Organisational Design & Implementation
Effective organisations are those which have been designed with the benefits and outcomes to be achieved in mind from the very start. Elysium EPL has specialists that work with clients to design organisations through the implementation of a thorough design framework that defines desired outcomes, requirements, and considerations, then an organisational framework to realise them.
Over the next decade the Royal Australian Navy is facing a significant increase in the tonnage and complexity of its fleet coupled with a heightened strategic operating environment. These factors necessitated a change of approach to vessel sustainment to ensure that the future fleet is available when and where it is needed.
When our team of specialists commence work on an organisational design project, they firstly critically analyse what success looks like for their client; what is the organisation’s vision and what are the outcomes to be achieved or benefits to be realised? This is a ‘right to left’ approach to confirm outcomes, determine the benefits, and then set the requirements.
During this process a range of factors are also considered: Culture, systems, function, and strategy. And in the conduct of designing a functional organisation, the team utilises an Enterprise approach, aligning with the organisation’s policies and constraints to ensure best practice, utilise collaborative working and integrated workforces where appropriate and other necessary reforms along the way.
The
Challenge
Under the previous approach to maritime vessel sustainment, there were different organisational and contracting arrangements for each capability, and often separate processes and procedures for planning and executing maintenance. Whilst this existing Naval support organisation was not considered ‘broken,’ it was not going to be sufficient to cope with future demands.
These existing arrangements were competing for access to industry and facilities and high initial investment costs and other barriers to entry place limits on Small to Medium Enterprises contributing to maritime sustainment. This is at a time when the Commonwealth Government’s focus is on increasing resilience and self-reliance in the supply chain and making it easier for local suppliers to bid for major contracts.
Our Comprehensive soultion
The concept of the Future Maritime Sustainment Model (FMSM) to address the challenges posed by the increased demand on maritime sustainment already existed. A key element of the model aimed to embed a new, centralised way of maintaining the fleet, and included four Regional Maintenance Centres established in key strategic locations in Australia. The team worked with the Commonwealth and industry to confirm assumptions underpinning the FMSM concept and agree the desired benefits to be obtained from this transformation. The team was then able to design the organisational construct with these benefits forefront in our minds.
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The project continued by expanding on the design of the FMSM, the creation of its enterprise architecture and the evolution of the associated functional reference set. This work was undertaken in close collaboration with Commonwealth personnel and aimed at allocating work to the entity best placed to undertake that work.
From there, the team continued to work with Commonwealth and industry personnel to scope the various management, governance and enabling systems for the enterprise, using quantitative methods to establish current and future resource requirements and organisational milestones and constraints to determine growth rate.
A key part of the process was stakeholder engagement. By establishing positive and productive relationships with stakeholders early on (and keeping them updated) the team were able to quickly move on to developing process maps, swim lanes (responsibility boundaries) and enabling systems in a collegiate way.
The team worked together on the following key deliverables, adopting an iterative or evolutionary approach, to incorporate learnings and continually improve by:
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developing an operating model and a design and build plan, that governs and controls the design as it evolves;
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the development of a benefits realisation framework, that was incorporated into the organisational policies, frameworks and reforms to ensure compliance and/or best practice, and
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the creation of integrated enterprises that is achieved through increased collaboration and common outcomes and values.
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The team then determined what work would be allocated to the Regional Maintenance Centres, identified the work to be allocated to industry, scoped this work within contracted arrangements and then looked at how work would flow to and from the Commonwealth workforce.
The
Enduring
Value
The benefits to be achieved from the new organisational design for Navy shipbuilding and sustainment remain the focus of all the work that Elysium performs on behalf of the Commonwealth and are identified in the Plan Galileo Benefits Realisation Framework.
The intent is that Navy will have greater capability to achieve its mission and adapt to a new set of strategic challenges, whilst improving the coordination and the allocation of limited sustainment resources. There should also be increased Value for Money in sustainment for the Commonwealth and improved opportunities for local industry, Navy, and the Australian Public Service workforce to contribute and to develop capability in the future.
The organisational design process has determined what work will be allocated to the Regional Maintenance Centres, and what will need to go to a contractor, and identified other workflows for the Commonwealth workforce.
Because Elysium has provided clear processes and procedures and the associated education and training for personnel coming into the new approach, Defence will be able to realise the benefits long after our team is gone. This is further enhanced through the adoption of an evolutionary and learnings approach to the organisational design and processes to enable continual improvement.