Areas Of Expertise

• IT / business program management governance and delivery

Education

• Bachelor of Business – Finance & Banking, Edith Cowan University

Key Clients

• MLC (Plum Super)
• Telstra Health
• JBWere (NAB Group)
• NBN Co
• LINK Group
• DFSI
• Telstra
• Superpartners
• Plum (NAB Group)
• Cbus

About Nevil Cope

Nevil is a skilled practitioner at the PMO Director and Program Manager level, joining Seven Consulting’s Melbourne practice in September 2013. He has significant delivery experience in business and technology consulting in UK, USA, and Asia with expertise in the Financial Services sector encompassing Investment Banking, Retail Banking, Superannuation, and Insurance.  

Nevil has strong business management skills with comprehensive experience of PMO governance practices, procedures, and relevant legislation, coupled with a complete understanding of project management / delivery methodologies. 

Nevil is an expert facilitator between technology and business stakeholders with proven aptitude to interpret the key drivers of risk / reward relationships, thus maximising the benefit of these relationships to understand and deliver relevant business priorities.

What Nevil brings

• Ability to build and lead teams (onshore and offshore) at high performance levels, in complex environments.
• Proven delivery experience in managing large, complex remediation programs-of-work.
• Strong mathematical and analytical ability with extensive experience in the design / development, plus the interpretation and analysis of complex financial data models.
• Ability to plan, co-ordinate and manage process improvement / change agendas coupled with a strong experience in driving and / or adhering to recognised quality benchmarks whilst fostering an environment of continuous improvement.
• Experienced in evaluating and establishing strategic sourcing propositions for engaging third parties and transforming business operating models.
• An extensive knowledge of financial services business practices and processes.

Key Achievements

As Program Director at MLC, Nevil led the Workplace Super Remediation program. He stepped-up from Program Manager to lead the program when the incumbent PD moved on. Nevil successfully navigated the ownership transfer from MLC to Insignia (IOOF), with Event levels at <40 when Nevil left the Program in March 2022. Upon completion of this engagement, Nevil transitioned into a Head Office role within Seven.

As Program Manager at MLC,  Nevil initially (mid 2019) led the Insurance in Super Remediation program, standing-up a team to focus on the Events in scope (~60 including 8 regulator reportable), each Event being a project of varying size and complexity. Nevil ensured the value proposition was clearly defined and expectations set and understood by all stakeholders (cross-business / Risk (Lines 1 and 2) / Tech / Org Change Management), and established a structured-end-to-end resolution and remediation approach that improved throughput and closure velocity (closed ~40 Events in first year including 6 reportable, coupled with  ensuring underlying business processes and controls were uplifted to ensure fixes were permanent, minimising the likelihood of Event reoccurrence.

After nine months, Nevil’s scope broadened to include non-Insurance Events (peak of ~250 Events in mid-2020) leading multiple remediation squads (peak team size of ~75 plus ~25 delivery partners e.g., Risk / Tax / OCM). He consolidated the program of work and rolled-out processes embedded in the Insurance in Super program across the broader remediation landscape, strengthened the governance and oversight protocols with a right-sized fit-for-purpose PMO team, and conducted a thematic review of the Events book, to group / consolidate like-themed Events to maximise closure velocity. Nevil introduced a level of consistency and repeatability across the event remediation space, in conjunction with a specific focus on team well-being, actively facing the challenges arising throughout the pandemic – at one stage, no resignations over a 9-month period and <10% turnover throughout program life.

As PMO Director at Telstra Health, based in Melbourne, Nevil initially provided program oversight and secondly, performed a program delivery role as part of the implementation of the National Cancer Screening Registry (NCSR) program of work. Nevil established and maintained robust governance practices for the multi-year, multi-faceted Cervical Screening Program together with defining a framework to commence oversight uplift within the broader NCSR business. Created and embedded effective two-way relationships with the numerous internal and external stakeholders, through provision of streamlined, transparent and relevant reporting content coupled with a rationalised governance model. Closed gaps identified as part of formal ‘health-check’ gateway reviews.

