- Public Sector, Digital PMO
Sydney Water’s Infrastructure Portfolio – Investment Management Office (IP-IMO) oversees a $3B capital program, ensuring governance, budgeting, and risk management across critical water infrastructure projects. Central to this is the Overall Measure Delivery (OMD) dashboard, a board-level tool using Earned Value Management (EVM) techniques to track portfolio performance.
Over time, the evolution of the metric had resulted in additional complexity that made the dashboard become unreliable, outdated, and no longer fit for purpose, risking effective executive decision-making and operational confidence. MIGSO-PCUBED (MP) was engaged to recover, stabilise, and modernise the OMD dashboard – and later, the Schedule and Milestone Trends dashboards – delivering a sustainable, future-proof solution aligned with Sydney Water’s strategic goals.
The Challenges of Fragmented Data and Eroding Trust
Like many organizations in the utilities and infrastructure sector, Sydney Water faced a common challenge: ensuring that portfolio reporting could keep pace with the growing complexities of a large-scale capital investment program. The OMD dashboard, a critical tool used to track and report on a $3B portfolio, had become increasingly difficult to maintain and had not functioned as intended for several months.
As their Earned Value Management (EVM) procedures evolved over time, layers of complexity were added without a cohesive and optimized design, resulting in reduced reporting accuracy. Compounding these issues, executives and delivery teams lacked visibility into key indicators such as schedule trends, milestone deviations, and data quality, limiting their ability to proactively manage portfolio performance. At the same time, reliance on manual processes consumed more than 16 hours of effort each month, delaying access to critical insights and increasing operational risk across the investment portfolio.
Client Objectives
To overcome these challenges as well as to create a more reliable and efficient reporting environment, Sydney Water established a clear set of objectives focused on rebuilding trust in portfolio performance data and strengthening decision-making capabilities across the organization:
- Restore confidence in portfolio reporting for executive and board-level stakeholders.
- Eliminate manual effort and inefficiencies in data processing.
- Modernise dashboards to support real-time, data-driven decision-making.
- Document and future-proof solutions for long-term maintainability.
Why MIGSO-PCUBED?
MP was uniquely positioned to support this transformation thanks to a combination of Digital PMO capabilities, especially in using Power BI for data-driven portfolio reporting, and deep Project Management experience. Unlike a purely technical implementation partner, MP brings an understanding of how project, program, and portfolio data is used to drive governance and executive decision-making. This allowed the team not only to resolve the underlying technical issues affecting the dashboards, but also to ensure that reporting outputs aligned with the needs of both delivery teams and portfolio executives. In this way, MP was able to deliver a solution that improved reporting reliability, increased user adoption, and created a sustainable foundation for future growth.
Solution: From Recovery to Transformation
1. OMD Dashboard Recovery
As the primary reporting tool for Sydney Water’s $3B capital portfolio, the OMD dashboard had become increasingly complex and difficult to maintain, reducing confidence in the accuracy of portfolio reporting. MP conducted a comprehensive review of the dashboard and identified 12 critical issues affecting performance and reliability.
Key improvements included:
- Redesigning the data model and aligning the EVM processes with updated reporting standards.
- Automating key data processes, reducing manual effort by 75%.
- Introducing new KPIs and enhanced visualisations to improve executive insights.
These enhancements transformed the OMD dashboard into a stable, fully documented, and user-friendly solution, restoring stakeholder confidence and providing reliable, real-time portfolio performance data.
“MIGSO-PCUBED got to work quickly to assess our current PowerBI model, which had historically evolved over 3 previous development sprints in the last 2½ years with other partners. Engaging with key stakeholders to understand the expected model and partnering with us throughout the development journey (business analysis, prototyping, design reviews through to final implementation), MP delivered everything required and more, in a friendly and professional manner.”
Paul van Neijenhoff, Systems & Reporting Manager, MAICD
2. Schedule Dashboard Enhancement
Although a schedule dashboard was in place, it was underutilised and provided limited value as a standalone reporting tool. To increase its effectiveness, MP integrated schedule data with the OMD dashboard, creating a more unified view of portfolio performance and progress. The team not only added data quality indicators and enhanced visualisations to highlight scheduling risks and trends, but they also refined KPIs through ongoing stakeholder engagement and feedback.
By providing greater visibility into schedule health and potential deviations, the enhanced dashboard was re-adopted by delivery teams and became a more valuable tool for monitoring performance and supporting proactive decision-making.
3. Milestone Trends Dashboard (New Development)
Recognizing a gap in visibility around milestone performance, Sydney Water sought a better way to identify schedule risks before they impacted delivery. MP developed a new Milestone Trends dashboard to provide insight into milestone performance, rescheduling patterns, and emerging delivery risks. The new dashboard also introduced innovative KPIs, including milestone deviation trends and early warning indicators. Therefore, it provided greater visibility into potential schedule risks across the portfolio.
By equipping teams with forward-looking insights, the dashboard enabled more proactive schedule management and helped stakeholders identify and mitigate potential delivery issues before they escalated.
“MIGSO-PCUBED’s expertise in Power BI and project controls was pivotal to our team’s success. Their deep understanding of project controls enabled them to translate complex data into clear, actionable insights through our reports and dashboards. Their contributions directly impacted our ability to monitor and control projects with precision.”
Omer Iqbal, Senior Portfolio Manager - Investment PMO
Benefits: Quantifiable Impact and Lasting Value
Area | Impact |
|---|---|
Executive Confidence | Restored trust in portfolio reporting, with 12 critical issues resolved. |
Efficiency Gains | 75% reduction in manual data effort; 16+ hours/month saved. |
Decision-Making | New analytics and KPIs introduced, enabling data-driven planning. |
User Adoption | New dashboards adopted by delivery teams and executives. |
Futureproofing | Fully documented, optimised code for easy maintenance and scalability. |
Conclusion: A Partnership Built on Trust and Innovation
Sydney Water’s engagement with MP demonstrates how Digital PMO solutions can recover critical tools, restore stakeholder confidence, and unlock new efficiencies. By focusing on outcomes and the processes that drive them, MP delivered:
- Reliable, real-time portfolio insights for executive decision-making.
- Sustainable, documented solutions that reduce long-term maintenance burdens.
- A culture of data-driven performance, with dashboards now central to Sydney Water’s PMO operations.
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Key results
- 12 critical issues resolved in the portfolio dashboard, restoring executive confidence in reporting.
- 75% reduction in manual data update effort through automation.
- 16+ hours saved per month for the client’s team.
- All enhancements delivered in 3 months, exceeding the initial 6-month estimate.
- New analytics and KPIs introduced, strengthening portfolio-level planning and decision-making.
Client overview
Industry: Public Utilities / Water Infrastructure
Size: Sydney Water manages a $3B per annum capital portfolio, serving over 5 million customers in Greater Sydney
