Environment Agency

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Environment Agency - Government case study

As part of the Flood Warning Investment Strategy the Floodline Warnings Direct (FWD) project was established in 2002, with the objective of providing a service that would exploit both current and emerging technologies to deliver warnings and information. In practice this means sending information simultaneously via telephone, mobile phone, pager and fax, and in due course email, SMS text messaging, digital TV and radio.

The Challenge

Around 5 million people, in over 2 million properties, live in flood risk areas in England and Wales and the Environment Agency takes the lead role in both informing and warning people about the risk of flooding from rivers and the sea.

One of the major challenges facing the Agency is how to communicate to such large numbers of people in an effective and timely fashion. The current system, for providing flood forecasts and flood warnings, has been in place since 1996 and is reaching the end of its life in terms of both reliability and capacity.

As part of the Flood Warning Investment Strategy the Floodline Warnings Direct (FWD) project was established in 2002, with the objective of providing a service that would exploit both current and emerging technologies to deliver warnings and information. In practice this means sending information simultaneously via telephone, mobile phone, pager and fax, and in due course email, SMS text messaging, digital TV and radio.

This is an innovative and groundbreaking project and the developed solution can be applied in other emergency warning situations in the UK. It is also generating a lot of interest from other countries.

Good business practice meant that the FWD business case included a benefits plan but there was a need to delve deeper. The Agency wanted not only to be able to validate the identified business benefits but also to understand how they would actually be realised. In addition it was recognised that any approach taken would need to be able to support the business in the long term. Once the project was complete and handed back to the business the mechanisms put in place would need to continue to be used by the business for perhaps the next 10 years. The approach being used by the Agency, to develop benefit plans, could not meet this more rigorous challenge.

Fujitsu Services had been working closely with the Agency team for some time, having been selected by FWD as the partner to initially design the solution and subsequently to take responsibility for the build, which started in April 2004.

Following discussions Alan Matthews, a lead consultant with Fujitsu's business consultancy practice, outlined the benefits of adopting “Benefits Realisation”. Alan described how by implementing this consultancy methodology the Agency would be able to meet its objectives.

The Solution

For Floodline Warnings Direct the Agency wanted to have processes in place to ensure benefits could be identified, measured, monitored and realised.

“Benefits Realisation” consultancy seeks to enable the delivery of benefits, which are identified and agreed as realisable, and which are documented within a business case.

For FWD the consultancy was delivered in two Phases. The output from Phase One was the Benefits Roadmap, developed through a series of working sessions with stakeholders and Agency staff. Why call the output a roadmap? Because it captures, in an easy to navigate form, the path that must be followed and the steps that must be taken if the expected benefits are to occur. So no “leaps of faith” but activities which can be defined, monitored and measured.

In Phase Two the Roadmap was used to produce a report detailing recommendations for increasing benefits management capability within FWD.

Within the Agency the Performance and Innovation unit has the remit to identify best practice in developing and managing benefits. The consultancy ensured that the use of the Roadmap, as a live management tool, was compatible with the existing tools already in use by the Agency.

Benefits to Floodline Warnings Direct

Normal practice is to measure the benefits at the end of a process, once all activities are completed. One of the major benefits of having the Benefits Roadmap is the ability to see and understand the intermediate measures. Measuring further back in the chain of activities creates the opportunity to spot early indicators of problems. These can then be examined, corrective action taken if needed and the activity can get back on track. Without this ability to understand where and how to intervene, measurement takes place at the end of the process, looking at target Key Performance Indicators (KPI) s and then discovering something has gone awry.

The consultancy resulted in a revised Benefits Plan and contributed to an updated Business Case. The benefits identified for FWD can be summarised as,
Flood Damage Avoided
Service Efficiency
Cost Avoidance
Non-Financial Benefits

In each case the Roadmap has identified where the benefits can be measured, so for example Flood Damage Avoided will be monitored through tracking the increase in people being offered the service and subsequently registering as customers.

The Roadmap also supports an understanding of the activities which drive non-financial benefits, which are often termed “soft measures”.

For FWD the challenge of effective communication includes providing an improved warning and information service to its professional partners, such as Local Authorities and the Police. Delivering this service will enhance the reputation of the Environment Agency which in turn will build greater trust and so lead to more efficient multi-agency working.

“Making it Happen”, the Environment Agency's published corporate strategy states that success will come from “constantly challenging ourselves” and the Floodline Warnings Direct project demonstrates this is happening in practice.