Areas Of Expertise:

• Portfolio, Program and Project Management
• Scope Definition & Change Management
• Release & Incident Management
• Reconciliation & Conflict Management
• Cost Management
• Risk Management and Ownership

Education:

• Bachelor of Engineering in Information Technology

About Hardik Lakhani

Hardik is a seasoned Program Delivery Leader with 18 years of experience successfully delivering large‑scale regulatory, operational resilience, digital and technology transformation programs. Since joining Seven Consulting in March 2022, he has led complex multi‑stream initiatives across major organisations, including Cuscal’s most complex multi‑year regulatory uplift program. He brings deep expertise in mobilising programs, establishing governance, driving cross‑functional execution, and ensuring measurable, compliant outcomes for clients. Highly effective in C‑suite and ELT forums, Hardik translates complex regulatory and strategic requirements into clear, actionable delivery plans. Calm, structured and relentlessly delivery‑focused, he consistently demonstrates Seven’s commitment to leaving clients stronger and more capable at the end of every engagement.

What Hardik brings

• Enterprise Delivery Leadership: Expertise in leading multi‑year, multi‑stream programs across regulatory, risk, digital and technology domains
• Program Mobilisation & Recovery: Ability to step into high‑risk or red‑status programs and rapidly establish program plans, governance, controls and operating rhythms that stabilise delivery.
• Executive Level Engagement: Skilled at engaging CEOs, ELT members, presenting clear, concise delivery narratives and influencing strategic decision making.
• Cross Functional Team Leadership: Experienced in managing large delivery teams across multiple geographies

Client feedback:

	Senior Corporate Counsel, Financial services company – 2025 “Hardik is organized, follows up, focused on delivery, calm and professional,; and willing to help even on matters outside his direct responsibilities.”
	CIO and Solution Delivery Director, Multinational Corporation – 2024 “Hardik has the ability to connect with and support any leader in a strategic and business context; he has strong communication capability and way of getting into the issue and solving for it. Hardik is well liked by all team members and the business team, that has helped in an unmeasurable way.”
	CIO and Solution Delivery Director, Multinational Beverage Corporation – 2023 “Hardik has the ability to cut through issues and get to the problem to solve it. He has strong people skills, trustworthy and transparent. He has helped align our resources and projects to get success.”
	Clement Chen, PSD Plant Manager – 2023 “Hardik was very impressive in keeping all accountable. Engaged key stakeholders very well, kept everyone to the timeline and was always willing to teach people.”

Key Clients:

• Cuscal
• Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP)
• Westpac
• HSBC
• Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA)
• American Express

Key Achievements:

As Program Manager and later as a Program Director at Cuscal, Hardik played a pivotal role in leading Program Diamond—the organisation’s most complex multi year transformation, delivering the full regulatory uplift for CPS230 Operational Resilience and CPS220 Risk Management. He joined this $22 million AUD enterprise program when it was in red status, with no structured plan, governance model, or delivery rhythm. Within his first month, Hardik mobilised the entire program by producing a comprehensive, enterprise wide program plan, establishing delivery controls, and leading a core team of four Project Managers and a Business Analyst across eight interdependent workstreams. He designed and embedded disciplined program governance—including Steering Committees, Quarterly Business Reviews, integrated schedules, risk and issue pathways, and uplifted executive reporting—while restoring stakeholder confidence and stabilising execution across streams. Hardik presented critical updates to senior governance bodies, including the Enterprise Risk Committee attended by the CEO and ELT, where he translated complex regulatory obligations into clear delivery narratives and decision pathways. Under his leadership, Cuscal achieved CPS230 compliance by the 1 July deadline, with zero audit findings related to program governance, and successfully transitioned into the Embed phase.

