Welcome to the APM podcast. APM is the chartered body for
the project profession. My name is Emma Devita and I'm
the editor of Project APM's course free journal and your
host. In this podcast, I go behind the
scenes at London's Natural History Museum, which is an APM
corporate partner. The museum celebrates its 150th
anniversary in 2031 and has kicked off a celebratory project
programme that includes the creation of 6 new permanent
galleries within the iconic building in South Kensington.
The first gallery has already opened and that's where I
headed. It's called Fixing Our Broken
Planet and focuses on the planetary emergency and the
solutions that scientists, including those at the Natural
History Museum, are working on. It started life as a temporary
exhibition that opened in 2021, but it was so successful it was
decided a permanent home should be made for it.
It subsequently became the kick off project for the Natural
History Museum 150 Years Programme.
As you might imagine, being a programme or project manager at
the Natural History Museum, surrounded by dinosaurs,
precious gems and taxidermied animals draws not only on strong
project management skills but the ability to speak to all
kinds of different stakeholders to get them on board, engaged
and committed to a vision of what can be.
Come with me to visit the gallery mid morning during the
school summer holidays to get a sense of what's there.
Samantha Bannister, who project managed the design of the
exhibition, shows me around the rooms that shows off the
architecture of the original building, which was completed
back in 1881. The exhibition opened at the
beginning of April and they're expecting to reach 1,000,000
visitors by August. Yes, one of the whole sort of
principles of this gallery, we've got a public span
principle of showing off the architecture of of the building
and bringing more daylight into our galleries.
But the gallery itself was designed to be quite reductive
because the whole sort of the premise of the galleries around
highlighting the climate crisis. And so we didn't want to build
anything unnecessarily. So.
The design is quite reduced. We've just got showcases, we've
just got the flints and the necessary graphics to explain
what's going on. So yeah, there is a sort of an
open, open plan feel to the gallery to reduce that use of
unnecessary material. The NHM declared a planetary
emergency and this is our sort of first physical exhibition at
the South Kensington site, which sort of brings that to the fore.
It displays scientists behind the scenes the work that they
are doing to help to find solutions for the climate
emergency. So we're looking at Specimen
Solution Scientists Society as a sort of encompassing directive
for the the exhibition. So it's meant to show you what
the issues are, but bring you hope that solutions can be found
and help you to take some actions away yourself to help to
counter the planet. Treatment.
The first exhibit I face is a huge Marlin.
So this is a Marlin. So this is showing how
overfishing of our seas can deplete our apex predators in
our seas and that can affect the, the ecosystem of our our
seas. So they're looking at the the
DNA of this of this Marlin to understand how chemical makeup
and specimen can help us to develop the solution for a
healthier planet. I asked Samantha what her
involvement in the project was. So I was the project manager for
the, the sort of the exhibition development.
So from deciding the scope of the project, developing the
design, the 3D, the 2D design, the lighting design, the
specimen selection, the narrative of of the exhibition,
and then ultimately the installation of everything
that's. In here alongside Sherry Louise
with the the installation. So it was a two year programme
from start to finish. And I think walking around it
looks exactly how we envisioned it.
Like there it it completely looks like the design that we
were working through. We had a fly through created
that sort of showed the space as it is and it is it's literally
as it was on paper. So that's very nice to, to see
that sort of the to be realised, especially with all sort of the,
the sustainability of the sort of materials being at the fore
and actually seeing that realised is and it's nice to see
people walking around it. We were in here maybe 30 people
at a time installing it and it felt very, very sparse.
And then within the 1st 15 minutes of it opening, we had
200 people come through the door and it's it's just not stopped.
It's just great to see people engaging with these stories.
What was one of the biggest challenges of putting the
exhibition together? I guess the the really large
specimens here. So we got the Marlin and and the
bison over in the corner there. And in order to get the cases
in, for example, they had to be manufactured in a way that
they're sort of demountable. So we could bring everything in
in pieces and assemble them here and ensuring that we could sort
of get the specimens into those cases.
Everything in the gallery has had conservation work done to it
before it goes on display. So we have an in house
conservation team who do any remedial works to the specimens
before they go on display. So everything to make them
display. Were they?
Why have we? Got.
Bison. This is about the rewilding of
bison into. I think it's into the to the UK
basically they help with by grazing, they help to to lock in
carbon and so yeah, so they're sort of a natural carbon thing.
The exhibition doesn't intend only to educate, but to provoke
conversation. These in screens in the centre
here by the seating are our conversation starters where
people are asked questions and then we sort of like a poll.
Do you think, for example, that we should continue to deep sea
mine in order to find the necessary minerals for batteries
or should we not be allowed to to do that?
And then we can gather that data and use that to sort of
understand how what society is thinking about these these
issues. And that will be used by
different departments across the museum.
So we've got our learning teams, our digital teams, our policy
makers. Yeah, so it's stated that all
help. Drive all of that.
These are our film booths, and this one is specifically by a
Nook winner, a Natural Environmental Research Council
winner, and they give awards for scientific research that looks
into environmental issues. And so we've got three around
the gallery. So they're sort of scientists in
conversation with everyday people that are doing things to
to help the environment. I asked Samantha how she got to
where she has. So I've been here for 10 years,
always been in the project office that started in a sort of
support role in the first instance.
So I've been a project manager for delivering this level of
exhibition for about two years now.
