Welcome to the APM Podcast, brought to you by the Chartered
Body for the Project Profession. This episode is part of our
series of Senior Leader Interviews hosted by APM Chief
Executive Professor Adam Morrison.
This time, Adam is speaking to Baroness Valentine, having
started out working in Corporate finance in the city in the
1980s. In recent years, Baroness
Valentine has had what she describes as a portfolio career.
Her current roles include Chair of Heathrow, Southern Railway
and Co Director of Place at Business in the Community.
As of 2005, she also sits in the House of Lords as a crossbench
member, with the current focus on levelling up.
She was also formally on the boards of both Crossrail and
HS2. Listen on to here Adam and
Baroness Valentine discuss what she took from her time in the
City into her later career, why the UK struggles to commit to
long term infrastructure plans, and whether the business
environment in general has become more inclusive.
I'm delighted to be here today with the APM Podcast and to
welcome today's guest Baroness Valentine.
Welcome. Hello.
I'd like to start by asking you to tell us a bit about your
career, if I may, from your days in the city, right through to
your advocacy and charity roles and and of course the award of
your peerage in 2005. I started in in corporate
finance in the 80s. It must have been.
I was the first female and corporate finance department of
bearings. I then went and did a
regeneration project in Blackburn and Darwin, a
completely different field. Then came back to work for BBC
student company leading on planning and finance.
Then went to work for the London First I think which is a
campaign group for London and then well and then sort of
started a portfolio career during the 2000.
So I've done National Lottery Commissioner, Peabody Housing
Trust and at the moment I'm doing two days a week on
levelling up essentially in sort of forgotten towns running OK,
but I was on Crossrail and HS two boards.
For the purposes of this conversation I am currently on
Value and Index Property Income Trust.
I'm obviously in the Lords as you mentioned I'm chairman or
something called Heathrow Southern Railway and I just
stopped being vice chair of UCL. So how you can make sense of all
that, I don't know. I do sometimes reflect on it and
think, well, why did it end up being like this?
Yes, a lot of twists and turns though I was really interested
that you you you went, particularly when you were
describing your move from the city through to to the
regeneration work that you kind of described it as being
completely different. I'm I'm, I've had a few twists
and turns in my own career not quite as many as as you.
But what I've found is that sometimes it's the most
unexpected things that you pick up in one aspect of your career
that are really relevant to another aspect, probably in a
way that was really unexpected. And I wonder whether you found
that in your move from the city into regeneration that there
were things that were really valuable that you've learned in
the city that helped you in that regeneration work.
The twists and turns are partly because I thought of myself as
an equal to all the men around me and I was expecting ambitious
things of myself and that was until much later on, not not
really how other people saw me. So that has caused some of the
twists and turns in terms of skill sets from different
things. Funnily enough, the corporate
finance side of things taught me, I mean there's all arrogance
to investment banks doing corporate finance.
And what you do is you you pull in as you know all the brokers
and the whoever, the company and the accountants etcetera and and
you basically orchestrate what they all do against a very sharp
deadline typically of a issue of shares or takeover or whatever
it is. And that taught me some some
lessons which I've applied ever since I guess um which is I now
and really have forever Carole stakeholders in one form or
another to do things. And the other thing is it taught
me about hard deadlines and in the public sector and the
charity sector there doesn't seem to be as as clear and
understanding of our deadline normally because there there
isn't a real deadline. And the other thing for
corporate finance is you absolutely don't talk about, you
know, if you've got a thank you for going on, you obviously
don't say it to party. You know I'm, I'm acting for
blah and they're taking over blah.
Whereas whereas the government has a very different
understanding of absolute secrecy like that.
You can reflect it on the challenges of being one of the,
well, I think the only woman you were saying in in in some parts
of your career. Do you think we've got better
now as a, well, I'm thinking of the project profession, but
probably the world of business more broadly.
And what more do you think we still need to do to really make
this a truly inclusive business environment?
