Trinity College Dublin

A shining light on the educational world stage, Trinity College Dublin (TCD) is home to 17,000+ undergraduate and postgraduate students across all the major disciplines including arts and humanities, business, law, engineering, sciences and health sciences.

To better service ongoing expansion across campus and meet the growing requirements of Ireland’s most iconic and visited campus, TCD sought to elevate project governance, to hold project management to the same high standard as the educational service delivered. This decision led to the establishment of a dedicated Project Management Office (PMO) and the introduction of an Enterprise Project Management approach, underpinned by modern digital Project Portfolio Management (PPM) solution, Microsoft Project.

Integrating with the existing ERP platform to pull financial and procurement data daily, MS Project enabled the team to consolidate project insights from across the entire University portfolio in real-time.

Smart forms backed by a robust data structure created an individual environment for each project, within which all relevant documentation and project data is catalogued and stored. Document change-tracking and enhanced visibility of project schedules, risks and issues, action-tracking, project diaries, and other important project meta-data align with internal and external auditing requirements.

Shifting project management perceptions and placing enhanced emphasis on governance and transparency, the introduction of Project Online challenged the status quo, requiring cross-functional project teams to re-think existing processes and project accountability.

Having successfully delivered upon initial objectives the solution has grown far beyond the initial scope of 25 project managers running capital projects to include 150+ users across campus, with future plans for deployment across in other parts of the organisation currently under review.