Background
RW King was engaged by a leading federal IT and cybersecurity contractor supporting a $2B multi-agency cybersecurity initiative. The client was responsible for delivering solutions under a significant Department of Homeland Security contract. This involved accountability to multiple federal agencies and managing numerous task orders. With over 100,000 project activities spread across 25 independently managed schedules, the program’s monitoring and controlling capabilities were immense. Consequently, transforming how the program managed information was necessary to meet program contractual requirements, provide the Executive Team with crucial decision-making abilities, and ultimately support the client agencies.
At a Glance
What Mattered Most
Deliver a scalable, real-time program management system capable of handling 100K+ tasks, that equips leadership with daily insights and reduces team burden in reporting to senior leadership and clients.
What We Noticed
The Project Controls team faced complex reporting demands across clients and internal leadership. Manual data handling slowed delivery and limited visibility. Metadata management (subject to changes by client needs), disrupted project manager effectiveness.
What Changed
developed and adopted
new tools and processes
trained on Administration
Challenge
The Project Controls Office had successfully set up a team of Project Managers and Administration Support. However, the popular approach to schedule management fell short of their needs. Separate, independent managed schedules injected complexity and manual labor into simple administrative activities, like modifying metadata or fulfilling ad-hoc progress requests.
Monthly reporting required the PC staff to spend four days curating data from disparate schedules into Integrated Management Schedule (IMS) contractually required by the clients. These long-winded activities prevented the team from providing management with timely insights into program health, risks, and milestones, and applying their time to value-add activities. Also, the complexity of the contract—spanning over a dozen agencies—meant that even minor updates triggered cascading manual rework. The team needed a scalable, configurable solution that is easy to use and administer. It also needed to provide program executives with the information they need to make decisions.
Solution
We delivered a 6-month transformation that replaced the file-share system with a purpose-built scalable SaaS based Project Management Information System (PMIS). Eliminating the arduous time and effort spent or administration and reporting:
- Conducted design workshops with key stakeholders and developed proof of concept
- Coordinated with client’s internal IT to provision Microsoft Project Online then configured it to support the client’s complex requirements for metadata, standardization, views, and secure access. Adhering to the organization’s IT policies and procedures.
- Standardized all project schedules, each with 2,000–3,000 tasks, and aligned them with IDIQs, Task Order and over 12 variations of agency-specific metadata.
- Automated the creation of an IMS, reducing build time from approximately 120 man-hours to 30 minutes (95%), freeing up the Project Controls for value added activities
- Trained 10 project managers and 4 Project Controls Admin tool usage, metadata, reports and dashboards management
- Migrated all schedules to the SaaS environment and provided change management during the transition
- Developed and launched Power BI dashboards for executives and project controls, providing near-real time visibility into top-line KPIs, milestones, agency-specific tasks, project level views
- Transitioned administration and management of tool and Power BI to Project Controls staff
Outcome
This engagement transformed a reactive, manual process into a real-time, insight-driven program control center. What took days now takes minutes—freeing up hundreds of hours annually and empowering leadership with the data they need to act decisively.
- Reduced IMS creation time by 95%, enabling weekly updates across 100,000+ tasks
- Tool configuration allowed the addition/modification of meta-data to be propagated to all schedules eliminating hours of one-by-one editing
- Delivered a centralized, metadata-rich scheduling platform, aligned with federal compliance requirements
- Enabled daily visibility into program health, improving responsiveness and client engagement
- Freed hundreds of hours annually by automating reporting and schedule integration
- Provided real-time access to KPIs, risks, and milestones, enhancing strategic agility
- Increased confidence in delivery through scalable, compliant, and data-driven oversight
Conclusion
In a high-stakes federal environment, this transformation delivered operational efficiency and restored confidence in program delivery. RW King helped the client shift from reactive reporting and administrative burden to proactive oversight. The result: faster decisions, reduced risk, and a scalable foundation for future growth, all while managing multi-agency deliverables.
