Presentation given by Richard Corderoy from the Oakland Group on 29 July 2020. Link to the news story: https://www.apm.org.uk/news/cutting-through-the-hype-how-to-use-advanced-analytics-to-do-practical-things-today-webinar/ Link to YouTube recording: https://youtu.be/OIsvCrFR5Uw

1. Intelligent
Forecasting
A practical guide to finding
the value in your data
Cut through the hype of project analytics with a
real-world solution demonstrated to reduce risks,
increase confidence and improve outcomes in
major capital programmes.

2. Introduction
Capital programmes are prone to failure, partly
due to their complexity and often long gestation,
and can quickly become the subjects of critical
reports. Crossrail is a great example. This 73-mile
railway under London is running more than two
years late and will cost over £2bn more than
the original £15.9 billion estimate – with further
setbacks looking likely. In its 2019 annual report
on UK major projects, the IPA said its overall
confidence in the delivery of projects had been
steadily falling since 2013: only 22 from 133 were
rated as ‘probable’ or ‘likely’ to achieve their aims
and objectives, and to do so on time and on
budget. It is little wonder such ‘megaprojects’ are
often in the news and subject to constant political
and public scrutiny.
It is, however, important to acknowledge that these
programmes are incredibly technically challenging
and major project achievements can be obscured
by news of cost overruns and delays. Long timescales,
some running into decades, mean it is inevitable that
plans will change. In 2009, HS2 was initially intended
to run from London to Birmingham; by 2017 the plan
had been expanded to include lines running much
further north.
These hugely multifaceted engineering challenges
also demand intricate supply chains and funding
arrangements, adding to complexity and creating
a vast number of moving parts. And every part
of the delivery structure also creates data – these
increasingly massive volumes of data have been
challenging to integrate, and it has been difficult
to extract value from them. However, the latest
information technology can revolutionise the way
major programmes are delivered and help to
deliver more for less. Leading businesses are taking
advantage of tools such as the Oakland Group’s
Intelligent Forecasting Platform to continue their
journeys towards digital transformation.
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3. So, what is
the answer?
The Oakland Intelligent Forecasting
platform is a scalable platform which
services both reporting and analytics
within a single environment. Harnessing
powerful artificial intelligence (AI) and
Machine Learning to help organisations
make better decisions, it transforms
reporting and predicative capabilities.
What can be achieved?
• Vastly improved project forecasting - over
50% more effective than project managers
at spotting expensive failures up to 9
months out
• Enhanced board and management level
reporting
• Improved process compliance
• Targeted assurance activity
• Better data quality
• Strong Return on Investment: on average
the Oakland platform delivered a 10:1 ROI
in the first year, with improvements in years
two and three
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Intelligent Forecasting - A Practical Guide

4. Complex capital programmes face significant
project failure rates, Bent Flyberg, an expert
in project management at Oxford University
Business School, estimates that 9 out of 10
projects go over budget.
Why do
you need
Intelligent
Forecasting?
The Oakland Group are experts in complex
operational issues. We understand running
major projects is difficult. Most major
projects have complicated structures and
complex information architectures with
a whole raft of different source systems;
integrating their data can seem like an
impossible task. Our Intelligent Forecasting
platform helps to transfer project learning
more efficiently. It enables you to predict
where and when risks are likely to happen.
Intelligent Forecasting - A Practical Guide
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5. Understanding
the pain of
capital
programme
delivery
Data is nothing new - businesses have
been producing and storing data long
before the ‘Big Data’ explosion. However,
typical data flows are complex, extracting
data from large enterprise systems can
be difficult, and replicating data to the
cloud where it can be utilised more
effectively has been problematic.
Common challenges include:
• How to improve forecasting, being able to spot
both the underspends and overspends?
• Knowing where to target your manual assurance
and audit activities?
• Extracting additional value from data and
spotting areas of poor process and data
compliance?
• And finally, how to unlock deeper insights –
perhaps through advanced predictive analytics,
machine learning and artificial intelligent tools –
to drive the organisation forward?
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We recognise the challenges which
come with capital programmes.
There is no silver bullet; no single
solution can do everything we need.
Intelligent Forecasting - A Practical Guide
You need to:
Understand the key business decisions
that will benefit from being more
data-centric - for example:
• Areas where stakeholders are sceptical
• Areas where there are constant ‘surprises’
Challenge why simple questions are
hard to answer
• Do you require excessive ‘calls for data’? Why?
• Would you get the same answers if you asked
the questions twice?
• Would you get the same answers if you
attempted to reconstruct the results from a few
months ago?
Understand where reporting is being
‘manipulated’ to make it work.
• Why is the source data not sufficient?
• Is there organisational data missing (i.e. project
to programme mapping)?
• Does the business connect the same errors in
the data every month?
• Are key aspects of the data held ‘off-system’?
Identify appropriate project controls
• How does your lead time direct assurance and
validation activities?
• Experience is vital, but could you justify why
some projects get checked while others don’t?
With our help, companies can integrate, access,
interrogate and understand their own data
instantly. They no longer rely on monthly reports
that provide only a fraction of the true picture.
They can also extrapolate their data to predict
more accurately what might happen in the future.
Major programmes struggle to collect
clear and consistent data. Sometimes
data is also under-utilised or not used
effectively.
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Legacy Architecture
ApplicationsSeparate Source Systems
Disjointed Reporting
Ad hoc analytics
Current issues
• Manual Integration of
information
• Parallel, inconsistent and
excessive cleansing activity.
• Hard to combine data across
platforms - analytics often
restricted to limited datasets
Siloed reporting
Over-reliance on
‘experts’ vs data-
driven decisions
Difficulties in
maintaining the
corporate memory

