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Through Life Management Plans (TLMPs) for Small Projects (eg Category C Projects)

Some form of TLMP is required for small projects

Through Life Management is a fundamental tenet of Smart Acquisition and hence should be applied to all projects, whatever their size or type.

Having a TLMP is recommended best practice for all projects, regardless of their category. The AOF guidance on TLMPs is equally applicable to all categories of project, including Category D and smaller projects.

Approvals of Category D projects will require evidence that a Through Life Management approach is being employed and that Whole Life Costs are being managed (the Approvals and Business Cases guidance provides further details). The most concise, effective and structured way of demonstrating this is through some form of Through Life Management Plan.

The format of the TLMP, and level of detail in it, should be commensurate with the project’s value, type and complexity, but it must meet the requirements of the stakeholders involved in the management of the project.

Consult with stakeholders in selecting the preferred format, especially Customers and the Cluster DG.

A detailed TLMP may not be necessary

In any project, compiling and maintaining a TLMP is not a trivial task and requires commitment of time and effort, on top of the many other demands placed upon the project team. Inevitably, in a smaller project the constraints of limited resources will be even more acute, particularly where a very small team or a single person may be managing one or more projects. Therefore do not be tempted to include too much information if it is not going to be used; it is not just a matter of assembling the data in the first place - it has to be kept up to date.

If using a good practice TLMP as an example you still need to consider what sort of content is required for your project, especially if it is quite different or in a different stage of the acquisition cycle. In a small and straightforward project, a highly detailed TLMP is unlikely to be needed.

Make use of existing information

Make maximum use of existing planning information – use references and hyperlinks to the live documents. However the TLMP should contain a few lines of strategic summary for each of the most important documents, this will enable key stakeholders and customers to understand the important issues without accessing linked detail.

Use a high level summary plan

Draw a ‘plan on a page’ programme for the project, showing the timeline from now to the Out Of Service date and the key milestones and events along the way. This can be a useful place to start when writing the TLMP; it provides a visualisation of the whole programme timeline and can act as a ‘window’ into the lower level plans.

Executive Summaries

For smaller projects an Executive Summary may not be necessary.

However, the content of the TLMP may not need to cover much more than the defined requirements of an Executive Summary, in the same format:

Section 1 - Overview
Section 2 - Assumptions
Section 3 - Management Strategies
Section 4 - Through Life Support Solutions
Section 5 - Level 0 Plan
Section 6 - Key risks, issues and opportunities
Section 7 - Cost and outputs
Section 8 - Stakeholder matrix.

At the furthest extreme, for example in the case of small projects in a cluster or commodity IPT – where an overarching TLMP is used, a simple project annex consisting of one page or a few paragraphs for each of the six TLMP sections may be all that is needed.

The table below shows what such an Annex might look like in practice.

Section 1. Objectives	Reference to the project Requirement. List of key milestones and assumptions
Section 2. Stakeholders	Identify the Customer/User organisation, the supplier, any important stakeholder IPTs or authorities.
Sections 3&4. Strategies and Plans	References to project programme plan, procurement strategy (where applicable), support policy, any other key plans (for example, risk, safety management, acceptance, disposal).
Section 5. Through Life Cost information	A summary Through Life Finance table, with reference to other important project finance information.
Section 6. Evaluation of Success	Reference to current targets and how they are reported. Can link out to existing Management Information System reports or project review outputs where applicable.

Costed TLMPs

Even small projects need to have a “Costed” TLMP. All projects should work towards developing WLC information and using it for decision making.

The TLMP must be costed in accordance with Through Life Finance procedures.

All project Approvals, for all project categories, will continue to require a demonstration of affordability on a Whole Life Cost basis.

When costing the TLMP for a small project, do not get bogged down trying to capture every detail of every cost from every stakeholder. Apply the Pareto principle and concentrate on the most significant cost areas in the initial passes.

The process of compiling the The Master Data Assumptions List [211KB DOC] and costing it should become considerably easier and quicker once costs have been compiled for one or two other projects in a cluster IPT.

If the projects are in the same capability area then engagement with many of the same stakeholders will already have taken place. Some of the same assumptions can be read across for the MDAL and parallels can be drawn with the costs of similar types of new and in-service capability.

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