PRESS RELEASE
BPUG CONGRESS AWARDS CELEBRATE BEST PRACTICE ACHIEVEMENT
7th February, 2008, London, UK
The Best Practice User Group (BPUG) awards were presented last night during a gala dinner at the BPUG Congress, held at the Millennium Gloucester Hotel, London. The awards, which were beautiful glass presentation objects incorporating the Best Practice logo, were presented to achievers in the design and use of OGC’s best practice methodologies.
The awards were presented by Pete North, Manchester City Council, Sandra Lomax, BPUG Chair, and Richard Pharro, The APM Group.
The first award was the Best Practice Partnership Award for Innovation in Training. It was won by Maven Training. The award was nominated by fellow Accredited Training Organisations.
Sandra Lomax said, “Maven Training offers courses in all OGC products and has an enviable reputation for both quality and creativity. Delegates enjoy using their online delegate area with a variety of quizzes designed to suit different learning styles. Maven has a flexible schedule offering weekly, evening and weekend events to suit different working and life styles. Their promotional video is available on you tube and they were responsible fro training the 200,000th PRINCE2 candidate. They are very worthy winners of this award.”
Melanie Franklin, CEO, Maven Training, collected the award. She said, “We are delighted to win this award especially in the category of Innovation in Training. This ethos goes to the heart of our beliefs at Maven. Innovation drives everything we do – not just product innovation - but also devising new ways of working, communicating and supporting our staff and delegates. Encouraging and motivating staff to generate ideas and then support them through to delivery is the secret of our success. We work as a team, not just as a group of individuals. This is recognised by our trainers an even by our competitiors who voted for us. We would like to thank them and our delegates who are the heart of our course development and delivery.”
The second award was the Best Practice Partnership Special Merit Award for individual contribution to development of the guidance. The winner – nominated by fellow BPUG members – was Andy Murray Director of Outperform Ltd and Lead Author for the ongoing revision of PRINCE2.
Sandra said, “Andy was selected to receive his award by BPUG members for his work in developing PRINCE2 as well as for his work in implementing it in organisations across a number of countries. He receives the Special Merit Award for individual contribution to development of the guidance.”
Collecting his award, Andy said: “This award is a total surprise – if I had expected it, I would have worn a tie! I hope the updated version of PRINCE2 lives up to expectations – every effort is being made to ensure it will. It’s very rewarding to be recognised by your peers and I am very proud to be the recipient of this award.”
The third award was the International Special Envoy of the year, which was awarded to Eddie Borup for guidance implemented in over 150 countries. Eddie was Head of
Projects at Cable and Wireless prior to forming his own consultancy business. His recent work with the United Nations, introducing PRINCE2 to developing countries, has required personal sacrifice in the form of significant periods away from home and family.
Eddie said, “I am thrilled and surprised to receive this award, which I feel really belongs to the UNDP for their commitment to improving life in the developing nations. It has been more than a pleasure working with them – it has been a life enhancing experience.”
The fourth award was the Best Practice Partnership Honorary Award for contribution
made to development of qualifications. This award was won by Colin Bentley.
Sandra said, “After the effort of writing the lion's share of the original PRINCE2 manual Colin "retired" to his home office to write some supporting guides. He was enticed out of his den to accept the challenge of creating a series of exams. He thought the work would fit between his other personal commitments. Instead it took over his life for the last decade during which period he has been the most influential person in shaping and developing the qualification scheme. His dedication, passion and determination to make the qualifications successful single him out as the most worthy winner of this award.
The fifth award was the Best Practice Partnership Grand Prix for leading-edge
innovation in a user organisation. The winner was Right Track North West and was
collected by Jean Hunter.
Sandra said, “How many councils can say that they have a complete picture of all the projects running their organisations, or can honestly say that they feel that they are running the most effective portfolio of projects? Councils have to be more efficient and there is an urgent need to recognise the role of better PPM in this. The purpose of Right Track North West is to help councils address this issue and they are worth winners of this award.”
The sixth award was the Best Practice Partnership award for outstanding contribution
to embedding PRINCE2 in the public sector and was awarded to Manchester City Council Capital Programme Group.
Sandra said, “For the last five years, Manchester City Council and in particular the Capital Programme Group have been an active member and supporter of BPUG. The Capital Programme Group developed a fundamental approach to project management based on PRINCE2 with a view to promoting a standard methodology and further promoting PRINCE2 as a qualification. To date over 1,200 Manchester City Council officers have attended the Fundamentals and Board Members courses and 84 of these have progressed to PRINCE2.
”The authority has used the development of its staff to deliver better services for the people of Manchester, one example of many is the complex and successful Sure Start £12.5m Programme, 25 major projects over 2 phases was managed by Manchester City Council's own staff. The Capital Programme Group have maintained an open and helpful approach to others and have shared their experiences with over 70 other organisations, many are BPUG members,” Sandra said.
The BPUG Congress awards were specially commissioned for the event and were made and designed by Egyptian Blue. For more information see www.egyptianblue.co.uk