone pulled out. Apparently they talked about me a lot, it still feels gutting to know I was so close and yet rejected. But I know I have learnt a lot and look forward to my feedback. Why is it you always learn more when you faiI? I always knew it would be tough as I had only been at the organisation a year and I certainly felt I was the most junior applicant.

Wednesday 1st October

Today I just sorted out all my emails and finished off my final job of the placement. The final job was creating a project plan for the Communications Workstream for the IPT Programme.

Tuesday 30th September

I applied to get onto the councils Leadership development programme. As part of this I had to take part in a development centre and the day was finally here. I had to take part in three different tasks: a group exercise, a presentation with Q&A and a written exercise. The first task was the group exercise. It went okay but I feel like individual ideas were ignored, also that people lost focus on the task and my performance helped ensure we delivered to the brief. The second task was the written exercise. I felt I did okay but was a few minutes off completing a table. Also I wrote the report too much like an essay but was pleased with the points I raised. My final assessment was the presentation. This went okay but I felt I could have leant it all off by heart (if I can do this for amateur dramatics why not use this skill at work). In addition I missed a few points I wanted to cover, though I was within time. In terms of the Q&A I felt I did well but could have applied my Warwick experiences. Overall there were 40 places but 90 made it through to the development centre (120 applications in total). I found it harder than the NMT assessment centre as you knew what the IDEA were looking for. Also everyone was a graduate, at the development centre it felt as though I was the most junior person there. Tasks were marked out of 5 and I marked myself 3 out of 5 for all.

Monday 29th September

I am coming towards the end of my placement. I am working hard on finishing off my communications strategy for the Integrated Passenger Transport (IPT) Programme. I am also tying off other loose ends. One of my colleagues I helped on his delivery work-stream for the IPT Programme took me and another colleague to lunch. It was a nice way to close off my work with this part of the programme. The individual was very grateful for my hard work and it is always nice to be thanked.

Wednesday 24th September

The final day and yet again bacon rolls, though I was a bit late so mine were cold. After finishing the final sections we went over more practice exam questions. Again the trainer assured us we would all pass and get a similar score to the CD-ROM. This was it, time for the exam. I worked through all the answers I knew and then answered the ones I had skipped. It was not a very nice paper with the questions structured in an unclear way. I was checking over my answers and started my bad habit of changing answers. I decided to hand in my paper before I changed more answers, our trainer said you normally switch to the wrong ones. I went outside and joined everyone else whilst we waited for our results.

Results were in ... the trainer ran through everyone’s results, there were some close calls but everyone passed. I managed to get 65% not the 80% I got on the CD-ROM but still above the 50% pass mark.

Tuesday 23rd September

I returned for the second day and had renewed enthusiasm after performing well on my homework. And yet again we had bacon rolls. I did wonder whether it was a form of bribery to ensure we arrived on time or due to the fact we had to move to the second floor after the Hotel double booked our room. I have got to admit I did find the subject a bit dry. However we had a really good trainer who broke things up with games. A lot of them were based on retro themes such as blockbusters. And the trainer ensured us that we would all pass. However when we went through a practice exam question paper it was clear that the examiners were not keen on plain English. They differed greatly from the CD-ROM as the skill was as much about understanding the question as it was knowing the answer. We completed another day of project management learning. And we had more homework I was relieved that the last day would mean no homework although there was an exam. Our homework was to complete two practice papers, I managed to average 55% (pass mark 50%). I was disappointed that I was scoring lower than the CD-ROM and thus went back to the CD-ROM to renew my confidence achieving my best score of 80%.

Monday 22nd September

Project management training course called Prince2 (3 day). This training was located at a local hotel. It was definitely nice to be in a different location for training. After arriving at the room there was warm bacon rolls, the benefit of arriving early. I was in shock when I saw the size of the manual we would be covering in three days. The manual was bigger than a lot of the course texts I had from university. I learnt after the first day that Prince 2 involves a lot of different processes and that the important thing is to tailor them to your council. After finishing 6 or 7 hours of hardcore work i.e. lectures I was glad to be on my way home. For the first time since school I had homework, a strange feeling. Although luckily it was just answering some multiple choice questions on a CD-ROM we had been given.