Future proof
Our mail centre strategy programme has been shortlisted for Programme of the Year at the Association for Project Management (APM) Project Management Awards 2018.
The awards recognise the very best the profession has to offer – from aspiring young project managers to experienced project professionals managing complex projects and programmes both in the UK and overseas.
The APM judges have selected our entry in the Programme of the Year category to go through to the second stage of the awards where we have been invited to make a presentation to the judges on Wednesday 5 September. Winners will be announced at the APM Awards ceremony on Monday 26 November at Old Billingsgate, London.
The programme
We launched our transformation programme in 2006 in response to the predicted volume decline in letters, growth in parcels and significant levels of legacy automation nearing the end of its production life.
As part of the programme, we acknowledged that a number of mail centres were no longer fit for purpose, requiring either significant transformation or complete replacement. The mail centres identified included those that were situated within multi-floor buildings and those with space constraints both under the roof and in the operational yard.
These limitations would lead to significant future operational inefficiencies, by inhibiting the deployment of new operational layouts, use of larger double deck articulated vehicles and our ability to provide a safe and comfortable working environment for all colleagues.
In response to this challenge, the business authorised the mail centre strategy programme. This programme, which concluded in March 2018, has delivered the largest infrastructure change in our 500-year history, having successfully reduced our mail centre estate from 69 to 37 units, which were future proofed for the change in customer posting trends from letters to parcels.
We did this by renovating 11 sites and constructing four new state-of-the-art mail centres. The overall mail centre estate was reduced by 170,000 square metres; while increasing on-site capacity by installing the latest letter sorting technology.
By reducing our internal operational footprint and ensuring all sites could accept larger vehicles, we were able to deliver a significant reduction in our vehicle fuel and site energy consumption across the operation, delivering a carbon footprint reduction of eight million tonnes.
We realised at the start of the plan that we would impact on over 20,000 colleagues in operational units. To minimise the impact on this affected population we developed a people approach that would take and support our people from the first announcement of a potential mail centre consolidation through to moving to their new role, either within or outside of Royal Mail. In the end, 93.6% of impacted colleagues achieved their first job preference and more than 4,500 moved into new roles.
Ian Jones, business transformation director, Post & Parcels, said: ‘The P3M community has been at the heart of the transformation that has taken place across Royal Mail in recent years.
‘The focus, dedication and professionalism of this community have ensured successful delivery of major change into the organisation, enabling a major turnaround in the fortunes of the company.
‘Robust governance, effective planning, perfect execution and strong stakeholder management have enabled the mail centre strategy programme to be successfully delivered to time, cost and quality.’
