Tom Taylor is a founding partner of Buro Four, principal of dashdot and a vice President of Association for Project Management.

He is a practicing project manager with over thirty years of front line experience across a variety of sectors, types of procurement and ranges of contract form.

He also provides consultancy, advisory services, talks, courses; and is a broadcaster and author - with a touch of enthusiasm and good humour here and there.

Recent themes and topics have included: A Sustainability Checklist for Managers of Projects; Defining, Managing and Leading the Expanding Design Teams: Selecting the Right Project Manager; and Recession Survival and Recession Recovery - for businesses of all sizes.


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David has operated at CEO level in large-scale organisations for over 25 years, both in Australia and internationally.

Prior to joining OGC, he was the Chief Executive of Palm Jumeirah in Dubai, the world's largest land reclamation project and before that, the Chief Executive of the City of Melbourne in Australia. Before that role, he was the Chief Operating Officer of the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games.


Presentation: A word from the ERG (OGC): project management strategy

Giving an ideal overview of the latest strategies for project and programme management.

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Howard Joseph has worked for a number of central government bodies working on initiatives dealing with state benefits, child support, finance, reward, prisons and police performance. One of his more unusual tasks was to convince HM Treasury to fund a prison ship.

For the last five years Howard has led development of programme & project management capability for the Home Office. During 2008 his training for project sponsors was used by the APM Group as the basis for their Programme & Project Sponsorship (PPS) Qualification and he is a member of the PPS exam panel. More recently he has coordinated recruitment of over 300 staff to Home Office projects and pioneered Core PPM Skills Training for the broader workforce.

Howard is part of the cross-government Careers Group led by the Office of Government Commerce. This group provides a lead on development of the Government Programme and Project Management Profession.

Presentation: Management of major projects at the Home Office

Going through some conversations around the delivery of major projects, covering the key issues explored by the National Audit Office, and the Home Office approach.

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Paul is Head of PPM and Profession in HM Revenue and Customs recently introducing new Investment Governance for their multi-billion pound Transformation Portfolio. Paul has worked for 8 Government Departments and 2 private companies running 4 PPM Centres of Excellence and leading IS Strategy in 2 large organisations. Paul delivered the first office system into Government followed by implementing 10,000 workstations into the first computerised 250 benefit payment locations. Paul worked on British Rail privatisation and developed an IS Strategy for the 25 newly privatised Train Operators. In 2003/5 he was responsible for delivering a 23,000 user Oracle ERP system.

Presentation: Public sector project management: a practitioner's view

Providing practical advice on project management in the public sector.

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Roy is responsible for the planning and delivery of all internal audits of project and programme management within Transport for London. He joined TfL Internal Audit in September 2002, and has 27 years of experience of engineering projects in PPP, PFI, partnering, joint venture, consortia and conventional contracting environments, as project engineer, risk manager, project manager and internal audit manager. In particular, he has had lead roles within Racal on major defence projects such Bowman and IRIS, and as a senior manager within Thales on the Connect project for London Underground. He has an Honours degree and a post-graduate Diploma in Management Studies; is a Fellow of the Association for Project Management (APM) and a full member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology; sits on the APM Audit & Performance Review Committee; is PRINCE2 and MSP qualified at Practitioner level; and is the founder and Chair of the APM Project & Programme Assurance Specific Interest Group.

Presentation: Best practice in the provision of effective and efficient project and programme assurance

Outlining the benefits of project and programme assurance.

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Karen is Head of Transformation Development at Birmingham City Council, Europe's largest local authority, leading on the development of business transformation and driving forward business change. Karen has held a senior position in the public sector for the last 20 years, both in local government and the National Health Service. Her experience and background has predominantly been at the centre of the organisation in management and organisational development. She currently has a corporate role in driving forward transformational change; fostering collaborative working and helping the organisation deliver its substantial change programme.

Karen holds a master of philosophy degree from the International Management Centres/LSE and is a corporate member of the Institute of Personnel and Development (CMIPD).

Presentation: Change management at Birmingham City Council

Discussing the project which created Service Birmingham, the company that delivers the ICT service for the council, and the CHAMPS2 approach.

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Susannah Howard is the Head of Enable East – a University accredited NHS organisation with a role supporting the delivery of projects and programmes in health and social care in the East of England. Susannah was responsible for creating Enable East originally as an initiative of the Eastern Development Centre where she was in a leading role from 2001 to 2010. She was appointed as Programme Director for the centre when it was set-up as part of the National Institute for Mental Health in England in 2001 and then Deputy Regional Director for the centre when it became part of the Care Services Improvement Partnership in 2005. From 2008 to 2010 Eastern Development Centre supported the delivery of more than 200 commissioned projects and programmes on behalf of NHS East of England, Government Office in the East of England and other organisations.