Yes, definitely got better. I mean I didn't know that I'm
minded until I got to a 5050 male female environment in on
London first. It was such a relief to not have
to talk about male subjects all the time.
So you know in in in bearings it was sort of shooting and fishing
and in in Blackburn you know it was sort of you've got to do The
Dirty job for it to be a real job etcetera In in BC it was
golfing I suppose but in in London first at last I managed
to sort of you could move between subjects to have
conversations about rather than sort of stuck in in the ruts
that have very male violent give you so.
So what have we got to learn. I was on a panel talking to a
load of young people in round old city roundabout who would
techies young techies. And there are there are group of
us oldies talking about it must have been a women's celebration
day or something talking about barriers to work and none of the
youngsters in the audience understood what we were talking
about and they were also under 30 getting on with stuff.
My, my daughter worked for a tech company actually around
there and they had a policy of automatically having average
male salaries the same as average female salaries.
No matter who they brought in whatever.
They would always average it out across the two sexes, which
which I think is probably not good policy.
But I think some of the tech startup type things are
innovative on this stuff and sometimes a bit clunky.
But I thought it was great that they were doing it and that they
understood, understood this. Your world feels a bit more
staid and traditional, I suppose if you think of sort of railways
and and construction and that sort of side of things, it all
still feels a bit male. You know you haven't got
somebody Network Rail female or Transport for London who's
female leading it. The the The funny thing was some
environment. So I'm not talking about those
two, but is when they're very male, they don't understand how
bad they look. If you're female.
We were talking earlier about the pictures on the wall, you
know, if, if all the pictures are of men, if you go into a
training centre and you're female, you know, obviously
that's not quite working. Ditto ethnic minorities.
Obviously if all your pictures are white people that doesn't
resonate everywhere. So I think role models are are
very important. It was interesting in your
reflections there on particular sectors, you know, the kind of
the gender balance in different sectors.
One of the things I excites me about the project profession is
that, you know, whilst it started in kind of telecoms,
infrastructure, construction and so on, it's really broadened out
now to be kind of a truly kind of pan sector profession.
And what's really interesting is, you know, we've now got some
sectors, uh, you know, education being a good example, where
actually you get a gender skewed the other way.
And I'm, I'm hoping that as a whole that helps to kind of
balance things out across the profession.
But you're absolutely right, there's certain sectors where
there's definitely much more more to be done.
One of the things I've been reflecting on, which is whether
the project profession actually has a bit of an image problem.
Because in my, in my mind, before I got involved with a PM,
I always kind of had this idea that I don't know, project
managers are all about kind of Gantt charts and templates and,
you know, telling people what to do and, you know, probably
limited to certain sectors. And, you know, my eyes have been
opened really. And so I do wonder whether
they're particularly leaders when they're really
organisations are not particularly aware of the
project profession. I wonder whether they just think
it's a really technical kind of administration type thing rather
than something that really adds value in terms of delivery,
particularly strategy delivery, you know?
In business 11 is basically doing project and programme
management all the time of what happened level you're operating
with. One probably doesn't think of it
as a sort of profession whilst doing it.
So yes I think you know as as I started I I I'd sort of
pigeonholed it into railways when you asked me the question
but I'm I'm I'm well aware of the need for the expertise daily
from everybody really. Some bits of the civil service
have got this really well honed. Some bits are in terms of what I
want out of the civil service it's often not well homed but
but the charity sector this this bizarre thing about having to
have impact evaluation. But it it appears to me to be a
substitute for the fact that people haven't really said this
is my objective. You know this will happen if
I've if I've done it but the way that both the charity sector and
the public sector use sort of KPI's it's sort of box ticking I
suppose is what I'm trying to say and because they use the box
ticking they failed to do the the big picture objective.
So there's something in that space.
Understand exactly what you mean.
I was having a conversation actually just yesterday and I
put four statistics up on the screen about what percentage of
projects have been successful over the past.
I think it was the past five years.
Um. And I asked people you know
which statistic they thought was right and it went from kind of
nought .5% of projects are successful right through to 30%.