I think at the museum we're we're looking to have more sort
of engagement with the science that we do behind the scenes.
So galleries now are sort of trying to showcase that a lot, a
lot more, make people understand that the things that they're
seeing on display are things that scientists that at this
institution are working on. Be that in the dinosaurs
gallery, be that in this sort of climate action kind of space,
people are working everyday with these collections.
They're doing scientific research with them.
Yeah. So it's a lot less passive in
terms of you just sort of see, see a dinosaur in the gallery.
You can understand who the people behind the research
that's been done with. That is why it's in our
collection versus somewhere else less sort of stuffy and more
sort of this is a living breathing organisation that does
a lot of cutting edge research into into things you meant to
leave with, with hope as you as you leave that there are things
that you as an individual can do in your everyday life to help
with the the climate emergency. You don't have to be a scientist
that's researching you as a as a person can do small things
within within your life, within your everyday life that will
help with the climate emergency. I leave the gallery, walk
through the earthquake section of the museum and then through a
discreet door into the project office, where I sit down with
Meg McDonald, programme manager for Fixing Our Broken Planet.
It gives me the bigger picture, but first I ask her how
seriously the museum takes project management.
More and more seriously as time goes on.
So when I first started, we were a relatively small group.
There was a push to sort of form a project management office that
lasted for about 5 years. And then we sort of changed TAP.
There are now sort of 30 project managers and project support
staff and admin, whereas we were a much smaller team back in the
day. And when with the projects that
we do, we're really one of three strands, 3 core teams.
So it is at the heart of so much of what we do in terms of
exhibitions, building works and everything else.
So it is, it has grown, it's sort of the stature and
importance, but it's always kind of been at the heart driving
these exhibitions and galleries forward previously and in other
museums still you might find that there are more curator LED
exhibitions and galleries and it's more LED sort of by the
content side. But there is obviously an
increasing, it always was. But now particularly with giant
master plans and refurbishments, there's a lot of construction
work. And around that construction
work comes a lot of coordination, a lot of
stakeholder management and a lot of kind of regulatory aspects
that need to be considered and adhered to.
So having someone sort of be at the centre of that, you know, I
always kind of like in PMS to a conductor, we're not playing any
of the instruments, but we're at the core to make sure we're
bringing in everything at the right time.
We're giving everybody their cues.
And I think that having that role in place and making it at
the heart of the project really increases chances of sort of
delivering on time and delivering to sort of the scope
that you'd set out to. It also helps you along the way
make sure that you're talking to the right people.
This is a huge partially visitor facing, partially scientific
institution. And in any number of the
projects, whether you're looking at something that Sophie does,
which has to do with the building itself or any of the
building's project managers, or whether you're looking at
galleries and exhibitions, there's a certain amount of
stakeholders that will always be involved.
And when we tell people about all the people who we talk to
and sort of list them off endlessly, people are often
shocked. You know, they, they have their
own sort of little view of what they're doing.
And when they see the whole picture, they realise how
important it is to have someone, essentially how important it is
for someone to have the big picture in their mind so that
the people who are delivering work packages can just focus on
their specialties. As I previously mentioned, the
Fixing Our Broken Planet or FOBP gallery started as a temporary
exhibition led by Meg during the COVID lockdowns.
It was open for about 10 months I think and we phased the build
of it, which was a a real testament to how quickly we
moved. So we opened one section.
The first section was food and then we moved on to materials
and then energy. It only had three sections.
Then we've added the the 4th for the permanent gallery.
But it was really hugely successful in ways that I think
that we didn't necessarily foresee.
It had about a million people through it and it's a free
exhibition and it was on for a certain length of time.
So that in and of itself isn't too surprising.
But we found that there was a lot of interest from
policymakers and change makers and we had sort of Greta
Thunberg was in there being interviewed.
And you know, we found there was this whole other audience in
terms of policy makers and change makers that we always had
links with, but who were interested in that and who
wanted to come to that and wanted to see it.
There's also another part of it where it was the first time
where we'd really spotlit our scientists work.
You know, it's the the permanent gallery is following the same
formula in some ways as that temporary exhibition where you
have the specimen, the science, that the scientist that's doing
the science, a picture of that scientist in a quote.
And we found that people really reacted to that.
And it's like we found our voice when it came to the planetary
emergency and that we found that people really trusted the
scientists more than they trust this institution as a whole.
It was the person to person dialogue that seemed to be the
thing that really got people interested, engage and sort of
trusted the information that they were getting.
We named it Our Broken Planet, how we got here and ways to fix
it because we wanted to make sure, you know, the temporary
exhibition, you have the name and sort of the tag, you know, a
subtitle. We wanted to make sure that we
were selling that idea of of that there's hope.
Like here's the work that's happening.
People are trying to fix this and here's ways you can fix it.
And it's really important to us that people left with a sense of
hope because there's some really hard hitting, really hard to
take facts that we give and in order to not make everybody
despondent, walk out there being like, well, that's it.
As you say, we're screwed. We can't do anything about it.
It would that would be a failure on our part.
What we want to do is make people understand that they can
do things to help. And that's how the name sort of
changed into fixing our broken planet.
We needed something that was shorter but still kept still
kept conveyed. The the seriousness of the
situation is that we do have a broken relationship with nature.
We didn't want to shy away from that.
But putting the fixing in, it's like there is ways to do this.
