Building a Pioneer PMO: Transforming Project Portfolio Management at Cambridgeshire Highways & Transport

Background

Cambridgeshire County Council's Highways & Transport department sits within the Place & Sustainability Directorate and is accountable for managing an annual programme budget of over £84 million — representing 10% of the council's total annual spend. Delivering against that scale of investment demands not just good project management, but a mature, transparent, and scalable approach to portfolio governance.

Roscoe Gibbs joined the department as PMO Lead with a clear mandate: to build a project portfolio management capability fit for the organisation's ambitions. What followed was a multi-year transformation that reshaped how the department plans, governs, reports, and learns — and created a model with the potential to extend across the entire directorate.

The Challenge

Prior to 2020, the PMO had already developed a detailed understanding of what a best-in-class PPM platform should look like. A significant knowledge base had been built — particularly around data visualisation and portfolio reporting — and a robust project framework was in place. When Cambridgeshire County Council adopted Microsoft Project Online as its enterprise platform, the opportunity was clear: use that rollout as the foundation for something more ambitious than a standard configuration.

The challenge was to take an off-the-shelf platform deployment and shape it into a tool that genuinely served the Highways & Transport operating model — while designing for future scalability from day one.

The Approach

Working in collaboration with a Microsoft partner, the PMO developed a bespoke Enterprise Project Type (EPT) tailored precisely to Highways & Transport's delivery methodology. Every element was built with intent — not just to solve immediate needs, but to underpin a longer-term vision of portfolio-wide visibility and governance.

In 2023, the team undertook a structured review of the PPM framework through a series of focused workshops covering controls, stage gate approvals, scheduling, resource management, dependency mapping, risk management, and escalation processes. The outcome was a customised Microsoft Project training programme designed around the department's actual ways of working — with the aim of upskilling PMO staff to excel as practitioners and act as internal ambassadors for the approach across the council.

What Was Built

The most significant achievements came through the team's innovative use of the Microsoft Power Platform — particularly Power BI — pushing well beyond standard reporting functionality:

• Integrated portfolio intelligence — Live data bridged from SharePoint, Enterprise Resource Planning systems, and RAID logs to create a unified, real-time portfolio picture. The result was not simply a reporting tool but a genuinely holistic view of the programme.
• Governance-embedded bias controls — Optimism bias parameters built directly into Project Online's governance gateways, allowing the PMO to control and refine risk parameters as projects progress from assumptions to knowns. Individual subjectivity removed; PMO accountability built in.
• Geographical dependency mapping — Satellite mapping Shapefiles integrated into the platform to produce live visual representations of infrastructure project dependencies across the county.
• Self-serve reporting at the touch of a button — A Project Board PDF format with Power BI embedded, enabling any project manager to refresh their data in real time — eliminating significant manual reporting effort and accelerating stakeholder visibility.
• Custom database integration — Internal capability developed using Microsoft PowerApps to build bespoke databases and integrate them with the Project Platform, extending PPM transparency further than the standard toolset allowed.

Cultural Impact

The technical work was only part of the story. Alongside the platform development, the PMO drove a fundamental shift in how the organisation thinks about project data and accountability.

The PMO positioned the system as a shared asset — one that creates transparency, protects project managers through auditable records, and enables data-driven decision making at every level. It functions as a critical friend to project stakeholders: highlighting where support is needed, where challenge is warranted, and where escalation is required.

Strong buy-in was secured from senior leadership. The council's leadership recognised what was being built, supported the progression of the approach, and began actively engaging as sponsors of the wider culture change.

"Our PMO's message is that the system is everyone's friend. Our ability to capture and integrate data on a self-serve basis creates an end-to-end, auditable journey right across the PPM cycle. It generates transparency and joint ownership of important decisions."

Roscoe Gibbs, PMO Lead — Cambridgeshire Highways & Transport

Results

• A bespoke EPT built and embedded — tailored precisely to Highways & Transport delivery, with a clear roadmap to scale across the wider Place & Sustainability directorate
• PMO personnel upskilled as practitioners and internal ambassadors for best practice project management
• Portfolio visibility extended across staff, stakeholders, and senior leadership on a self-serve basis
• Risk governance matured through PMO-controlled optimism bias parameters embedded in project gateways
• Manual reporting overhead significantly reduced through automated, real-time Power BI integration
• Cultural shift achieved — data-driven accountability embedded throughout the project lifecycle
• Senior leadership and sponsor engagement secured for ongoing programme expansion