Welcome to the APM Podcast, brought to you by the Chartered Body for the Project Profession. This episode is part of our series of Senior Leader Interviews hosted by APM Chief Executive Professor Adam Morrison. This time, Adam is speaking to Baroness Valentine, having started out working in Corporate finance in the city in the 1980s. In recent years, Baroness Valentine has had what she describes as a portfolio career.
Her current roles include Chair of Heathrow, Southern Railway and Co Director of Place at Business in the Community. As of 2005, she also sits in the House of Lords as a crossbench member, with the current focus on levelling up. She was also formally on the boards of both Crossrail and
HS2. Listen on to here Adam and Baroness Valentine discuss what she took from her time in the City into her later career, why the UK struggles to commit to long term infrastructure plans, and whether the business environment in general has become more inclusive. I'm delighted to be here today with the APM Podcast and to welcome today's guest Baroness Valentine. Welcome. Hello.
I'd like to start by asking you to tell us a bit about your career, if I may, from your days in the city, right through to your advocacy and charity roles and and of course the award of your peerage in 2005. I started in in corporate finance in the 80s. It must have been. I was the first female and corporate finance department of bearings. I then went and did a regeneration project in Blackburn and Darwin, a
completely different field. Then came back to work for BBC student company leading on planning and finance. Then went to work for the London First I think which is a campaign group for London and then well and then sort of started a portfolio career during the 2000. So I've done National Lottery Commissioner, Peabody Housing Trust and at the moment I'm doing two days a week on levelling up essentially in sort of forgotten towns running OK, but I was on Crossrail and HS two boards.
For the purposes of this conversation I am currently on Value and Index Property Income Trust. I'm obviously in the Lords as you mentioned I'm chairman or something called Heathrow Southern Railway and I just stopped being vice chair of UCL. So how you can make sense of all that, I don't know. I do sometimes reflect on it and think, well, why did it end up being like this?
Yes, a lot of twists and turns though I was really interested that you you you went, particularly when you were describing your move from the city through to to the regeneration work that you kind of described it as being completely different. I'm I'm, I've had a few twists and turns in my own career not quite as many as as you.
But what I've found is that sometimes it's the most unexpected things that you pick up in one aspect of your career that are really relevant to another aspect, probably in a way that was really unexpected. And I wonder whether you found that in your move from the city into regeneration that there were things that were really valuable that you've learned in the city that helped you in that regeneration work.
The twists and turns are partly because I thought of myself as an equal to all the men around me and I was expecting ambitious things of myself and that was until much later on, not not really how other people saw me. So that has caused some of the twists and turns in terms of skill sets from different things. Funnily enough, the corporate finance side of things taught me, I mean there's all arrogance to investment banks doing corporate finance.
And what you do is you you pull in as you know all the brokers and the whoever, the company and the accountants etcetera and and you basically orchestrate what they all do against a very sharp deadline typically of a issue of shares or takeover or whatever it is. And that taught me some some lessons which I've applied ever since I guess um which is I now and really have forever Carole stakeholders in one form or
another to do things. And the other thing is it taught me about hard deadlines and in the public sector and the charity sector there doesn't seem to be as as clear and understanding of our deadline normally because there there isn't a real deadline. And the other thing for corporate finance is you absolutely don't talk about, you know, if you've got a thank you for going on, you obviously don't say it to party. You know I'm, I'm acting for blah and they're taking over blah.
Whereas whereas the government has a very different understanding of absolute secrecy like that. You can reflect it on the challenges of being one of the, well, I think the only woman you were saying in in in some parts of your career. Do you think we've got better now as a, well, I'm thinking of the project profession, but probably the world of business more broadly. And what more do you think we still need to do to really make this a truly inclusive business environment?
Yes, definitely got better. I mean I didn't know that I'm minded until I got to a 5050 male female environment in on London first. It was such a relief to not have to talk about male subjects all the time.
So you know in in in bearings it was sort of shooting and fishing and in in Blackburn you know it was sort of you've got to do The Dirty job for it to be a real job etcetera In in BC it was golfing I suppose but in in London first at last I managed to sort of you could move between subjects to have conversations about rather than sort of stuck in in the ruts that have very male violent give you so.
So what have we got to learn. I was on a panel talking to a load of young people in round old city roundabout who would techies young techies. And there are there are group of us oldies talking about it must have been a women's celebration day or something talking about barriers to work and none of the youngsters in the audience understood what we were talking about and they were also under 30 getting on with stuff.
