While leading a project for Camden Council, the Council added an additional interim reporting cut-off we weren’t expecting. As the project manager, it was my responsibility to ensure this could be delivered on time and with the resources we had. This required me to be highly organised, and flexible in the face of changing commitments. To overcome this obstacle, I re-prioritised my tasks to take on responsibility for writing the report.

 I consulted with the Council to clarify the scope of the interim report (and thus how much time would be needed). I then alerted the rest of my team to the request to check what time they had to help. This generated some stress, as the rest of the team had other project commitments and couldn’t help. However, having looked at my own schedule, I saw I could re-prioritise fieldwork moderation on another project (which I checked and cleared with the project manager and my line manager). I blocked out time in my calendar in advance so other projects could see I was unavailable. I also liaised with our external fieldwork supplier to ensure they could provide the extra data, and continued to check in with them as the deadline approached.

Despite initial obstacles of an unexpected request, and resourcing issues, I produced the interim report covering key topic areas the Council were interested in. This was very well received, and I got positive feedback from my team for effectively reassessing my workload to ensure it got done.