We can do this. All hope is not thought so our
out of the kind of temporary exhibition and out of the
everything that we've learned. It was decided that this because
the museum has a strategy to 2031 to make advocates from for
the planet, you know, to make a place where both people and
nature thrive. It was decided that we would
create this into a longer term offer.
Doing the work to the gallery had been on the table for a lot
longer before that decision had been made.
They talked about different things that could go in that
gallery, different types of of exhibitions.
And then when they landed on sort of that as a, as a lovely
space for fixing our broken planet.
But also there was sort of side stuff that was happening, side
programming that was happening while we were in lockdown,
mainly online because that's the only way that you could do it.
We had some audience engagement events that were online.
And then this meant that we weren't just keeping it to South
Kensington either. It wasn't South Kensington
centric, it wasn't London centric.
We could invite the nation and indeed people from around the
globe to take part in these discussions or watch people who
were activists or climate influencers speak on various
related topics. You know, they had, we had one
that had Jane Fonda speaking to a young activist and those
proved to be incredibly effective at sort of maximising
the reach of everything, getting that messaging out really far.
I think the NHM 150 programme was sort of developed while we
were already putting Fixing Our Broken Planet in, but Fixing Our
Broken Planet being the 1st permanent gallery that we'd put
in since 2016 when we opened the main hall, it seems like the
perfect place to launch that front.
Make that the first of those. Originally we started with an
idea that the Fixing Our Broken Planet gallery in that space
would only be sort of three to five years.
But given the importance of the topic, we and our ongoing sort
of strategy, that was when it was the decision was taken to
make it the 10 year and then position it as the first of the
NHM 150. And the NHM 150 has grown out of
the fact that a, we have, we're going to be 150 years old in
2031, which is we obviously want to celebrate that, but also
because we have an ever increasing number of visitors
that come here. And we have lovely gallery
spaces that have for decades now bin back of house bin collection
stores. And we have an opportunity to
refurbish them and open to the public and and bring the museum
back to the original Waterhouse galleries, the original
galleries that it was always meant to be.
I ask Meg about what she has learnt from this project that
will feed into the creation of the further 5 galleries as part
of the 2031 programme. Lots.
I think the broader programme is going to benefit hugely from us
having on through this one at a time where they were all these
emerging things, where the Tennis Valley Science Park was
was beginning to take shape, where the idea of NHM 150 came
in, where the idea of making fixing our broken planet a
permanent gallery and with the surrounding programme all sort
of came together, but not necessarily in the right order.
So there was a lot of sort of going down a certain way and
then having to catch up. I think having gone through that
process, will it help us better plan forward plan for the rest
of the galleries, which is something that we're absolutely
doing. The fact that it's a programme
of a number of galleries means that it's, you know, it's baked
in that we will be looking across the entirety of it to be
able to work more efficiently, to be able to plan things now so
that it works across all of the galleries to minimise clashes.
We don't have a great deal of room here for parking stuff
temporarily and we're going to have elephants and dinosaurs to
move as well as innumerable smaller specimens.
So it's, it's really good to have I think, I think having
gone through this in more of a bits and pieces way is going to
really have us well equipped. To look at it all holistically,
take those lessons about spaces to, to, to work spaces to store
temporarily, you know, the things that might happen with
the fabric of the building. Things that we should expect to
be surprises, you know, because it is an old building.
All of those things are going to massively feed into it and make
our lives a lot easier in the long run, I think.
I asked about the budget for the gallery and, as part of that,
the use of innovative, sustainable materials.
It wasn't a ginormous budget, it was healthy and part of the the
design was obviously to be as sustainable as possible.
So not you'll have noticed that it's not very heavy onset works,
it's not a lot of built walls and you know, structures.
So that's sort of reflected in the budget.
But also we brought on a sustainability consultant, which
was something that we've never done before for this.
So there are some new things for which we invested some of that
money in, but it was a challenge too because it was using
sustainable materials, which a means you can't, if there's a
problem with the delivery, you can't go down to sort of B&Q to
go get more timber or something. But also because they aren't
widely available on the market, they have that sort of specialty
materials costs associated with them as well.
So I think the team did a really great job in coming in at, I
think they came in slightly under budgeting.
What's her advice to other project professionals who want
to experiment with more sustainable materials and
practises? Well, I, I think there's, you
shouldn't underestimate the amount of time it takes that
you'll have that you necessarily need to commit to, to sort of
research of these new materials. They're not known to people in
the construction industry. They're often made by smaller
companies outside of the country.
You know, there's it, it took our design team a fair amount of
time, probably more than we had expected to do the research.
And also it's because there is so many claims that on that
could look good on the surface. But when you start to dig down,
you can find many reasons why they become unsustainable or not
as green as they they claim. There's then materials that
aren't robust enough. You know, we have 6.2 million
people come through the gap the the museum last year.
We need stuff that's going to stand up to the sort of wear and
tear of that. So I would, I wouldn't
underestimate the amount of time for research and development of
these materials and also don't as don't underestimate the the
level of risk. And as long as you are capturing
that, spending time figuring out how to mitigate that, then
you're managing that as best you can.
I asked Meg about how successful the project has been and how
they measure that. Well, we generally have a number
of KPIs and benefits, obviously, that tie back to the strategic
aims of the museum. That's the very simple answer
when it comes to fixing our broken planet.
