S4E87: Why Independent Project Assurance is Important with Lorraine Humphrey

In this week’s pod we welcomed Lorraine Humphrey to talk about Project Assurance and Risk Management. Lorraine is the interim Director of Risk and Assurance at Transport for London (TFL), a post she has held since April 2021. Lorraine moved to Project Assurance in 2018 after 12 years of project delivery as a Senior Project Manager. Lorraine recently completed her MBA and has also been shortlisted for Inspirational Women of the Year in the Women in Rail awards for her mentoring work and support of autism initiatives at TfL. The main topics we discussed on the podcast were as follows: Assurance is ultimately about keeping honest Assurance teams will point out where things are not right and provide recommendations to senior management based on evidence PMO should be a critical friend to Project Teams Assurance team often sits under General Counsel / Company Secretary in an organisation structure. This promotes the independence of the team It is important to understand the political environment of the area you are working and not get dragged into it There is no ideal experience required to be successful in Project Assurance. The majority will have experience in project delivery, however, leadership is the most important skillset Transport for London reduced the number of assurance reviews in order to allow more time to analyse the findings and provide continuous improvements 10% contingency at the start of a project is often a red flag from an assurance perspective Avoid watermelon reporting! Where Level 1 milestones are reporting as being on time without supporting Level 2 / 3 milestones Transparency and being evidence based is the key to effective project assurance. Leaders may not agree with the findings but it should be as open as possible The best way to avoid biases and groupthink is via evidence Seeing Project Teams who actively avoid scrutiny on Quantitative Schedule Risk Analysis is often a symptom that the underlying assumptions may not be strong EFC/EAC should be a dynamic figure. Static numbers may be due to hiding issues. Use assurance, don’t fight it -----------------------------------------