None of them particularly optimistic I should say.
And the reality was they were all correct because it depended
on how you determined what we meant by project success.
Because some of those statistics were, were really saying
actually if you deliver your project on time within budget to
the required specification, then that's that's the measure of
access. But others were, you know,
exactly to the point that you're you're saying we're saying, well
actually that's that's only part of the job.
You only really know if it's been successful, if you realise
the benefits. And that might be 10 years after
you've finished the actual core delivery if you like.
So I think that vision, I suppose, of what what we mean by
success is not consistently understood in in my opinion.
No, I mean I have this very much on on the levelling network I'm
doing in the towns around around the UK at the moment because
clearly if you're tackling deprivation you're not going to
sort that out overnight and yet you don't want an excuse for you
know spending lots of time researching or just twiddling
your thumbs in the in the 25 years while you wait for the for
the deprivation measure to actually change sustainably.
So. So we we tend to do milestones
along the way that we think will impact the the deprivation
statistic and then sort of check them every year.
So when we were campaigning on Crossrail when I was at at
London first, our objective obviously was to get Crossrail,
but we would have getting it through Parliament as you know,
one objective or whatever it is each year we would have a a
milestone objective so that you genuinely are making progress,
you hope. Well, let's talk about some of
the specific areas that you, you've kind of, you know,
touched on as as you've been giving your responses so far.
So let's let's maybe start with Crossrail.
I think you sat on the border Cross Rail from 2019 to 2020 and
this was a project that you know, experienced widely
publicised delays, cost overruns.
But actually despite all of that, if you ask people now the
Elizabeth lines there, you know what do they think of it?
It was really credited both for the end product but also for the
successful turn around and the grand opening and so on.
I just wondered what your insights and reflections were
from your time on the Crossrail board and and that kind of
almost 180° turn around there? So I think you know big
infrastructure projects that that disrupt people and spend a
lot of money look like white elephants I suppose as you run
into them. I mean the the time that I was
on the Crossrail board. So I came in after all that
trouble with cost overruns and it wasn't finished and all that
things. So we were a new board came in
in it was it 2019, you said I was there and when I left it was
because the the Crossrail went in underneath Transport for
London, so it was brought much more under the Transport for
London umbrella. So the the line and the stations
were pretty much built by the time I arrived.
There were thousands and thousands of snagging issues and
of course the suspicion that all the consultants working on it
are just trying to do more work because that's how they get
paid. So they're just going to find
another snag and recommend how you deal with it and blah blah
blah blah. My perception about that was
that unless Transport for London really started pulling Crossrail
into Transport for London, they would never get.
They were going to keep going round in circles because it was
never in Crossrail's interest to hand over to TF LA Station that
might have something wrong with it, you know?
So Crossrail wanted to make sure they've they've dotted all the
eyes across all the teeth From Transport for London's
perspective, they didn't want to take on the headache of an
additional line and station that they had to manage.
So at the time, it looked like a headache from TFL's perspective
and no real incentive to complete on the Crossrail side,
even though allegedly there there was.
Because you've got all that baggage of all the consultants
and contractors working for you that they're in.
They're not. I don't know how you would you
would know better than me how to incentivise properly in that
sort of situation. But but government does seem to
get itself into position where one just hires loads and I've
got nothing against consultants. Please don't take it to this but
as loads of people and and then doesn't really know how to
control them. The other thing I remember
clearly from that era was we had a risk register.
But I was, I was looking at risk registers and thinking actually
are these real, You know, there's 500 risks.
Yeah. Does anybody ever really think
about them? So I'm always keen on on risk,
risk registers, whatever you want to call the strategic risk
register of sort of 5:00-ish risks that you actually can sort
of touch and feel and get your head around.