It's it, it has a layer of complexity because it, it comes
down to how do you measure creating advocates for the
planet? How do you know when you've done
that and the museum has actually developed sort of an advocate
advocacy engagement model that they are using, which is
basically to it to inform, to inspire and to empower.
And this is all gone through our wonderful sort of audience
research and evaluation team, because that's the tricky part
to capture. You can say, you know, we've had
a million people through in the first six months.
You can say, you know, we've had a number of pieces in the media,
we've had this coverage, we've had these policy makers come to
visit, but how do you actually measure what happens when
someone leaves and whether they take those actions?
And that's a much more that's, that's almost an impossible
thing to do. So what we can do is, is try to
quantify the sort of positive interactions and the onward
journey that someone might take through our channels and then
make sure that we're providing links and tools to other
organisations and wherever we can send them.
What's about the delivery of the project?
It was a very hard deadline. This is one of the things about
the projects, particularly the, the, the public facing ones have
less leeway. I mean, some of the stuff that
the buildings team do absolutely have a hard deadline and they're
they, they face it innumerable challenges on that.
But when you're opening a gallery or temporary exhibition,
there's definitely, definitely a movable deadlines for
completion. And it can be really
challenging. And this team managed to pull it
off. So they they opened it on time,
despite some some small delays that are are small in and of
themselves. But when they start getting more
new, even more in number, it does have sort of have a, a
compacting consequence or outcome.
But they, they did, they did deliver it on time and they did
deliver it to budget. So for, and, and they delivered
it to the quality that they asked for.
And that's often where the stressor is when you have a, a
very, very, very firm timeline that in which you can't go past
you often something has to give. But they really worked very hard
at a number of teams across the museum to get that open in time.
Does the museum take a particular approach to managing
projects? We used to be, we used to try to
follow Prince 2 for a really long time because obviously that
was sort of the government way approach to project management.
But recently we have been looking more at APM and their
approach to it through the project management qualification
PMQ on which we've just loads of our PMS have just been sort of
trained on it. They've just written the exam
and we have our membership and that seems to be a better fit
for us as an organisation because it's very grounded in
practical approaches. Of course, every project is, you
know, we get a project that very massively.
So you know, I talk about ME programme managing FOBP
programme which involves learning international
partnerships and all of these teams.
But then I also just recently put a singular dinosaur in a
display case. So you have these varying
projects with varying amounts of money, varying amounts of teams,
but really when we're, we're quite strict on making sure that
we have that project management framework and it is the sort of
the APMPMQ that so that we have our documentation is, is the
same across all of the projects. And the way that we approach
stakeholder management, you know, lessons, all of that sort
of stuff is, is generally tends to be more APM these days.
Now let's turn to the detail of delivering the construction of
refurbishment side of the project, which was the
responsibility of senior project manager Sophie Dolan, who has
worked at the Natural History Museum for three years and in
construction project management for eight years, most recently
at the National Gallery Victoria in Melbourne, where she was
involved in the building of a new gallery.
So I'm actually sort of one of the few people in our team who's
from what I call more of a traditional background.
Our team are really diverse and have really interesting sort of
past careers and all sorts of different things.
I'm one of the few who sort of come from a traditional point of
view. So I did a construction
management degree at university in Australia and then I've
worked in project management since.
And then I did my 8:00 PM qualification earlier this year.
So I feel like I kind of was a qualified PM anyway, but it's
nice to have the extra stuff and I did actually get a lot out of
it and learned a lot out of that as well.
What's about dealing with people who might not be familiar with
the world of project management? Stakeholder management is such a
big part of what we do because whilst people might have a
general idea that the building needs upkeep or we need new
exhibitions and new galleries, it's if it's not kind of in
their, their team's line of sight and priorities and, and
staff resource and whatnot, it can be quite hard to sort of
balance that. So it's all about like early
communication, running some workshops with them, explaining
what we're doing and why is a big one.
And like, you know, if we're talking APM benefits really
comes into this because we have to explain to people like, you
know, there may be some disruptions, some noise and so
on for this amount of time. But why we're doing that is to
give you this new gallery and then you can display some of
your amazing specimens or give you a nicer workspace or, you
know, like everything we do is to benefit the museum and it's
staff and it's visitors and it's collections.
So which is no sort of small task, but I'd say it kind of
depends on your audience. Like we have some teams who
actually we have a lot of in house technical trades.
So like carpenters and joiners and AV specialists and people
who build robots and like do all that kind of stuff.
Most people have now outsourced that or get freelancers in.
Whereas we have an in house team again, some of whom have been
here for nearly 40 years, which is some of them built their
creepy crawlies exhibition, which is our next project to to
change that one up. So really useful talking to them
because they remember what's around.
Whereas some so they they tend to need that less kind of not
dumbing down, but sort of simple terms and whatnot.
They kind of get it. Whereas some of the teams who a
really specific science focus or or a curatorial focus, but you
know, we just work around our audience.
So we we love visuals. You know, we do big maps showing
this area is going to be impacted for this long.
Here's the route you can go And you know, we just we kind of
tailor as we go yeah early comms, really early comms and
keep and not just once like it's the repeated because people
forget people are busy. They have, you know, really busy
other jobs. We're saving the planet right.
You know, we've got a respect people's time and their main
work focus. We can't expect everyone to just
work around us all the time and our works.
So yeah, I'd say early and regular communication for sure.
You know, we do all the stakeholder mapping.
