Client: UK City Authority

What the Advisor was asked to do

A leading UK city was keen to understand current and emerging thinking about the influence of transport strategy on economic growth, and ensure that this thinking was fully and properly reflected within the way they were organised and for future strategy development.

What they required was a quick, intensive, time limited desktop study which included a general review of current thinking about linkages between transport and economic growth in the industry, a review of current policy, strategy and organisation within the organisation, comments and observations about their current position and a recommendation to shape future strategy development.

What the Advisor Did

There are potentially two basic approaches to an intensive ‘assurance’ exercise such as that envisaged by this study. The traditional approach is to review and analyse all the information and data available in order to find evidence and/or data from which to draw initial conclusions, interview stakeholders, run workshops, and validate conclusions. This approach is comprehensive, but is time consuming and expensive.

Our approach, as contained within our Asset-Centric ™ suite of consulting tools and techniques, was to develop a hypothesis to test the client’s current position, enabling a quicker, more structured but still analytical approach considering smaller amounts of more relevant, data. This approach was supported by very focused interviews with key people to validate the findings from the organization review.  Together with the research and document review we brought all of the elements together mapping strengths, risks, and areas for improvement in our final report.

Benefits

We found that there were elements of thinking which were not present in the current strategy and were not influencing future strategy development. We also found that there were areas of immediate opportunity for improvement within the organisation, with its relationships with other regional players and institutions but also that there was a real prize at stake for the city if they were to take the potential steps under consideration.