Th, Feb 16, 2006Risky business
Though the cabinet member for Education Cllr Donnelly said that the programme of school investment is set in stone (when it's not), this doesn't necessarily mean that Lewisham Council has to stop looking for fall back positions in case of disastrous events. The cancellation of the expansion of Northbrook being a case in point.
In the light of the assessment of the risks run by the Building Schools for the Future project the Council's stubbornness in ruling out any alternative site to the Ladywell Leisure Centre for the siting of the new secondary school seems to be just another sign of the blinkered vision of this Council.
The project management team have produced this risk register that we obtained with a request made under the freedom of information act.
The register lists all the associated risks, their severity, their possible impact and the possible solutions.
We have also a mention:
Community Groups eg Ladywell Pool Campaign and New School Campaign delay programming through FOI requests delay planning and programme eg: endless F.O.I. requests.
Risk factor: 15% (they often underestimate)
But there are much more serious risks that could derail the whole process for a new school at Ladywell that don't even necessitate our involvement. New School Competition Rules might delay the programme is in fact assesed as a 50% likelihood to happen, in other words, a toss of the coin.
The level of risk on the planning alone paints a different picture to that portrayed in the Mayor and Cabinet paper on BSF on 11th January where the risks are generally played down.
Their own scoring matrix describes a risk which has a probability of between 51-80% as a ‘probable’ event. They have recorded 4 of these and flagged them as high risk items. There are also 6 risks with a 50% probability and another 6 with 40%.
Overall the register has flagged 15 risks with a combined ranking of ‘high risk’, taking into account the probability, cost and time severity and importance factors.
The council say that a project of this magnitude is not without its risks, of course not, but the lack of sound project management is exacerbating an ill-defined and volatile government programme which is uncertain in its funding allocation.
To view the risk register you need Microsoft Excel or Excel Viewer that you can download here LINK.
If the risk file opens as a Web page (html), then save it to disk and change the extension to xls. ...read more...