We work out, you know, the, the folks who need a lot more kind
of regular cons or like Taylor cons, whereas the ones who just
sort of need to know every month or So what you're doing.
We we map all that type of stuff out.
What's been really good that our team do is not just on a
specific project level. Do we do those columns and
information, but we do like, you know, coffee mornings and whole
company presentations where we explain what our team do and who
we are and why we're doing what we're doing.
Because I think sometimes and every team do it.
You know, sometimes, like I'm really not from a science
background. I can't stress that enough.
So sometimes I feel quite lost here with not lost here, but
sort of a bit out of my depth when they, when we get a
presentation about someone who's just discovered a new type of,
or, you know, something, I found it really interesting and I
think it's fantastic. But I'm kind of they sometimes
they're using words and I'm like, what does that mean?
So I think, you know, they do it for us, we do it for them.
And I think it's a really nice culture we have here in the
museum where we, we are encouraged to learn about what
all the other departments do. And I think that goes a long way
to then understanding when the difficult things come in doesn't
make it perfect. And then, you know, we
definitely have difficult conversations.
And I think the, the where it gets tricky sometimes too is the
priorities. So, you know, a lot of
organisations have this where, where it has to go to the
director level to say, do we lose commercial revenue by
stopping events to allow works to happen or do we keep the
events going and then the works are pushed back.
But that means we have a lot of money in, in, you know, delayed
construction time and we have to those decisions sit well, well
beyond us. But we again, we have a team of
excellent directors who have the best interests of the museum and
its staffing, collections and visitors at heart.
And they kind of they make those decisions.
But we we prepare little effectively, little business
cases to sort of explain. We're working with other teams
to say, look, here are your options.
How do you want to tackle this? Because when we're such a busy
live environment, we can't just stop all events.
We can't just stop having visitors from for a day, you
know, we, you know, but then we can't stop our works either.
So it's a really tricky juggle at times, but very luckily we
are supported by our our managers in that, which is
great. Let's rewind and allow Sophie to
tell us what her role covers. So yeah, so I'm a senior PM,
senior project manager here. Currently I'm working on the
similar type of thing of what I did for the last gallery.
So the, the gallery shell refurbishment of the what we
call Gallery 33. So that's the one that's
currently the creepy crawlies, which is a lot of people's
favourite from when they were a kid built back in the 80s.
So that one is due to now be removed.
So we're gonna strip that out. We, we, we sometimes call it the
children's gallery. Every gallery is the children's
gallery at this place. But that one in particular is
like really interactive and fun and yeah, it's bugs.
So kids like bugs and things like that.
So yeah. So that one is due to be
stripped out after for just about 40 years.
And we will, you know, recycle, donate, you know, as much of it
as we feasibly can. And then my role is very much
the restoration of the gallery. So it's a little bit different
to the FABP ones. That one, that gallery was in
much worse condition just for various reasons over the years
of, you know, water damage. And so we had to do a full roof
replacement. We replaced all the glazing we
did, replaced about 1/3 of flooring where it had rotted
away. It was all covered under vinyl.
Yeah. Basically it was a 1970s
exhibition called the Whole of Human Biology.
So it was all about the human body and how does it work.
And it was, for its time, it was extremely sort of trailblazing.
And it was a really new type of exhibition that was had come to
the UK. However, as Meg was talking
about before, they had no respect for the Victorian
architecture. So they built what we call a
space frame. So it's basically a white box on
the inside of the gallery. And then this big metal almost
looks like a climbing frame that ran across the ceiling.
So you could, if you look it up through it, you could sort of
see bits of the ceiling and so on.
But there was no celebration of the architecture.
They covered all the original oak floors with vinyl.
A real shame to be honest with you.
But it look, it was there for nearly 50 years.
So it, you know, it had a good life.
A lot of people fondly remember it from their own childhoods and
things. So, yeah.
So that one was again, big sort of decommissioning and strip out
process. So we had to take out all the
that one didn't have any actual specimens in it, but yeah, took
out all the models and the graphics and things like that.
Again, we donate, we recycle, we do as much as we can on that
front, and then you're left with this empty shell.
So then it's a huge process of because we were doing the roof
as well, we had to set up a big internal sort of structure,
scaffold structure, and then remove all the old slate tiles
and pull out all the old legs. And we had so many discoveries
on because what's tricky is because it's Grade 1 heritage
listed, you can't just go roofing it open to do surveys
when you feel like it. You have to a lot of it.
You're not given permission to actually have a look until
you're actually doing the works, which makes it really tricky
because you just find so many things.
And the roof filled up was not what we expected.
It wasn't even the depth we expected.
There was all sorts of things that meant we have to do a lot
of redesign. So this, it was a really
challenging project for that team.
I mean, I came in halfway and I found it challenging, let alone
the folks at the start. So it was just lots of surprises
because we did have some of the original drawings from the
original architect after Waterhouse, but not all of them.
So and like I mentioned being heritageist and we can't just go
like pulling things apart and having a look to see how they
work. So that to then inform the
design and the cost plans on. So we yeah, a lot of things were
not quite how we thought the yeah, building fabric surprises.
I will say on the flip side of that though is challenging as it
was and it did resulted a lot of difficulties for that project.
We now have a much better idea of what our buildings are
made-up of. And we've tested, you know,
concrete samples, we've tested paint samples.
