AECOM were asked to standardise and digitise the roadmap and planning process for various teams and departments within Flood and Coastal Risk Management (FCRM). The goal was to ensure that this process is interactive, allows for alignment with overall strategic direction of DEFRA, Environment Agency and FCRM, and is transparent enough to support summarised views and reporting. The existing planning effort was disjointed and not standardised, so there was a need to resolve resource bottlenecks and make the planning process more flexible.
Work done and value provided:
Various formats, approaches and documents of the Environment Agency’s roadmaps were reviewed and distilled into a standard best practice approach. After that, this approach was translated into a central data repository and built into an interactive wizard app. The app supports departments to complete their planning process in a structured way. As a result, roadmap information is accessible and reportable, allowing for cross departmental comparisons, strategic alignment reviews and resource needs. It is also interactive and can be updated or edited at any time. Area files reduced from 16 to 14 in order to align with Natural England (the public area dataset), as well as adding seaward areas. The app was made ready for release pending the EA’s deployment of the Office 365 enterprise software package.