And in Crossroads guys, they had a risk register roughly of that
type. I gonna have an 100 items
whatever. And but it wasn't connected to
network rails risk register and TFL's risk register and I said
for goodness for goodness sake you know this is your trains are
going to come out and go on to Network Rail tracks and they've
got to come out and you know tear on these things and these
risks need to be aligned anyway that did happen but it didn't
seem to be obvious to people that that needed to happen which
I found odd but the other thing is we we did have Network Rail
coming in updating us monthly or by multi remember but we we
weren't good but saying actually because this sort of risk
register thing wasn't clear what is the information we we want
you to give. So all they would do is come up
come up and say you know we've we've done some work with some
concrete on platform on reading or whatever it is.
You know, we've done our homework here.
Here's what we've done as opposed to, you know, this is
what we we need to be doing by when.
This is what's working. This is not what's not working.
That's really insightful. Thank you and and and a couple
of things for those people listening to to to this podcast.
So we APM has partnered with both Crossrail and with HS2 to
to produce learning legacy type documents.
They're available on the app and website and for people who are
interested in knowing more about some of the lessons learned on
those two projects of which there have been many, then you
you, you, you can obviously access those.
But I wanted to just pick up on one thing you said if if if I
may by Baroness Valentine which was you talked about some of the
kind of contractors who might be in the supply chain where
there's almost no incentive to kind of do a good job if you
like or not. Well, not no incentive, maybe
not not lots of incentives to do a good job because actually you
don't want to bite the hand that feeds you.
And for the project goes on longer, that's obviously good
because that's where your income comes from.
But I think there's also another issue, which is if something's
going wrong, what's the incentive to call it out and say
that it's going wrong early on because that might also get you
kind of booted off the project, especially if it's, you know, in
your area. And all of those things kind of
fall into this category of what I think of a strategic
misrepresentation where right the way through the supply chain
you might for different reasons, you've got people who are not
being totally transparent about what the reality of the
situation is. So those making the strategic
decisions might have the risk register and everything in front
of them like you've just described, but that's not
necessarily giving an accurate picture of what's going on.
That was allegedly very true across rail before before I got
on the board. So it's as you will know the the
there was a sort of flare up with it when it was alleged to
be ready and then and then it was two years away and and that
was absolutely alleged to be an issue that the that the issues
at mid level were ground level were not being surfaced to the
top And I think that's poor line management.
That's just that just is poor line management.
Well, I think I'm not meaning to blame anyone.
I think of all the people I work with on these things are are are
generally very good and generally trying trying to do a
good job. We're a PM, the only chartered
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apm.org.uk, Because when projects succeed, society
benefits. Can we move on to to business in
the community because you mentioned that as well earlier
on ahead of this kind of conversation.
I, I, I, I wouldn't have a a look on the website and and I
really like the focus on kind of green and sustainability and and
so on and combining that with the kind of the business side of
things, it was obviously very strong within business in the
community. I don't see that as strongly in
every business. Do you think businesses have got
a lot to learn from business in the community?
You know, why do you think not everybody has got that razor
sharp focus on on green, the business in the community's got?
When you get down to people who are really struggling with cost
of living and things like that, whether you're being green is
secondary to to whether you can eat for the day.
So at business security, one of the things we're just newly
doing is as a community climate fund.
Which is trying to help communities move to net zero and
we're trying to be innovative about different ways of doing
that. But it but it's really simplest,
it would be putting solar panels on a on a community building or
doing allotments to get local food production, whatever.
But you can see perfectly well why there's residents don't have
it as priority and that connects quite closely to SME's.
And so SME's likewise probably don't largely have it as a
priority because they sort of don't have the luxury of
thinking about it. If you then talk about larger
companies, I guess you need to look through to the investors.
I'm not sure whether the city and their investors is is quite
a sharp edged as they could be on on this green stuff and we
wish you the green bond in in UCL which was which was
interesting but but there's a question I guess as an investor
are you prepared to take a slightly lower dividend or
interest rate for something being green and and most
companies aren't having that sort of conversation with their
investors and that would be interesting.
So if you're not in that space, you're basically looking at
technology which is is green or satisfying regulation or or
stuff you can do that doesn't cost.