We've through this project, we've discovered a lot of stuff
about not just the current sort of build, but how it has looked
over the last 150 years. So we've done the paint
analysis, we've done the analysis of the slate we had on
the roof and worked out the exact quarry it came from, like
all this kind of stuff. So we now know that the, you
know, next couple of gallery projects to come in
restorations, we're much better prepared and we have a lot of
lessons learned and a lot of information we can bring
forward, which I think is, you know, really useful.
And you could look at it in the negative way of, you know, it
was a really hard project and all these things kind of came up
and there were a lot of surprises.
But we're trying to think of it in the positive of thinking of
all that information we can apply to the next ones.
What did she learn from this project that she will use on the
next? Within reason, because it's not
always possible, is allowing for more contingency for things not
being where you think they will be in the build up of the the
building fabric or or the structure.
So time and. Resource time, resource budget
people, resource to I know, and this is something that the
exhibition team can speak about as well, is that.
I. Think initially because the
exhibition, it started a bit smaller than it ended up being.
It was just meant to be a temporary one.
It was resourced accordingly and then it grew with the, you know,
it was, you know, decision. It should, you know, be bigger
than it is. It wasn't just like scope creep.
It did, you know, we did say, look, let's actually make this a
bigger thing. It probably should have had some
more resources allocated. We did do a fair few things
quite well of, you know, bringing people back to the
benefits on why, why are we here?
Why are we doing what we're doing?
Stakeholder management was done quite well and change control
and so on, things like that. I think programme was one of our
trickiest ones and we were really unfortunately bound by
what our contractors were saying in their programme because that
was sort of the dates we would have to take to stakeholders and
take to put in our reporting and our governance and things like
that. And I think as the project got a
little unwieldy because it was just growing and having all
these issues, the programme became a really difficult one to
match because we didn't necessarily feel we had control
over it. And I was sort of sitting more
with the, the contractor. So possibly changing the way we
ran that and like seeing if there was a way we could not
necessarily have more influence over it because it, the builder
was telling us the truth. You know, this is this is what
it is and this is how long it will take.
But I think finding that balance between saying, yes, you, you
know, show us your programme, here's what you think we can do,
and then us having more influence over that and so on.
Because yeah, the the programme did grow a fair bit throughout
the throughout the job. Sherry Louise Rowe is a senior
projects and programme manager who helped bring the projects
over the line. She has worked at the Natural
History Museum for 21 years, working her way up from duty
manager to her current position. She explains that she now works
on the more strategically important projects and temporary
exhibitions, of which there are typically 3 running every year,
which take around 2 years to develop.
She normally runs a project team of around 4 professionals and
then a broader team of 12. Some of the projects have
included a tour of Dippy the dinosaur around the UK, an
exhibition on animal sex and moving the museum's statues of
Charles Darwin, scientist Thomas Huxley and the museum's founder
Sir Richard Owen around the building.
So I'm overseeing some of the temporary exhibitions, so the
one that Sam's doing on Jurassic Oceans and another one called
Great Ocean Forests, these are open in the next couple of
years. I oversee the art programme, the
project manager works on the art programme.
So we've got a gallery called the German Gallery, which is
sponsored partly by the German Foundation and it has to be an
art science type exhibition that goes in there.
Yeah. So in the past we've done things
like Gregor Sailor exhibition. We've had various artists that
we've commissioned done stuff. We had the Moon Museum of the
Moon here. That was really good.
I did that one actually. That's that was a really good
project. Yeah.
I asked her what's unique about working at the museum.
I think it is just the one for a better word.
The randomness of it really. Every day is, is different.
You know, it's not, you're not at the job where you're doing
the same, I know data input or seeing the same people.
It's very, you know. Different.
What skills do you need to thrive somewhere like this?
I think you have to be a good communicator and knowing how to
deal with the various, and it's only probably something you can
learn while you're here, because I knew nothing about science or
curators and conservation and how they feel about their
specimens and their objects. And if there is an issue
regarding them, you know you're going to treat it quite
sensitively and carefully, just can't bulldoze in and whatever.
So I think you've got to learn how to communicate effectively
to the right people in the right way.
How do you learn to deal effectively with specialists as
a project manager? I sort of put it on them, like
give them ownership of it, make them understand that I think I
understand that they're the, they're the expert.
So I'm relying on them to give me the right information to take
some ownership and responsibility for it.
And don't, I don't go in saying, right, I'm the project manager.
I'm going to be in charge of you or I need you.
We work as a team. I need you and your expertise
because I don't know, I think what best conditions are for a
specimen or I don't know, the best way for AV hardware to be
installed into the floor. You know, I'm relying on you as
my fellow project team members, but you know, we make this
project, we deliver this project together.
I just the conductor, the, you know, the band leader that
brings it all together and, you know, might be the head of the
face and the name of the document, but it's all the
others that really do all the work.
I ask her, how do you make a project a success at the museum?
Once you know, you know how the museum works and the the various
bureaucracies and the hierarchies and that that go on.
But you're still an important cog in the massive wheel.
But I think you can only do what you've got given in front of
you. If you haven't got a set amount
of time, ain't got a set amount of money.
We, I think that I think we very rarely fail.
You know, we always deliver on time within budget.
And as I think you just got to be, you could be quite calm as
well. You can't be too hot headed.
And yeah, you're going to have a level head about you and take
all the different personalities on and everyone's arguments,
whatever and just sometimes be a peacemaker, be a mediator.
You know you have different lots of hats to wear.
