Making Project Assurance Work

We all know what Project Assurance is, don’t we?

Well actually, no, we don’t. Typically it’s a term that has a much broader meaning than most people think.

No, it isn’t just about project reviews. This event was held on 13 July 2023.

Assurance provides scrutiny, insight and confidence that your project is being well managed and that the benefits and anticipated outcomes identified remain on track. Assurance is forward-looking, acting as an early-warning system, helping to uncover current and potential problems. Additionally, it forms an important component of project governance inherently considering risk and impact, and informing decision-making. In this Face to Face event sponsored by the APM Scottish Branch we will hear the good and the bad from Roy Millard who is a national authority on how to achieve efficient and effective assurance arrangements within projects, programmes and portfolio’s.

In this talk, Roy gave some insights, based upon 40 years of working in projects, into really what is, and what isn’t, Project Assurance; what gets in the way of getting good Project Assurance; and how to avoid making costly and damaging mistakes.

Where confidentiality (and memory!) allows, he made reference to his experiences of where Project Assurance has been done well, and not so well.

The session covered:

What is Project Assurance?
Why do we have it?
Who does what to whom?
How to avoid too much / too little Project Assurance?
How to get the most out of Project Assurance?
Project Assurance – the emerging profession.

Benefits of attending: Assurance promotes transparency and accountability, and helps assure the realisation of your business or project benefits. We can all benefit from learning about assurance.

 Roy has very kindly allowed his presented material to be made available for viewing.
The slides on Slideshare are now available in our APM resources area and also embedded below for reference.

Roy Millard, Owner, P3 Risk & Assurance / ASIG Founder & Committee Member

Roy is a national authority on how to achieve efficient and effective assurance arrangements within projects, programmes and portfolios.

His approach is pragmatic and flexible, taking into account that although the principles of good governance, risk management and assurance remain true for all organisations, each will have its own set of challenges in implementing them.

He has a unique background of over 30 years in engineering projects in PPP, PFI, partnering, joint venture, consortia and conventional contracting environments, as an engineer, risk manager, project manager and senior internal auditor.

He is a consistently strong and independently minded leader who can confidently speak truth to power.

His influence extends far beyond that of the organisations he’s worked for. As founder and past-chair of the APM Assurance Specific Interest Group, he has spoken at many conferences and led on the publication of a number of well-received APM guides on assurance.

He is a fellow of the Association for Project Management (APM), and a full member of the Institution of Engineering & Technology (IET), and is an ex-Trustee & Board Member, and ex-Chair of the Audit Committee, of the APM. He currently Chairs the APM’s Nominations Panel.

Now an independent management consultant, as owner of P3 Risk and Assurance, he provides advice and support on matters of governance, risk and assurance in project organisations.

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