Future Brize: third party consultancy with military precision

Supporting front line troops in Afghanistan and overseas theatres is an essential function of the Ministry of Defence. Future Brize is a £250 million programme to establish Brize Norton as the RAF’s centre for strategic and tactical air transport and air-to-air refuelling operations, and in doing so, to significantly reduce costs by closing RAF Lyneham.

 

“Like all government departments and operations around the country, resources are scarce. We have to make sure that those resources that are needed to service front line operations, such as our troops in Afghanistan, are best used,” explains Group Captain D A Houghton, Future Brize Programme Manager. “There was a study done back in 2003 to look at our air bases in terms of real estate and how they could be best use without impacting on operations. The decision was taken to close RAF Lyhnham in Wiltshire and move everything across to RAF Brize Norton.”

 

This entailed moving  of all Air Command capabilities from RAF Lyneham to RAF Brize Norton, the enhancement of the infrastructure at RAF Brize Norton, the introduction of two new aircraft types, the increase in passenger handling and freight handling capacity and the migration of both military and civilian personnel. The size and complexity of this programme is immense, involving 7000 personnel  or some 15% of the total RAF headcount - and their families, as well as aircraft, housing, infrastructure, IT and supporting contractors. 

 

Project Future Brize builds upon and subsumes the scope of another programme Project Catara. “One the problems was that it lacked a governance structure,” comments Houghton. “It didn't have the top level ownership that was needed. We realised that the best way to achieve this was to get in outside assistance so Hitachi Consulting was brought in. We're very good in the military at getting things done, but we've not always been so good at keeping things like this on track. That's where the outside consultants come in. They became my programme management staff."

 

An essential requirement for both the RAF in house team and Hitachi was continuity of service and a lack of any disruption to critical services. “Future Brize is intended to create  a single base. It will be the single main transport base for air refueling so it's absolutely critical that we get it right," says Houghton. "None of the changes made as part of the programme can be allowed to impact on our ongoing operations. None of the soldiers in Afghanistan can realise what's going on.”

 

 

Bringing in external consultants in the private sector can often end up with the contractor's corporate culture imposing itself on the buyer organisation, which presumably cannot happen with the armed forces? “We see this as a team effort,” says Houghton. “We have a particular structure and a certain way of doing things, but we adapt of course as technologies and processes change. 

 

“The RAF and the military may have done certain things in certain ways in the past, but best practice in modern industry might be to do things in a different way. So what we need to do is see if we can adapt it to our RAF structure. We have certainly have had to overcome certain views and to explain why we want to do some things certain ways.” 

 

Specifically Hitachi Consulting carried out a number of activities to both evaluate the programme against Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) methodology principles and industry best practice, and to make recommendations for delivery. These included reviewing current governance arrangements, including programme resourcing and structure; introducing features of programme success from both the private and public sector; introducing  a programme structure with resourcing recommendations; developing  programme vision, scope, principles and assumptions with client; and coaching and mentoring staff.  

 

The firm then worked to embed the programme amongst the RAF personnel impacted by the changes before finally working towards final skills transfer to RAR personnel,  enabling them to deliver the programme without any external assistance.

 

From a technology perspective, work continues on the Ministry of Defence's  Defence Information Infrastructure programme, but there's also work to be done on consolidating various disparate systems. “At the moment different areas of the force are on different systems. We will get everyone onto one system which will allow us to work collaboratively and collectively,” explains Houghton. 

 

 

Overall Future Brize is demonstrating the value that bringing in external consultancy can provide at a time when such engagements have attracted the ire of the mainstream media. “For the taxpayer and for the RAF, this has been a good move,” insists Houghton. “It's costing us £200 million to make the move, but will be making savings of £437 million. It makes sense to reallocate resources. We can have all the units and resources to support our fleets in one place.”

 

The Hitachi engagement has also been a learning experience, suggests Houghton. “Whether we bring in consultants or best practices from industry, it's essential to have a formal governance structure in place and to make sure you have a champion at the most senior levels,” he advises. “You also need to make sure you communicate right from the start about what you are trying to achieve. The days are gone when we just told people to crack on with it. It's important to get your message across.”