As Program Manager, Open Banking at Westpac, Hardik led the management and delivery of July 2021 and November 2021 phases of Open Banking features for regional brands (St George, Bank of Melbourne, Bank of South Australia, and RAMS) of Westpac Banking Corporation, involving 20 teams with more than 150 people having annual budget of $40 million. He strategized program delivery by forming teams, delivery plans, and governance to set them up for success. Hardik met with leads from various teams to understand the pain points and challenges, implemented solutions that ensured governance activities like pen testing, operational readiness assessments, EIM governance, etc. were completed on time before the production deployments. Weekly sync-up meetings were scheduled with all the teams involved to ensure everyone was on the same page, key risks or issues were discussed and documented. He took a pragmatic approach to project delivery by making quick decisions during the critical phases of project delivery, managing and mentoring service owners, solution designers, and implementation managers, seeking suggestions for improvements, and keeping them motivated by entrusting them with key responsibilities. Hardik established a defect review and prioritization process closer to the release to ensure stakeholders were across the open and deferred defects, worked with architects and tech leads to identify areas for improvement, like building roadmaps to improve NFRs, parallel test environments to support concurrent releases, risk management in JIRA integrated with confluence, etc.

As Digital Program Manager at HSBC, Hardik managed 4 digital scrum teams involving 35 people with an annual budget of $25 million. He helped stakeholders make priority calls by introducing processes like WSJF and 4 Quadrants and was the single point of contact for any new digital initiatives to be added to the backlog for prioritization. Hardik kept executive management (including the COO and regional heads) regularly informed on the status of the initiatives via steering committee meetings and was responsible for vendor management for UX design and development.

As Portfolio Manager at CCEP, Hardik led the Finance and Supply Chain verticals, overseeing a portfolio of projects valued at $1.9 million AUD annually across Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific region, and Indonesia. In this role, he managed a team of 7 Project Managers and 9 Business Analysts, providing a consolidated overview of project statuses, resource allocation and utilization, costs, risks, and issues to the Director of Solution Delivery. As the first point of escalation for project challenges and resource needs, he significantly improved resource capitalization from an average of 30% to over 50% within six months. He fostered team cohesion and morale by organizing regular meetings, creating forums for team members to express concerns, and addressing challenges collaboratively. In addition, he was a business Partner for the Commercial portfolio reporting directly to the CIO of Australia, he resolved over 40 long-standing items (actions, incidents, change requests, queries) within a month. By enhancing visibility among stakeholders, building incident and enhancement dashboards, and streamlining processes within the Commercial business, he established himself as a trusted partner. This collaboration led to increased adoption of global tools and active participation from the business in shaping global project outcomes to align with their requirements.

As Program Manager at CCEP, Hardik managed the finance integration and SOX compliance projects. By implementing Rapid Action Planning, he successfully accelerated the SOX project timeline, establishing essential structure and governance to ensure timely project delivery.

As Delivery Lead at Westpac, Hardik managed the economic and financial statistics program phase 2, which was an industry-wide program where all banks were required to submit a set of reports to APRA on a regular basis based on the new reporting standards and specifications set by APRA. Though hired as an Agile Coach, Hardik was asked to lead the AXIOM delivery of Phase 2 of the EFS Program involving 8 scrum teams with an annual spend of $20 million, because of his good work in establishing practices that resulted in high-performing scrum teams. He coached the business teams, new team members, and delivery teams on the fundamentals of agile and the agile framework used for EFS delivery, maintained the EFS program board and steered the conversations in the right directions for the various program ceremonies, mentored delivery team members, and motivated them by entrusting them with key responsibilities.

As Process Manager, Central COVID Response Team at Westpac, Hardik directly worked with the CFO, General Manager, and other heads of various departments to manage and respond to various data requests from APRA and AUSTRAC related to COVID reliefs that the bank was offering to consumers and business customers. He established a process in three days to review and track the data requests from APRA and AUSTRAC, scheduled daily status meetings with senior management to track the progress, and within 3 months the process was self-sustaining, analyzed the existing process in various departments of generating the requested data and identified the areas that needed improvement and optimization.

As Senior Scrum Master, Digital Projects at HSBC, Hardik was the first Scrum Master to join the bank on their Agile journey. He established the JIRA and Confluence structures for the digital portfolio, transitioned the first two teams to Scrum, and delivered multiple digital initiatives on time and within budget.
As Scrum Master and Senior Technical Business Analyst, Netbank Projects at CBA, Hardik managed multiple distributed scrum teams to successfully deliver various Netbank projects involving end-to-end delivery, from database changes and APIs to front-end web applications.