After beginning her career as a Research Psychologist, Susannah worked in a variety of academic and managerial positions for the Department of Health, The Royal College of Psychiatrists' Research Unit, Health Advisory Service and the Commission for Health Improvement. She has published widely and worked with the World Health Organisation in several countries. She is currently seconded part-time to the Department of Health as the UK National Counterpart for Mental Health to WHO. In 2007 she led a successful bid to the Big Lottery Fund for £4 million which supports the regional portfolio of 25 local 'Well-being in the East' projects.

Presentation: Delivering more with less in the NHS

Sharing experience of working with the NHS and other public sector organisations to develop pragmatic ways to enable organisations and individuals to deliver more effective local projects and programmes.

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Rod Sowden is an experienced programme management consultant with a number of successful consulting and delivery assignments behind him that have left organisations with sustainable change.

He has been a pioneer of Managing Successful Programmes, having been involved since the launch in 1999 when he was working at the BBC. He was first person to carry the title "Lead Author", when appointed by the OGC for the 2007 version and this was followed up with appointment to lead author development of P3M3 version 2, which was released in 2008. In 2009 he was appointed as Mentor to the authors for the refresh of MSP due out in 2010, he anticipates being referred to as Yoda for the version after this.

Rod's left the BBC in 2002 after 14 years to start to set up Aspire Europe Ltd, a company dedicated to the development of Programme Management and maintaining the momentum to improve and develop the industry sector. As such it is now one of the leading accredited consultancy and training companies in the UK, with branch offices in Sydney and Warsaw. For more information please visit www.aspireeurope.com.

Over the last three years he has worked closely with the other OGC lead authors and contributed to all the revised OGC best practice publications, as such, he has a unique insight into the trends and concepts that are driving forward the development of P3M in practice.

His somewhat anarchic wit, passionate beliefs and vast experience in a range of organisations, ensure that his sessions are never boring and littered with pearls of wisdom and insight that leave audiences inspired.

Presentation: An introduction to Managing Successful Programmes

Presenting the new version of MSP.

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Barbara Roberts is a Certified DSDM Consultant, Practitioner, Trainer, Coach and Examiner. She has been actively involved with DSDM since running one of the DSDM early adopter projects in 1995, and is currently the director responsible for Professional Development. Barbara has worked with organisations of varying sizes, ranging from small software development companies to the MoD and the Civil Service. She has mentored and supported the roll-out of DSDM in a major finance organisation, both in the UK and India and was instrumental in the creation of DSDM Atern. During 2010 Barbara has developed APMG's training and certification programme for Agile Project Managers and run pilot courses to train the trainers in several Accredited Training Organisations.

Presentation: Being agile: enabling knowledge and learning for successful project delivery

Giving an overview of the recently launched APMG accredited Agile Project Manager training and certification.

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Nick Kinsella is a recently retired senior police officer with 30 years experience spent mainly in the Criminal Investigation Department, (CID).

Nick has been involved in the investigation of serious and organised crime and the management of intelligence for a number of years in both the National and International arena. Previous posts held include Director of Intelligence in a metropolitan police force including responsibility as head of Covert Operations and Special Branch.

Between January 2004 and April 2006, Nick was an Assistant Director at the National Criminal Intelligence Service, (NCIS). Whilst at NCIS Nick initiated, planned and secured funding for Operation Pentameter 1. As a result of that three month campaign targeting trafficking for sexual exploitation, 88 victims were recovered.

On leaving NCIS Nick took up post as Head of the UK Human Trafficking Centre, (UKHTC). Amongst many initiatives, in December 2006, he initiated the planning for Operation Pentameter two, the second national campaign targeting human trafficking in the UK. The campaign commenced in October 2007 and subsequently recovered 172 victims. The centre also became one of two separate but linked 'competent authorities' following the introduction of the National referral mechanism in April 2009.

In 2009 Nick was awarded the Queens Police Medal, (QPM) in the New Year Honours list.

Since his retirement in April 2010, Nick has continued to be involved in the field of combating human trafficking and now acts as a consultant to several key organisations involved in this vital area of activity.

Presentation: Establishing multi-agency working

Talking about the major undertaking of the UK Human Trafficking Centre, identifying successes and failures along the way.

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Joseph left University with a BSc. in Economics with maths and statistics and went on to work in the international mining and metals industries where he gained postgraduate qualifications in Statistics. He subsequently spent some years in the UK energy industry where he progressed through senior economic and analytical roles to hold a number of senior operational management positions with British Gas. He was part of the team that created the UK's competitive gas market following which he became a consultant and worked at director level in the energy, utilities, telecommunications and financial services industries. He joined the Government Economic Service in 2003 to become Head of Preliminary Investigations at the Office of Fair Trading and for the past 5 years he has been at HM Treasury where he is responsible for the Treasury's guidance to Government on appraisal of spending and investment and business cases, known as the Green Book.

Presentation: Developing good business cases

Discussing the need to demonstrate best value for money in project proposals, and how the 5 Case Model can be used to justify investment decisions.

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