My, my daughter worked for a tech company actually around there and they had a policy of automatically having average male salaries the same as average female salaries. No matter who they brought in whatever. They would always average it out across the two sexes, which which I think is probably not good policy. But I think some of the tech startup type things are innovative on this stuff and sometimes a bit clunky. But I thought it was great that they were doing it and that they
understood, understood this. Your world feels a bit more staid and traditional, I suppose if you think of sort of railways and and construction and that sort of side of things, it all still feels a bit male. You know you haven't got somebody Network Rail female or Transport for London who's female leading it. The the The funny thing was some environment. So I'm not talking about those two, but is when they're very male, they don't understand how bad they look. If you're female.
We were talking earlier about the pictures on the wall, you know, if, if all the pictures are of men, if you go into a training centre and you're female, you know, obviously that's not quite working. Ditto ethnic minorities. Obviously if all your pictures are white people that doesn't resonate everywhere. So I think role models are are very important. It was interesting in your reflections there on particular sectors, you know, the kind of the gender balance in different sectors.
One of the things I excites me about the project profession is that, you know, whilst it started in kind of telecoms, infrastructure, construction and so on, it's really broadened out now to be kind of a truly kind of pan sector profession. And what's really interesting is, you know, we've now got some sectors, uh, you know, education being a good example, where actually you get a gender skewed the other way.
And I'm, I'm hoping that as a whole that helps to kind of balance things out across the profession. But you're absolutely right, there's certain sectors where there's definitely much more more to be done. One of the things I've been reflecting on, which is whether the project profession actually has a bit of an image problem.
Because in my, in my mind, before I got involved with a PM, I always kind of had this idea that I don't know, project managers are all about kind of Gantt charts and templates and, you know, telling people what to do and, you know, probably limited to certain sectors. And, you know, my eyes have been opened really. And so I do wonder whether they're particularly leaders when they're really organisations are not particularly aware of the
project profession. I wonder whether they just think it's a really technical kind of administration type thing rather than something that really adds value in terms of delivery, particularly strategy delivery, you know? In business 11 is basically doing project and programme management all the time of what happened level you're operating with. One probably doesn't think of it as a sort of profession whilst doing it.
So yes I think you know as as I started I I I'd sort of pigeonholed it into railways when you asked me the question but I'm I'm I'm well aware of the need for the expertise daily from everybody really. Some bits of the civil service have got this really well honed. Some bits are in terms of what I want out of the civil service it's often not well homed but but the charity sector this this bizarre thing about having to
have impact evaluation. But it it appears to me to be a substitute for the fact that people haven't really said this is my objective. You know this will happen if I've if I've done it but the way that both the charity sector and the public sector use sort of KPI's it's sort of box ticking I suppose is what I'm trying to say and because they use the box ticking they failed to do the the big picture objective. So there's something in that space. Understand exactly what you mean.
I was having a conversation actually just yesterday and I put four statistics up on the screen about what percentage of projects have been successful over the past. I think it was the past five years. Um. And I asked people you know which statistic they thought was right and it went from kind of nought .5% of projects are successful right through to 30%. None of them particularly optimistic I should say.
And the reality was they were all correct because it depended on how you determined what we meant by project success. Because some of those statistics were, were really saying actually if you deliver your project on time within budget to the required specification, then that's that's the measure of access. But others were, you know, exactly to the point that you're you're saying we're saying, well actually that's that's only part of the job.
You only really know if it's been successful, if you realise the benefits. And that might be 10 years after you've finished the actual core delivery if you like. So I think that vision, I suppose, of what what we mean by success is not consistently understood in in my opinion.
No, I mean I have this very much on on the levelling network I'm doing in the towns around around the UK at the moment because clearly if you're tackling deprivation you're not going to sort that out overnight and yet you don't want an excuse for you know spending lots of time researching or just twiddling your thumbs in the in the 25 years while you wait for the for the deprivation measure to actually change sustainably.
So. So we we tend to do milestones along the way that we think will impact the the deprivation statistic and then sort of check them every year. So when we were campaigning on Crossrail when I was at at London first, our objective obviously was to get Crossrail, but we would have getting it through Parliament as you know, one objective or whatever it is each year we would have a a milestone objective so that you genuinely are making progress,
you hope. Well, let's talk about some of the specific areas that you, you've kind of, you know, touched on as as you've been giving your responses so far. So let's let's maybe start with Crossrail. I think you sat on the border Cross Rail from 2019 to 2020 and this was a project that you know, experienced widely publicised delays, cost overruns. But actually despite all of that, if you ask people now the Elizabeth lines there, you know what do they think of it?
