Sunchana Johnston

Sunchana Johnston is an independent PMO Planning Consultant and has been running her own company since 2010.  Sunchana is a full member of APM, Committee member and volunteer for APM Scotland.  Sunchana has been working in project management for the past 20-years, both in the UK and internationally.  Her first job as a Project Manager was to manage the build of eleven Data Centres across Europe, with a budget of £8 million per annum.  Since then, Sunchana played a pivotal role as a Strategic Planner on the £2 billion capital investment plan for Scottish Water.  She managed several large, complex consultancy programme engagements in financial services (Business / Technology Transformations) and public sector programmes (DWP).

Synopsis: Love your BREXIT PMO

Full of enthusiasm, honest and practical advice, Sunchana describes ‘how to learn to love any regulatory PMO’.

BREXIT has been on the news daily since the decision to leave the EU in 2016.  Businesses across Scotland and the UK are going to be profoundly affected by it.   The way we trade with Europe will fundamentally change for us all. This presentation explores best practice and different options available to private and public sector organisations, constrained by broader regulatory environments, to ensure effective project and programme management while making decisions that have lasting impact.

We are starting with exploring how to align a company’s vision and strategy with the benefits that a regulatory programme ultimately needs to accomplish as a result of the change.

The next stage is to define a structured approach and set-up a PMO Function. The spotlight is on creating the right framework for both functional teams and programme management teams for the benefits of all parties.

During the implementation, we are embedding best practices to deliver an extensive, complex regulatory constrained programme successfully.  Throughout this process, we are implementing the most appropriate Change Controls.

Finally, it is vitally important to manage the hand-over enabling BAU functions to collaborate successfully, to operate and to thrive.

This session is based on multiple professional engagements within the regulatory space. Sunchana is a P3O Practitioner and Management of Risk Practitioner who has been engaged for a large financial services company in the UK on the Brexit Programme.