.

 

Our Services

blue limes offers flexible services, tailored to the needs of the client: we can take direct management responsibility for a client’s programme, project or procurement; work as part of a client team; or act in an advisory role for clients to an agreed set of objectives and terms of reference.

Our ethical approach ensures that our advice is truly independent; we will never work on both ‘client’ and ‘supplier’ side during projects. We have no marketing or partnership relationships to mitigate against potential conflicts of interest.      

Each of blue limes’ services independently delivers significant business benefits; their complementary nature means that, when they are combined, even greater value is often achieved.

Our Service Framework does not try to enforce a pre-determined approach with forms and procedures that must be implemented. Each Service is tailored to meet the individual client’s needs and can offer a full range of capabilities.  

  • Management Support: The continuing pace of change stretches resources and expertise. As a result many companies have a significant shortage of skilled and experienced management staff. Many organisations look for external support - to complement their in-house skills with management proficiency in the areas where they lack resources, expertise or experience. blue limes often supplies the key management, business and technical skills to ensure the programme or project is managed and delivered successfully. However we do not seek to take over or to bring in "the cast of thousands" – we work in a true partnership with our client. We can provide management resources at any stage of a programme or project: to help resolve one particular issue; to develop a particular product (e.g. business case or PID); manage a phase; or take day-to-day responsibility for delivering the client’s initiative. Our partnership approach, where experienced blue limes management specialists work in a team with client staff, is a very cost effective means for clients to ensure success, whilst retaining ownership and control of the activity in-house.

  • Best Practice: Many projects start as an idea and progress too rapidly to a point where the emphasis is on producing something… anything… fast - enthusiasm overtakes pragmatism, reasons for past failures are forgotten and focus on the ultimate goal is lost. In such situations, the desire for some progress frequently outweighs the need to know precisely what progress has been made. Sometimes the complexity or scale of the undertaking can be such that too much management effort is spent on attempting to understand the situation rather than on actively managing it. The path to achieving this understanding, and to addressing related issues of control, is smoothed by equipping the team with appropriate methods and tools. Working with client staff we will develop or adapt a programme life cycle, processes, procedures and tools and help implement an effective management structure and organisational capability.  

  • Reviews: Increasingly organisations are using programmes and projects as the basis for developing their business capabilities and changing their business approach, whilst line managers focus on ‘business as usual’. However, there is plentiful and well-publicised evidence of the failure of major programmes and projects. Many are delayed, some are cancelled and many do not deliver their targeted business benefits. In such an environment, impartial reviews of key programmes or projects by blue limes specialists provide managers with the confidence and assurance they need to invest, in the expectation of successful conclusions to these activities. 
     

  • Skills Transfer: blue limes’ consultants work in partnership with client management and staff towards the achievement of the activity’s objectives. They operate as part of our client’s team, in the process raising the expertise of the client staff working with them. Their aim is not to create a dependency culture – so that a client can go forward sufficiently empowered through the skills transfer process that they no longer need consultant support.  

Focused management for projects and programmes

Specialising in managing projects, programmes and strategic assignments in partnership with its clients, blue limes provides experienced and multi-disciplined managers and specialist consultants, whose in-depth skills are based on the application of management experience and information technologies.  Typically, these projects must be managed outside the normal operational line management culture, necessitating new management processes and the transfer of skills to client staff.  The blue limes approach provides focused management attention dedicated to achieving specific objectives, created through the high visibility of progress and issues for action.  

blue limes does not employ the “cast of thousands” approach; only key management personnel complementary to the client are deployed on any project.  Our specialist managers provide the expertise to create the most effective strategies, architectures, designs and implementable plans. blue limes’ consultants often remain ‘under cover’ – without revealing our presence within the project -  working as part of the client’s management team, promoting the client’s interests, not our own.  

Underpinned by robust methods and tools

As a specialist provider of management support services, blue limes has comprehensive standards for planning, monitoring and managing programme activities; these detailed processes and guidelines are based on the cumulative experience of the company and its staff and are complemented by the industry standard approach, including:

  • PRINCE2 & MSP;

  • IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL);

  • Public Sector Best Practice including structured Gateway Reviews;

  • Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply (CIPS) Best Practice.  

Our methodology is available in the DRIVE Toolkit, which includes processes, guidelines and templates for managing the whole project and operational life-cycle.  All of these can be used as they stand but we can adapt them to create a lifecycle that meets the specific requirements of the client.