Worcester Library History Centre (WLHC) Project Management

The Partnership

The partnership is led by Worcestershire County Council and the University of Worcester and includes Worcester City Council and Advantage West Midlands. The partners have been developing the joint proposal for some time.

The County Council/City Council Customer Contact Centre (the Hub)

The proposal also includes a joint customer service centre. This is part of the realisation and development of the innovative 'Worcestershire Hub' a pathfinder e-government project being implemented by a wide range of public, private and voluntary sector organisations across Worcestershire.

The contact centre proposed fully meets the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) criteria for joined up service provision and will add value to the new library confirming it as the primary 'destination' for information and public services in Worcester.

Project Management

Patrick Birch, Director of Corporate Services and Dr Martin Doughty, University Pro Vice Chancellor are the Projects Owners with responsibility for promoting the project and liaison with senior executives. They also have overall responsibility for the successful delivery of the project.

Project Manager, Peter Parkes, Head of Strategic Projects (joint appointment with University) manages the day-to-day activities on the project, co-ordinates teams and tasks. Also leads negotiation with bidders with overall responsibility for procurement.

Iain Paul, our Design Manager, leads the team on all design and planning on the project. He will co-ordinate technical input and advice, including the development of appropriate Detailed Design Statements and corresponding Output Specifications. He will also lead on sustainability.

Funding

The project is being funded from a range of sources, including the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), ODPM, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), Advantage West Midlands (AWM), the University of Worcester, Worcester City Council and Worcestershire County Council.

Programme

Full Planning Consent has been granted by Worcester City Council on 23 July 2009. Construction will commence in February 2010 with a project completion in January of 2012.

Procurement

The project is being procured using the recently introduced PFI Competitive Dialogue Process. This process requires Participants' design teams to develop their designs in detail through close collaboration and interaction with the Partners' Joint Project Team.

Evaluation

The final submissions from AMK consortium (Kajima/Carillion) and Galliford Try Investments Ltd were evaluated using the Award software package  (39KB).

This enabled individual evaluators to input their marks on-line using a collaborative web-based evaluation model. This has permitted a significant number of individuals to take part in the various evaluation teams, and for the marks from each team to be entered remotely, but coordinated centrally by the PFI office.

In addition to evaluation by the Joint Project Team (JPT) and Technical Advisors contributions to the evaluation have been provided by the United Kingdom Climate Impact Programme (UKCIP), an Access Group that included representatives of the Worcestershire Association of Service Users (WASU) and the Worcester Civic Society who have provided a much-valued external perspective.