You kind of touched on levelling up as well.
I know this is something that's really close to your heart.
I wonder if you might tell me what you see as the main
challenges in rebalancing wealth and opportunity across the UK.
I don't know whether the aim is to whether whether a credible
aim is to rebalance the economy and it does play into the
question about London's role in the in the UK but and I'm very
anti any suggestion that London should be levelled down but so I
think if you're looking at a bunch of difficult places there
there must be loads of around the UK.
It's probably 1000 from the sort of thing I do, which is to go in
and try and get local stakeholders to buy into a a
route map where where they with some help from others, can
actually identify where they want to get to and start work on
getting turning around a tower. So Blackpool I did a lot of work
in, so setting an agenda for action and then actually
implementing it. I would love the levelling up
department to work better with what I do.
I I don't need a lot from them. I just need to strategic
engagement and a bit of match funding for some of the stuff we
do. They throw millions at places
but but actually in the early days we're just trying to get
people aligned to a common agenda.
You don't need a lot of money at that front end but actually it's
sometimes counterproductive to put in money before you've got
the trust built locally. But so I think places need to
have the right dynamic to start levelling up and sometimes
you've got weak councils and sometimes you've got weak
business, sometimes the communities are at war with each
other, whatever. So it for me it feels like a
constant ambition but going with the grain of where it's possible
and and being smart about going in and supporting other
Manchester combined authority if they if they if they're starting
to move in the right direction, getting behind them and really
helping make that happen. So it's a very difficult
question now you level up a country and as any government of
the future will be thinking about.
You obviously are a a huge advocate for for London as well.
You mentioned that in there you know you don't want no
suggestion at all of 11 debt levelling down London and I'm
just reflecting on your your time running London first
obviously now called Business London which advocated for still
advocates for London as a business hub.
There is that view that that we're quite London centric as a
country and that's a kind of barrier to economic growth in
other places. What do you say to those kind of
people who have that, who have that view?
Are they right? Yes, Um, we've got power bases
in London, which are the City, the government and to a lesser
extent probably higher education.
I'm always disappointed when ministers and civil servants say
they're coming up to Sheffield or Blackpool or whatever and
they they cancel because in their eyes something more
important has come up. And that just to me says such a
lot about the attitude. So, you know, if you're going
out to somewhere that really values your turning up and
cares, you know, about work stuff, then that needs to be far
better respected than thinking that a minister suddenly, I
don't know, the Secretary of State called you into a meeting.
The Secretary of State should be told I've already got a meeting
up in Blackpool though I'm not coming but that's you know that
that would be that's not the way it works.
So if I were thinking about UK long term I would definitely
seek to move probably government out of London in some way.
They're always theoretically doing that.
I think devolution is the much the strongest lever for doing
that. So I think the combined
authorities, the mayoral things is is is a good, good direction
of travel and and both parties are really heading in that
direction. Let's talk a bit about securing
government backing for projects at the moment.
Sometimes we see projects getting approved which are, I
don't know, maybe pet projects or vanity projects or ones that
are politically expedient rather than necessarily always the
right projects and programmes that will be, you know, the best
for society long term. Why do you think that kind of
thing happens, and and what do you think government could or
should do about it? Well, I I mean I hoped the
National Infrastructure Commission was going to be, um,
helpful on this. I mean we seemed to be so bad at
committing to long term plans and infrastructure plans in this
country. I have to go across across
parliaments. So you know you need to be 20
years. In fact my the chief executive
of Heathrow Southern Railway was in was in Berlin two days ago
and just talking about how the Germans do to who of course have
a much clearer plan which has the disadvantage of if you can't
change it very easily. So I'm probably mindless that
the wrong projects are done. So I think if there are
infrastructure projects which have some benefit and have
little disc benefit, I mean not not enough are done by thinking
about the wider wider social environmental impact which which
I hope the treasury is beginning to get better at but but but you
know who who is 1 to judge what are what are right and the wrong
project is but but I do think we desperately need a long term
direction of travel and and and I'm thinking particularly of the
airport stuff so. So you know we set up the
Airports Commission to decide what we were doing, but then
we've essentially not been doing what it recommended for 10 years
now or whatever it is. So we just seem to be incapable
of taking that long view. I when you when people talk
about restructuring the Lords and the and the Commons, I would
be quite interested in some relationship between the Lords
and the Commons where where the Lords sort of owned the longer
term plan. So so you could have some 20
year plans on housing, education, whatever which will
need to go across parliaments and and somehow the Lords could
be the conscience of that where where the Commons is doing all
the political infighting and you know their their day-to-day
stuff. That would seem to me to be a
helpful role for the Lords. Yeah, it's really interesting
idea. I've never thought about that
before, but it does make sense because obviously you've got
more continuity in in in that house.
