The review

The four day review is intense for the review team and consists of stakeholder interviews, documentation reviews and progressively collate the draft report.

 

What to expect during the review:

  • The review team will peruse documents and hold discussions with the nominated stakeholders. These are confidential and non-attributable, meaning you can speak your mind with confidence.
  • Discussions are usually held at the site of the review, however the review team allows for situations such as site visits, senior stakeholders with time restraints or travel restrictions.
  • The review team will interview the senior responsible owner (SRO) at the beginning of the review and meet with them briefly at the end of each day to provide a summary of its findings.
  • At the end of the review, the review team will present the SRO with its findings and recommendations and a draft report including red amber green (RAG) status.

The review team

The selection of appropriately skilled and experienced Gateway review team members is critical to the success and effectiveness of a Gateway review.

Gateway review teams are selected according to each project's needs and the approaching key decision point to provide a mix of skills, knowledge and experience. The review team should possess:

  • skills and experience relevant to the project and its current phase in the project life cycle;
  • knowledge and understanding of the project's industry sector;
  • knowledge of government and government processes; and
  • knowledge and understanding of the Gateway review process.

The independence of the review team from the project and the independence of the review team from the department, is the key to delivering objective, high quality reviews and reports.

Review teams generally consist of four people including a mix of private and public sector people.

The Infrastructure Policy and Assurance team uses a communicative approach when appointing review teams and will liaise with the department to ensure the right mix of skills are assembled and no conflicts of interest are apparent.

Allocating RAG status

At the conclusion of each Gateway review, the review team rate each of the individual recommendations and the overall project or program according to a colour based rating system.

Individual recommendations are rated as either red or amber, and the review team's confidence of successful project delivery (delivery confidence) is rated either as red, amber or green:

  • red (critical) and Amber (non critical) for individual recommendations; and
  • red, amber or green for delivery confidence assessment for the overall project.

Individual recommendations (criticality)

In the past individual RAG assessments have taken criticality and urgency into consideration. For example if a project had very little time to address a critical recommendation, the recommendation was classed as Red.

If there was time to address the critical recommendation, then the recommendations was classed as Amber. This was even though the issue and its criticality was still identical to the red rating.

Individual recommendations are now classified as either critical (red) or non critical (amber). Green is no longer used for individual recommendations.

  • Amber - Non critical recommendation - The project would benefit from the uptake of the recommendation; or
  • Red - Critical recommendation - Action required.

Overall assessment (delivery confidence)

An overall assessment (delivery confidence) is also required for each review based on the definitions in the table below.

When determining the overall assessment, the review team should refer to the areas probed assessment and their own judgement / expertise to determine the most suitable delivery confidence rating.  

  • Green - Overall report: successful delivery of the project to time, cost and quality appears highly likely. There are no major outstanding issues that at this stage appear to threaten delivery significantly;
  • Amber - Overall report: successful delivery appears feasible but significant issues already exist, requiring timely management attention. These issues appear resolvable at this stage and if addressed promptly, should not impact on cost, time or quality; or
  • Red - Overall report: successful delivery of the project to cost, time and/or quality does not appear achieveable. The project may need re-baselining and/or the overall viability assessed.

Final report

At the conclusion of the Gateway review, a draft report is issued to the SRO, who has seven days to comment on any errors of fact prior to the report being issues as final.

The Infrastructure Policy and Assurance team is issued with a copy of all final Gateway reports for the purposes of reporting to Cabinet, and for the collation of generic lessons learned.

These lessons learned are used by the Infrastructure Policy and Assurance team in the development of best practice guidance materials, and in the provision of advice to department’s and agencies to help ensure that good practices are identified and mistakes of the past are not repeated in similar initiatives.

 

 

Reviewed 16/05/2018
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