City of London Corporation

The City of London Corporation provides Local Government services for the financial and commercial heart of Britain, the City of London. It is committed to maintaining and enhancing the status of the business City as the world’s leading international financial and business centre through the policies it pursues and the high standard of services it provides.

The Corporation approved a strategy to rationalise and consolidate the office
accommodation of its administrative departments from seven to two core sites and to renew the Guildhall complex to 21st Century standards.
PTS Consulting was first engaged to provide IT Consultancy Services to successfully implement the Guildhall Accommodation Project. The development of a relocation strategy, to facilitate refurbishments of the buildings affected, resulted in three main project phases and a number of enabling projects being identified.

Initial user relocation commenced in late 2004, with the migration
of IT systems to new Computer Room facilities being completed in late 2006. This involved a migration of all communication services and computer systems, which was completed without loss of active services to the Corporation. Further refurbishment of the main building, including another computer room was completed in late 2007, with PTS completing a successful migration of all users
and services back into the complex in mid 2008.

1) ICT Architecture and Infrastructure Consultancy: PTS Consulting provided assistance with the design, procurement and commissioning of a scalable, resilient and cost-effective data network infrastructure, that could accommodate the current and future business requirements of the Corporation. This included the utilisation and migration of existing network equipment to integrate business processes across platforms and ensure effective data management.

2) Operational Relocation Strategy, Project Management and Delivery: PTS Consulting supported the Corporation in the development of an operational strategy for the Data Network infrastructure that covered all the transitional phases of the construction project and IT systems Relocation. Independent
strategic advice and project management assistance from PTS Consulting enabled the Corporation to select the most appropriate vendor through the issue of an ITT that focused on the network design, re-engineering, supply and implementation. The Corporation subsequently deployed proven PTS Consulting methodology to successfully manage the procurement process.

Chris Anderson, IS Infrastructure Manager for City of London Corporation, said: “We reached a major milestone with the completion of the relocation moves back into Guildhall North Wing. The work undertaken by PTS Consulting has been truly outstanding, from the design and commissioning of the Network and Telephony infrastructures to the resolution of a multitude of small issues that needed to be resolved in order to make sure that the moves went ahead according to schedule. Equally impressive is that this was undertaken not once but twice, with the temporary moves to St Alphage, and all of this work has been completed whilst dealing with numerous other projects, work requests and keeping the day-to-day service running to its normally high standard.”

Throughout the project, PTS Consulting demonstrated its ability to communicate with all project stakeholders at all levels in the organisation, including the Corporation’s legal and financial departments and the professional design and construction teams. Having PTS Consulting expertise on-hand to support the City of London Corporation throughout the duration of the project from concept to delivery has ensured that the Relocation and network procurement has been delivered on
time and to budget. Moving forward, thanks to PTS Consulting, City of London Corporation will have a secure, high performance IT network in place that can deliver efficient day-today management of critical data.

The Verdict: PTS Consulting saw the project right through to its finishing stage, undertaking vendor management, providing advice on technical design matters and liaising with other technology streams during the implementation of the network solution and the transitional phases of the project.

Chris Anderson, IS Infrastructure Manager for the City of London Corporation, concluded: “The guildhall Accommodation Project was a major undertaking for the City of London Corporation and the experience and expertise provided by PTS was a key factor in its success. Having PTS Consulting working alongside the City of London Corporation from the formation of our initial IT Relocation strategy right through to the network design, procurement and implementation has ensured a level of quality and consistency on the project that we could not have achieved on our own. PTS Consulting’s wealth of experience and expertise of working on similar public sector projects has clearly been great benefit to our project, enabling us to ensure our project has been aligned with best practice, at every step of the way.”