Following the successful transition of the NCSR PMO Director role to a permanent resource Nevil was requested by Telstra Health, to continue the NCSR journey. Initially charged with providing guidance to embed business-as-usual processes. Specifically, this involved the effective coordination of all relevant technical, business, and external stakeholders to ensure issuance of NCSR participants’ mandatory correspondence in line with agreed schedule. Defined and designed a repeatable and standardised approach to ensure compliance going forward. Subsequently, Nevil imparted delivery experience to lead solution elements of the Bowel Register Program through 2018 and into 2019. Leading the Labs & Interfaces stream of work facilitating the successful integration with all external parties connecting with the NCSR i.e., Histopathology labs / Govt. entities (e.g., MyGov, MyHealthRecord) / GP and Specialists practice management systems.

As PMO Director at Cbus, Nevil conducted a forensic assessment of the existing PMO framework, identifying general themes, gaps and potential systemic issues of current state; forming the basis for the ‘To Be’ design and implementation of a ‘refreshed’ right-sized and fit-for-purpose governance model, enabling uplift in the delivery of project management services to meet the anticipated increase in change investment funding.

As Program Manager at JBWere (NAB), for NAB Wealth Controls Transformation Program (CTP), Nevil introduced a Controls Management System (CMS) to strengthen the JBWere risk and controls environment through a structured and transparent approach to managing risk, helping the business ’Do the Right Thing’ by its clients, its people, the regulators and the NAB Group shareholders. This program involved building and leading a dedicated team of risk and process professionals to work with and across the entire JBWere business to uplift their ‘immature’ compliance framework by, identifying the regulatory obligations as they related to the JBWere entities, documenting the processes and controls to meet those obligations, testing the key controls with the business, creating remediation plans where controls were not effective and identifying and training relevant obligation, process and control owners in relation to the CMS. The program of work was successfully delivered in line within agreed timelines and cost boundaries with significant value-add through incorporation of additional scope elements.

As PMO Director at nbnCo, based in Melbourne, as part of an enterprise-wide IT uplift program of work, performed an end-to-end review of IT project management and PMO capability and practices, co-authoring papers covering the “As Is” and “To Be” delivery capability. Nevil was heavily involved in the planning / prioritisation activities for the Service Delivery Improvement program (i.e., FY17 program of work addressing the multi-year transformation activities arising as a consequence of the review) and leading the “Metrics that Matter” initiative focused on the creation and roll-out of a suite of standardised, holistic, fact-based leading indicators and lag measures to improve IT delivery oversight and optimise management decision making.

As PMO Manager at Telstra, based in Melbourne, Nevil undertook an assurance review of several key programs of work, assessing the quality of program delivery, ensuring feedback provided positioned the Global Project Services team for success by driving Project Management capability as a key differentiator.

As PMO Director at LINK Group, based in Melbourne and Sydney, following the acquisition of Superpartners, Nevil undertook a detailed capability assessment of the existing PMO. This involved identifying general themes, gaps and potential systemic issues and forming the basis for the design and implementation of a ‘refreshed’ right-sized, fit-for-purpose governance model enabling project management delivery uplift. In conjunction with the above activities, Nevil conducted a structured review of their project management cohort to evaluate individual competence and identify gaps where personal and, ultimately, enterprise-wide project management enrichment was required.

Mirroring the LINK Group engagement; for the Department of Finance, Services, and Innovation (DFSI), based in Sydney, Nevil conducted a capability assessment of the CTO Office project management group whilst concurrently performing an ‘As-Is’ / ‘’To-Be’ review of their enterprise-wide PMO model.

As Program Manager / PMO Manager at Superpartners, based in Melbourne, at a program management level led several client delivery streams as part of the multi-year Insurance Remediation Program. Key areas of focus were providing systemic and / or process related fixes coupled with remediation of underlying data ensuring the provision of rigorous insurance administration services to both members and Trustees, and their Insurers. Leading the program specific PMO team; introduced numerous operational efficiencies that ultimately led to reduction in core team size from five to two resources.

As PMO Manager at Plum Financial Services, based in Melbourne, as part of the MLC division of the NAB Group, Nevil undertook an assurance review of key regulatory projects (SuperStream / StrongerSuper / MySuper), assessing the quality of delivery, ensuring feedback positioned the program of work for success. Delivery scope included deep-dive reviews of the effectiveness of project management processes and controls, reliability, accuracy and referential integrity of program / project status reporting to the program governance forums and effectiveness of escalation processes, completeness and achievability of plans for completing delivery of the agreed scope within approved time-frames, cost and quality objectives including achievability of the required exit and entry criteria for each remaining program milestone, an assessment of the appropriateness and maturity of contingency plans to deal with the remaining execution of risks and issues and an assessment of the completeness, accuracy and reliability of the Delivered Risk Assessment.