Project Description

Paul Bernard

Paul Bernard

Program Director

Areas Of Expertise

  • Project and Program Management 
  • PMO transformations 

Education

  • MBA at Kingston University London 
  • PRINCE II Foundation 

About Paul Bernard

Paul is a highly experienced manager with 18 years in the ICT industry, 10 years of which have been in line, project and program management roles. Paul is MBA qualified specialising in corporate finance, international and services marketing. During this time his focus has moved from purely IT to one encompassing an operational and business perspective. Paul is extremely outcome focused and has been relied upon to troubleshoot and turn around projects on numerous occasions. 


What Paul brings 

  • Extensive full project lifecycle management experience including building of business cases detailing both economic and non-economic benefits.  
  • Applications development management of multi-million dollar projects. 
  • A highly developed understanding of end-to-end business processes across a wide range of organisational functions including direct experience with project management, development and business analysis and QA teams. 
  • Undertaken a number of PMO transformations which have included the design and delivery of end-to-end frameworks. 

Key Clients:

  • BOQ
  • Westpac
  • Equifax
  • Worley Parsons
  • Oil Search
  • Bauer Media
  • Vodafone
  • Insurance Australia Group Limited (IAG)
  • NSW Government – Ministerial and Parliamentary Services (‘MaPS’)
  • British Telecom
  • HQBE
  • Madgex
  • Metcash Trading Australasia
  • AOL

Key Achievements

As Program Director at Bank of Queensland, led the technology stream supporting the risk, compliance and regulatory requirements for the integration of the Me bank acquisition


As Program Director at Westpac, Paul Worked within group risk, leading group wide rollout of new controls framework to improve risk management across the enterprise. This involved very large stakeholder environment with heavy governance and compliance focus.


As Executive General Manager, Transformation and Delivery, at Equifax, Paul led all customer facing and internal project delivery, business analysis and the business PMO (BPMO) including customer facing client implementation, regulatory and compliance initiatives, digital product development and innovation, program and portfolio management for a $70M portfolio p.a. (100 staff direct). This was a senior executive role reporting to the CEO. Accountable for driving the Portfolio Steering Group (PSG), which had accountability for capital allocation and tracking as well as project portfolio management for the ANZ business. Paul’s group also demand management, prioritisation and annual resource planning for ANZ. Major accountabilities included driving a holistic product and service delivery mentality for the company as well as local leadership for a global technology and business transformation initiative. Paul achieved a 20% cost reduction in staffing costs whilst supporting net same revenue, embedded governance and operating model changes from SLT through to individual scrum teams to align to Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) ways of working and delivered a diverse portfolio of projects including client implementations, business driven regulatory initiatives, security transformation and product development and innovation.


As Program Lead for Worley Parsons a $10M outsourced Telco Transition and Transformation, Paul was responsible for extensive change management and stakeholder management required ensuring a number of senior stakeholders supportive of the initiative.


As Program Manager for Oil Search, Paul was responsible for planning, PMO and implementation for the Information Management program rollout for an ASX listed oil and Gas Company. A small team challenged to ensure an important contractual obligation was taken seriously for a non-core competency activity.


As Business Program Manager for Bauer Media, Paul was responsible for a change program comprising six streams for a major Australian magazine publisher including offshoring of a call centre, upgrade of the core CRM and provision of a new web presence for a major new customer. This was a sensitive initiative that required careful messaging.


As Program Manager for Vodafone, Paul led the PMO, governance, communications and RFP stream for a multi year multi hundred-million-dollar outsourced data centre transformation program.


As Program Manager for Vodafone, Paul, as part of a managed service transition program, led the transition of all non-production environments from IBM to Tech Mahindra.


As PMO Manager for Insurance Australia Group Limited (IAG), Paul Implemented a PMO Change Program across $40M project portfolio, within 6 months, moved from delivering 30% to 93% of projects to within best practice tolerances. Paul designed and delivered a range of communications and training on topics such as project estimation, overall portfolio updates and refreshed and rolled out new streamlined SDLC process. He also developed business change delivery framework for new Enterprise PMO including associated collateral in 6 weeks.