Just one final question before we probably need to wrap up.
Sometimes when I talk to senior civil servants, occasionally
politicians as well, they talked to me about the fact that
sometimes trying to get the right projects approved is
really, really difficult because either they're going to cost too
much money, they're not going to be completed within their
political tenure. Maybe they've described the
situation where they kind of almost are not completely
transparent about the full complexity or full cost or how
long the project's going to take up front.
Because they say, uh, it's much easier to get a project approved
by going for something simpler and then and then to go through
the change control process once a project is already approved.
And that's an easier way of getting to the end game.
And and of course, that just ends up costing the public purse
a lot more because, you know, because we're not being clear
about costs and things from the outset and it takes longer.
And then we end up with all of this, you know, stuff in the
media about projects failing because they're late and so on.
I mean, that feels to me like a, a really wrong way to go about
things. I mean, is that a genuine
problem, do you think? Or or is it just something that
happens occasionally? I mean I haven't thought about
it quite that way, but when certainly what I see is, is
projects going in that cost 2 billion which you know probably
common sense would tell you cost 5 billion.
I mean I I think the Treasury must be quite quite aware of
this sort of issue. I I was thinking earlier about
the the Department of Transport and Treasury and in managing
projects like Crossrail or HS2 because I I always think the
client really has to bear the brunt of the project doesn't
work. So it's all very well saying HS2
or Crossrail have failed but actually the governance going
back up the chain is failing and you know it's all it's very easy
again to beat up government departments but I think because
no one quite has the authority to to be the client probably you
know you've got the Treasury looking over your shoulder if
you're the DfT so you never feel like you're quite in charge and
it's something around that we we did it just two I think where I
think that the the risks on a project we're doing would looked
at 9 times before they were authorised and we actually
worked out that we were building risk in by doing that process
rather than reducing risk. So there's something about that
whole process which which is very unhealthy.
I think the Infrastructure Projects Authority, you know
there's there's been attempts to to to to deal with these things
better, but they're thought of as processes, whereas actually
the sort of accountability that needs to be sorted out probably
why you've got a strong lead. I think Michael Gove is a strong
leader on on on levelling up. You can then sort of hold the
Fort a bit better, but mostly things aren't strongly led to
the minister changes, Secretary of State changes, etcetera.
So I don't. I don't know what the solution
is, I'm afraid. OK.
Well, yeah, it's good to hear your reflections on that.
But Baroness Valentine, thank you very much for your time.
It's been a pleasure. Thank you.
I've enjoyed talking to you. Thank you for joining us for
this episode of the APM Podcast. If you enjoyed it, don't forget
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contact us with your feedback at apmpodcast@thinkpublishing.co.uk?
For more on levelling up, check out the resources published by
APM as part of its Future Lives and Landscapes campaign, which
seeks to raise awareness of the social value of projects by
highlighting the many benefits they create for people and
communities, and by helping practitioners and organisations
incorporate benefits into projects to shape the future
economic, social and physical landscape of the UK.
To find out more such future lives and landscapes at
apm.org.uk or see the link in the episode description.
That's it from us for today. Thanks for listening.