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.
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