Case study

Management Consultancies Association

Best Management Practice Awards 2004

Electronic Trading Category - Bronze Award

Client: Neighbourhood Renewal Unit

A knowledge management portal to help regenerate Britain's most deprived neighbourhoods

PA Consulting Group has helped the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit (NRU) to create an Internet-based portal allowing anyone involved in renewal to base their work on evaluated evidence about good practice.

Within 10 years, the Government’s National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal aims to close the gap between deprived areas and the rest of the country. Success depends on providing policy makers, renewal practitioners and community groups with ready answers to the question ‘What works where?’ The NRU asked PA to help create a knowledge management portal to meet this need.

A PA team with extensive experience of renewal work, as well as a comprehensive set of relevant technical skills, collaborated closely with the NRU’s own team. The portal was developed using PA’s Rapid Systems Development approach, which encouraged users to shape the portal and its content to their requirements. The project comfortably met its challenging  six-month timescale.

Since its launch by Neighbourhood Renewal Minister Barbara Roche in October 2002, the site has received 350,000 hits – well above the specified targets. Eighty-eight percent of users surveyed have found it useful in the design and delivery of neighbourhood renewal programmes.

“The assignment has felt like a joint endeavour; the spirit has been collaborative. In our view,  PA has excelled in all areas of contract delivery.”

Bill Feinstein
Senior Knowledge Adviser
Neighbourhood Renewal Unit