What are the hardest parts of delivering a project?
There are certain things that we're just giving a hard no on
and just like, you know, it's not even worth arguing it.
It's a no, it's not going to happen.
We need to find an alternative way.
You know, it might not be that we've got enough budget for
something or we just don't have enough time.
We haven't got enough time, right?
What do we prioritise and what can we say?
It's an exhibition. So we opened this gallery on the
3rd of April. It did get to a point where
we're like, right, what are going to be priorities that can
happen after we open? What can we not open without and
say, you know, there was a hard, that date of opening could not
change. There was press, there was
everything else set around it. It was out there in the public.
So we're like, OK, that wasn't have to wait till after.
No, wouldn't people wouldn't know, but for us we'd know that
was about priority and that sort of thing.
If it comes to money and it's which often unfortunately is an
issue, just say, OK, we might not be able to do the higher
spec or something. What's an alternative?
What else could we produce? Or, you know, does someone else
have to give? Or something else?
What was her involvement in the Fixing Our Broken Planet
project? So actually I didn't come on
till last May I think. So more Reba stage 5.
It just came obvious that it was almost too big for one person
and Sam had done a great job up until then, but it was going to,
you know, principals contractor was about to come on.
It was only going to get bigger and bigger.
So I came on to sort of just help Sam out really.
I took on a relationship with the principal contractor.
She took on some of the other smaller work packages and we
sort of then managed it together.
And I, and I say I oversaw all the install stuff while she did
all the other, but you know, the work practise that she'd been
managing up until that time. It's easier if she to carry on
doing that and I did the new things.
So the principal contractor, the installation schedule, all the
logistics about coming on site, all that sort of thing.
At the time didn't think that it was something that hadn't been
done before. I just thought it was like we've
been given a lovely brand new open space.
We need to fill it with someone that's going to look amazing,
which obviously colleagues were in charge of designing and
producing and whatever it was just it was more, I guess for me
and Sam, we knew we had a deadline.
It had to happen and it was getting everything ready for
that day again. It wasn't until afterwards, I
think you look back and think, Oh my God, this is the first one
we've done since whatever the date is more Hincy Hall, I
guess. So, yeah, I didn't typically
feel pressure at the time that it was something new.
It was more just like, Oh my God, we're running out of time.
We've got a lot to do in a short amount of time.
And it was a lot of very much all hands on deck.
And we built in like the contingency time.
We could do evening work, do weekend work.
I mean, luckily we didn't have to rely on weekend work.
I think we did a couple of evenings just to get, you know,
be also conscious. Don't want people to burn out
and, you know, because then that has a negative effect as well or
people going off sick or whatever.
So yeah, you just have to find the time and or bring an extra
resource if you're able to and just make it work.
I asked if she was there for the opening of the gallery.
We sort of stood outside because we hadn't, because the doors
that you went in this morning, everyone thought they were just,
that was hoarding because they haven't.
That's just how it was designed. It's going to look like that.
So those doors were shut the whole time.
So the first time we'd seen it open was the morning of the
third. And then we sort of stood on the
other side of the corridor, we got back to dinosaurs and just
watched everyone go with an hour really.
It was quite weird. And just watching how people
were reacting and acting in the gallery and around the showcases
and stuff. And it's always so busy.
You are relieved. And it hasn't really ended.
There's still lots of snagging and bits to continue with and
reporting and stuff. But yeah, it was a bit like, oh
God, I've done that. And it fell just in time for
Easter whole day. So I think nearly all of us took
breaks at different point and just like just forget about it
for a few days. What approach does she take to
projects? If you ask everyone in the
office, they'll all just say how laid back I am.
I don't get particularly panicked or stressed, and I
guess I'm quite methodical in that way.
And let's say it's all about priorities and listing what
needs to be done when, what can wait?
We can do that later. So rush for that and set in the
right deadlines at the right time.
And I just think, you know, I think we do is, is obviously for
people to come and enjoy. And they don't see what I think
that goes on behind the scenes, like whether, you know, blood,
sweat and tears or whatever. And there's just no point
getting what I'm trying to. They won't know if we've done
something wrong. The visitors won't know if
something you know that showcases that look quite right
or whatever. So I don't feel all those.
We always try. We always strive to get things
absolutely right. It's not the end of the world if
we don't. I guess you, you can't come in
with two fixed like say I have this style of project management
and that's that's it. Because it's not, it won't work
here and you have to have a flexible approach, be good at
communicating and be aware of all the different needs and
expectations from all the different stakeholders and
departments across the museum because No2 are the same.
What is the new galleries in the programme now?
Some are existing ones like we've done and need to be
stripped out and started again. Or I think at least one of them
is. Used to be a gallery, public
gallery years and years ago, but has since been taken by
collections and office space and whatever.
So yeah, it's like we said earlier, it's about bringing
back the fabric of the building to the visitors.
Samantha Bannister, who project managed the design of the
exhibition and who took me on the tour earlier, sat down with
me and gave me a bit more background on her role and the
work she's engaged in. I'm a project manager in the
Estates projects master planning department, and really I manage
public engagement projects. So these are things like ranging
from permanent gallery spaces to temporary exhibitions and
sometimes even commercial activities like the ice rink
that we used to do before the Urban Nature project.
And so, yeah, I'm really sort of on the the public engagement
side of things versus we've got our buildings PM that they look
into the infrastructure of of the building.
