Active Projects

Benefits Realisation

The BeReal research has developed significant insights into relevant issues and produced valuable methods and tools to help achieve improvements. A talented and motivated research team has developed a collaborative system to help those involved in different roles to identify and manage benefits and dis-benefits throughout the life of a programme or project, despite the likelihood of change over time in the external environment and internal objectives.

Main outcomes include:
• The BeReal process and methods
- The BeReal process is innovative, combining best practice from a diversity of knowledge areas and industry sectors. It targets successful and effective delivery of benefits through efficient management of change. Moreover it has been designed to align with other common programme and project management techniques such as the Gateway system, Prince2 and Managing Successful Programmes.
• BeReal consultative guide.
- The guide focusing on how benefits should be elicited at the initial strategic stages, and how benefits should be deployed, managed and traced along the lifecycle of a programme so their realisation contributes to successful outcomes.
• BeReal website (www.be-real.co.uk)
• A conceptual IT toolkit (http://tool.be-real.co.uk/) platform to function as:
- Training and Education Tool 
- Implementation Guide 
- Knowledge Database
• Training material on how to implement BeReal
• Publications
Major achievements include:
• Use of the BeReal process for selecting design options for the new 3Ts (Trauma, Tertiary and Teaching) hospital development in Brighton.
• Use of the BeReal process for formulating a benefits management strategy to be included in the full business case of St Thomas’s Community Hospital in Stockport
• Participation of the BeReal team in OGC Gateway 3 review.
• Bringing together a traditionally fragmented community within various NHS organisations through workshops
• Questionnaires and interview protocol used to link outcomes and customer satisfaction to planned benefits for MaST LIFT
• Member of the reviewing panel for Managing Successful Programs 2011 edition by OGC focusing on risk quality and benefits management.
• Post project implementation pilots: 
- National Institution for Health Research Information System development 
- Research Capability Programme / Health Research Support System development 
- Brighton 3Ts hospital FBC support 
- P21+ OBC support 
- In discussions with the Welsh Assembly Government on supporting "Better Business Cases" and leadership training programmes

Acknowledgements:

Many thanks are due to our advisors who were instrumental in the success of the project, these include: Rob Smith, Helen Donlan, Patricia Leahy, Richard Baldwin, Duane Passman, Keith Hamblett, George Stevenson, Erica Dyson, Clare Postlethwaite and Ged Deveraux.
Thanks are also due to our partners, kindly provided their time and advice to help with the success of the project: MaST LIFT - Manchester, Salford, Trafford Local Improvement Financial Trust, Stockport PCT – Stockport Primary Care Trust, Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, Department of Health.