Case Study: National Heritage Programme Recovery

The Situation

A national heritage organisation had launched an ambitious technology programme to modernise its infrastructure, digitise collections, and upgrade visitor facing systems across multiple sites. Eighteen months in, the programme was stalled. The primary vendor relationship had deteriorated to the point where contractual disputes were consuming more time than delivery. Five directorates were working to different priorities with no unified governance. The programme board had lost confidence in the delivery timeline and budget forecasts.

The organisation needed independent programme leadership to cut through the dysfunction and get delivery back on track.

What Elisabeth Did

Elisabeth was brought in as the independent senior programme manager with full authority over programme governance, vendor management, and delivery.

Her first action was a rapid programme health assessment. Within the first two weeks, she reviewed every workstream, met every stakeholder, audited the vendor contracts, and produced a frank assessment of programme status for the board. The assessment identified three root causes: governance gaps that allowed scope to drift without approval, vendor performance issues that had been escalated but never resolved, and stakeholder misalignment across directorates that created conflicting priorities.

She then restructured the programme governance from the ground up. She established a formal programme board with decision making authority, implemented change control processes to prevent further scope creep, created a unified RAID log that was actively managed rather than filed, and set up fortnightly reporting that gave the board honest visibility of progress.

On the vendor side, Elisabeth rebuilt the relationship through direct, structured engagement. She separated the contractual disputes from the delivery work, established a joint delivery plan with agreed milestones, and implemented performance monitoring that held the vendor accountable without creating adversarial dynamics.

The Results

• Programme delivered within four months of the revised timeline, compared to a projected 18 month overrun at the point of intervention
• Budget contained within 8% of the revised baseline
• Vendor relationship restored to productive working status
• All five directorates aligned under unified programme governance
• Collections digitisation completed across all priority sites
• Infrastructure modernisation delivered with zero unplanned downtime

Client Feedback

"Libby is an effective and efficient PM and certainly makes it happen. She is courteous, collegiate, inclusive, and charming to boot. I feel she has the strategic grasp which is not granted to every PM."

Senior Stakeholder, National Heritage Programme