What's her role on the project? So I came in as sort of the the
start up stage just before we sort of kicked off concept
design. So yeah, responsible for sort of
setting the scope and the the parameters of the project,
getting in any of the design team members that we needed.
It was delivered in house by our NHM design studios.
So 3D design was was covered, but we needed to get in our 2D
designer QS PD. Three of the zones, the material
zone, the energy zone and the food zone were zones that were
represented in the original temporary exhibition.
Some of the specimens that were in the temporary exhibition have
been removed because they we have to consider how long
they've been on gallery from the conservation conditioning
perspective that we had to replace some of those stories in
order that we weren't damaging our specimens.
The longer a specimen will be on display, the more sort of
detrimental that can be to a specimen.
So your conditions have to be very set with temporary
exhibition. A lot of those spaces are kind
of like black box spaces, so there's there's no daylight in
those galleries. So in order for us to be able to
maximise what we can put on on display, but they're often on a
run for seven months. So you can put things on that
are considered more fragile because of the shorter time
frame. Whereas for this gallery, it's
meant to be in the space for a minimum of 10 years.
You have to understand what specimens.
Will be able to. Withstand that some of those
specimens will need to be rotated out, some of the stories
will need to be swapped later down the line in order that
we're yeah, we're we're managing the risk to those specimens.
The whole concept of the gallery is to enable us to update it as
science changes. It's meant to be a much more
sort of dynamic space, so we can swap stories in and out as the
science around something changes, as something is more
perhaps to the fore in the news, for example, like wildfires have
been quite in the news at at the moment, but there may be
something else that is more relevant to at the time that we
want to represent on the gallery.
It's ongoing. So, so the project team that we
had to deliver this this exhibition has it's sort of
disbanded and really the the the update side of things will be
led by our interpretation team, who are the people that do the
research into what stories we can tell and what specimens we
can put on gallery when we come to do those swaps.
Project management team will get involved again in order to
coordinate that. But yeah, that's sort of
specific looking at what stories we want to put on since outside
project. Yeah, we designed it.
And then in that time we're establishing the the content,
the narrative, what specimens we can use.
And then once all the design is finished and you've established
what stories you're using, you go into the construction phase.
So procuring principal contractors, procuring showcase
manufacturers and then we had to procure with the 3D ceramic
plinths as part of that subcontracted to our PC.
Yeah. So there's a sort of an off site
construction period where all of those things are being made,
manufactured and then we bring them to start and install them
in gallery. It started in the beginning of
November and we opened the 3rd of April.
I ask her what was the biggest challenge she faced.
Our biggest change I think was around the the prints that are
in the gallery. Those were developed, they're a
3D printed ceramic. It's quite an innovative
material to use. The reason reviews that is for
sustainability reasons. It's made out of natural
materials. It's all held together without
the need for screws and the car footprint of things like screws
we've sort of taken into account and stuff.
But because it's an innovative product, we had to go through
quite a bit of prototyping with that.
And we had some issues with things not drying correctly and
therefore not firing correctly. So it was quite a process to
sort of get that right. And that was quite sort of a
linchpin moment in our programme in terms of we can, we got the
showcases in and then we wrapped the showcases with those clips.
And that was sort of the major bit of work that was really
happening in that gallery. So we had a long lead time of
like enabling works waiting for these ceramic clips to come in.
What lessons will she take from it?
So the whole sort of the point of of this as well was it wasn't
necessarily for us to create the most sustainable gallery
possible though, because as I said, there were constraints
around that. But for really for us to attempt
to reduce our sort of cup footprint around our gallery
production. But really so that we can sort
of create an initial assessment of how this gallery has
performed so that future galleries can look back at what
we've done and understand where they could improve on the
process. So it's really to yeah, to
create this is an assessment from a sort of carbon
perspective of delivering this gallery so that yeah, future
galleries can try to improve in terms of the next galleries.
We've taken a lesson around the working in parallel on the base
field side of things as well as the exhibition development side
of things. Whereas for this, for this
exhibition of this gallery, the base build was very much in
front of the exhibition development.
And that was some around the decision about what was going to
be put in there. And we didn't know that FOBP was
going to be the gallery that we were going with at that stage,
but it just meant that the interface between the two
projects were there was some some things that had been sort
of developed as part of the exhibition.
The base build that had we known the exhibition was going into
it, we probably would have looked to do slightly
differently. So going forward across all of
our new galleries, we are working more in parallel with
that base build and that exhibition development of the
base build can more easily achieve what the exhibition
design requires. I leave the project office and
I'm emerging to a throng of museum visitors.
It's been a privilege to go behind the scenes at the museum
and understand what it takes to put together a new gallery like
this and how's this fits into the institution's globally
important role in combating climate change.
No matter which sector you work in, I hope you found something
in our conversations that might inspire you or help you in your
project work. Anyway, thanks again to Meg,
Sophie, Sherry, Louise and Samantha for joining me and to
you for listening to the APM Podcast.
Just to mention, you can find out more about my Natural
History Museum visit in the Autumn 2025 issue of Project
Journal. Don't miss it.
And don't forget to look out for more episodes or to rate and
review us. Wherever you get your podcasts.
We'd welcome you to get in touch with your comments, feedback and
suggestions by emailing us at APM Podcast at
thinkpublishing.co.uk. This podcast has been brought to
you by APM, the chartered body for the project profession.
For more information on APM, visit apm.org.uk.