6. The Oakland
Intelligent
Forecasting
Platform
A scalable architecture that services both reporting
and analytics within a single environment
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Intelligent Forecasting - A Practical Guide
How the platform works
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Identify and integrate data
Data sources need to be identified and some level of standardisation agreed. We begin
with the data - our Intelligent Forecasting platform integrates data from different data
sources: spreadsheets, Oracle databases, PostgreSQL databases, SAP and even Blob
storage. We integrate these data sources into our cloud environment - Microsoft Azure or
AWS – and then apply Databricks, a core part of our Intelligent Forecasting platform.
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Set objectives
We understand your business projects are similar, but not identical. The starting points
must be your business and project objectives: what activities do you want to undertake
and with what outcomes?
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Intelligent Forecasting Platform
VisualisationIngestion
Oakland 4D
Data Model
Advanced
Analytics
Intelligent
Forecasting
Data
Quality

7. Analyse and predict
Using our ‘4D’ data model we can carry out Intelligent Forecasting, making predictions
using machine learning and artificial intelligence. We can carry out data quality
assurance to ensure we are meeting internal processes and compliance checks,
And we can undertake advanced analytics to identify the issues causing projects to
underperform.
Visualisation is a vitally important way to engage teams and generally help reduce
manual intervention. We can then export the data into any front-end platform such as
Power BI, Tableau and Looker.
But it doesn’t stop here. While we can start to predict future risks, we must also be able
to implement changes needed to bring the project back on track once areas of
concern have been highlighted. This involves looking at different aspects of quality and
governance, and at implementing process change.
Not everyone in the organisation may be happy at having a light shone on their areas
of responsibility. It is essential, therefore, to create a culture where project managers
feel confident to challenge the way things are being done. The Intelligent Forecasting
platform provides a powerful tool linking system outcomes to project level benefits, and
giving teams confidence that changes will improve outcomes.
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Ingest and expand data
Having aggregated lots of different data sources in a variety of different forms, ingestion
is a key step ensuring we have collected all the data needed. Then our unique Oakland
4D data model creates the ability to look at any time period across a project or portfolio.
This allows project managers to view the data from any point in history. It is this ‘4th
dimensional view’ that also drives our Intelligent Forecasting platform.
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Intelligent Forecasting - A Practical Guide

8. What is the impact of
Intelligent Forecasting?
Intelligent Forecasting provides not
only consistently objective results but
also more accurate predictions on
the current progress of a project. This
insight is not just focused on short-term
predictions, it can highlight potential
risks as far out as 6-12 months’ time.
• We have identified which projects don’t hold the
right data, are missing milestones, or are missing
other critical information.
• We have intercepted bad practices that were
previously undiscovered (for example, people
updating forecasts after actuals).
• We found open projects that should have been
closed and which carried substantial amounts of
risk contingency.
In short: there are huge benefits to be gained
from helping your organisation become more
data-centric and from incorporating Intelligent
Forecasting tools and thinking into day-to-day
operations.
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Intelligent Forecasting - A Practical Guide
At a 9-month range, PMs had traditionally
identified about 40% of the projects that
were on track to go wrong at the end of
the year. Using the Oakland Intelligent
Forecasting platform this risk was more
accurately predicted at over 70%.
70%
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Intelligent Forecasting - A Practical Guide
Q & A
My software vendor says
they can do this
There are some greats tools out there but many
applications focus mainly on presentation and
reporting. Our platform utilises and integrates
historic data to analyse, to provide vital insights,
and, critically, to make predictions.
My data is poor quality
The processes of data ingestion and integration
(which is often 70% of the work) helps improve the
quality of data enabling us to extract the insights
you need.
How do we integrate your
team with our team?
We work very much in collaboration with a client’s
team, running technical workshops and helping to
upskill where necessary.
How long would a typical
project take?
This could be anything from 3 months up to a year
- depending on the complexity of the project and
any subsequent ‘spin offs’
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10. 18
What sort of questions can
Intelligent Forecasting
answer?
Our Intelligent Forecasting platform helps answer
detailed questions that were traditionally difficult
to answer:
• What is the value of risks compared to the
approved cost envelope?
• Have activities been closed correctly in our data?
• How close to deadlines do people wait before
changing forecasts
• Do expected historic risks map to actuals at the
portfolio level?
• How often do PMs roll the previous period’s
spend forecast into actuals?
• Is frequency of updates a sign of control or
of panic?
• Which projects have mandatory milestones?
The platform is configured to deliver the answers
you need and can be fully customised to your
organisational and project requirements
How do I get started?
Digital transformation is a journey, not something
that can be achieved overnight. We suggest
starting small with an initial proof of concept. This
will help demonstrate the art of the possible and
begin to win buy-in from your stakeholders.
Intelligent Forecasting - A Practical Guide
Initial POC
System
Integration and
Architecture
‘Production’
(Support
and Develop)
Who have Oakland worked with?
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11. Construction errors cost the UK industry billions every
single year. According to the Get it Right Initiative,
annual spend due to errors is estimated to be
around seven times the total annual profit of the
UK construction industry.
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To organise a demonstration of the
Oakland Intelligent Forecasting platform
please contact:
intelligentforecasting@theoaklandgroup.co.uk
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Intelligent Forecasting - A Practical Guide

12. www.theoaklandgroup.co.uk
1 Aire Street, Leeds LS1 4PR
0113 234 1944