As Senior Consultant for NSW Government – Ministerial and Parliamentary Services (‘MaPS’), Paul Successfully delivered the IT strategic plan. This involved interviewing 30+ members of Ministerial staff to elicit IT needs and requirements, and delivery of a comprehensive strategy in only 6 weeks. Paul led the financial modelling and assisted planning of the business readiness stream of a major government transport initiative to deliver a new integrated ticketing system for Sydney transport.


Program Manager at British Telecom Finance IT, Paul led a team that developed and implemented a new Portfolio/Project Management & IT Governance framework. This took the best elements of what was currently in use and combined this with best practices to produce a relevant and implementable management system incorporating Agile practices. Key elements included working closely with key BT managers to understand ‘as is’ processes and evolve a ‘to be’ framework, developed an easy to follow handbook as a desk reference. Also developed an information portal with clear diagrams and process descriptions and a full suite of training material and delivered training to 80 staff in the new methods. Developed complete set of requirements for workflow management including use cases and process flows, implemented scoring and prioritisation system to enable portfolio management and ranking of all projects irrespective of business unit of origin. Rob developed clear governance principles in close association with all key stakeholders and communications briefings were delivered to all customers of the group and implemented standardised project costing and cost tracking job aids along with training of key staff in their use.


As Manager for The ‘HQ Business Engagement’ (‘HQBE’) group, Paul led the team that developed and implemented a new Portfolio/Project Management & IT Governance framework. This took the best elements of what was currently in use and combined this with best practices to produce a relevant and implementable management system incorporating Agile practices. Key elements included, working closely with key BT managers to understand ‘as is’ processes and evolve a ‘to be’ framework, developed an easy to follow handbook as a desk reference. Also developed an information portal with clear diagrams and process descriptions and a full suite of training material and delivered training to 80 staff in the new methods. Paul developed a complete set of requirements for workflow management including use cases and process flows, implemented scoring and prioritisation system to enable portfolio management and ranking of all projects irrespective of business unit of origin and development of clear governance principles in close association with all key stakeholders and communications briefings were delivered to all customers of the group. Paul Implemented standardised project costing and cost tracking job aids along with training of key staff in their use.


As Project Manager for Madgex, Paul was responsible for managing a major new contract to supply a UK broadsheet’s new online job board and advised on overall company product strategy.


As E-Trade Program Manager at Metcash, Paul delivered from conception www.almliquor.com.au which is Australia’s second largest e-commerce site by dollar volume with approximately A$150M in orders in 2005 (approximately 15% of the total ALM business). It was a multi-million dollar project completed on time and on budget, with a project team of approximately 45 people. The site’s impressive growth was as a result of working closely with key ALM business stakeholders to understand and map their processes and advise them on effective e-commerce marketing. Paul also managed the retail technology research and business analysis team and owned the requirements definition and development of PDA based applications for use by the independent retail customer base. This team also conducted research and analysis into areas such as diverse as in-store TV advertising and collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment (CPFR). Built strategic roadmap for customer PDA application and negotiated all external development. Paul led the national rollout and marketing of the new electronic ordering production system to the grocery customer base ($2 billion orders annually) and led the development and rollout of a new POS solution to a 42 branch network of Campbell’s Cash and Carry branches. Paul also managed the integration of A$130M customer business from a major customer using industry strength business integration software. Turned around a project in trouble and fixed a customer relationship in severe difficulties.


As Senior Project Manager at AOL Australia, Paul fully scoped, planned and costed the setup of second ISP brand, including assessment of potential vendors and systems integrators. Project managed rollout of increased dial-up capacity Australia wide. Developed and agreed with all stakeholders and subsequently put in place network escalation and monitoring procedures for the Australian operation.


As Head of Project Management at AOL UK, Paul managed a team of 8 project managers for 2 years with approximately 100 projects at any one time. Ensured communication and understanding of project lifecycles to internal customers and implemented regular cross brand prioritisation meetings.


Other Team Members