It was really credited both for the end product but also for the successful turn around and the grand opening and so on. I just wondered what your insights and reflections were from your time on the Crossrail board and and that kind of almost 180° turn around there? So I think you know big infrastructure projects that that disrupt people and spend a lot of money look like white elephants I suppose as you run into them. I mean the the time that I was
on the Crossrail board. So I came in after all that trouble with cost overruns and it wasn't finished and all that things. So we were a new board came in in it was it 2019, you said I was there and when I left it was because the the Crossrail went in underneath Transport for London, so it was brought much more under the Transport for London umbrella. So the the line and the stations were pretty much built by the time I arrived.
There were thousands and thousands of snagging issues and of course the suspicion that all the consultants working on it are just trying to do more work because that's how they get paid. So they're just going to find another snag and recommend how you deal with it and blah blah blah blah. My perception about that was that unless Transport for London really started pulling Crossrail into Transport for London, they would never get.
They were going to keep going round in circles because it was never in Crossrail's interest to hand over to TF LA Station that might have something wrong with it, you know? So Crossrail wanted to make sure they've they've dotted all the eyes across all the teeth From Transport for London's perspective, they didn't want to take on the headache of an additional line and station that they had to manage.
So at the time, it looked like a headache from TFL's perspective and no real incentive to complete on the Crossrail side, even though allegedly there there was. Because you've got all that baggage of all the consultants and contractors working for you that they're in. They're not. I don't know how you would you would know better than me how to incentivise properly in that sort of situation. But but government does seem to get itself into position where one just hires loads and I've
got nothing against consultants. Please don't take it to this but as loads of people and and then doesn't really know how to control them. The other thing I remember clearly from that era was we had a risk register. But I was, I was looking at risk registers and thinking actually are these real, You know, there's 500 risks. Yeah. Does anybody ever really think
about them? So I'm always keen on on risk, risk registers, whatever you want to call the strategic risk register of sort of 5:00-ish risks that you actually can sort of touch and feel and get your head around. And in Crossroads guys, they had a risk register roughly of that type. I gonna have an 100 items
whatever. And but it wasn't connected to network rails risk register and TFL's risk register and I said for goodness for goodness sake you know this is your trains are going to come out and go on to Network Rail tracks and they've got to come out and you know tear on these things and these risks need to be aligned anyway that did happen but it didn't seem to be obvious to people that that needed to happen which I found odd but the other thing is we we did have Network Rail
coming in updating us monthly or by multi remember but we we weren't good but saying actually because this sort of risk register thing wasn't clear what is the information we we want you to give. So all they would do is come up come up and say you know we've we've done some work with some concrete on platform on reading or whatever it is. You know, we've done our homework here. Here's what we've done as opposed to, you know, this is what we we need to be doing by when.
This is what's working. This is not what's not working. That's really insightful. Thank you and and and a couple of things for those people listening to to to this podcast. So we APM has partnered with both Crossrail and with HS2 to to produce learning legacy type documents.
They're available on the app and website and for people who are interested in knowing more about some of the lessons learned on those two projects of which there have been many, then you you, you, you can obviously access those. But I wanted to just pick up on one thing you said if if if I may by Baroness Valentine which was you talked about some of the kind of contractors who might be in the supply chain where there's almost no incentive to kind of do a good job if you
like or not. Well, not no incentive, maybe not not lots of incentives to do a good job because actually you don't want to bite the hand that feeds you. And for the project goes on longer, that's obviously good because that's where your income comes from.
But I think there's also another issue, which is if something's going wrong, what's the incentive to call it out and say that it's going wrong early on because that might also get you kind of booted off the project, especially if it's, you know, in
your area. And all of those things kind of fall into this category of what I think of a strategic misrepresentation where right the way through the supply chain you might for different reasons, you've got people who are not being totally transparent about what the reality of the situation is. So those making the strategic decisions might have the risk register and everything in front of them like you've just described, but that's not
necessarily giving an accurate picture of what's going on. That was allegedly very true across rail before before I got on the board. So it's as you will know the the there was a sort of flare up with it when it was alleged to be ready and then and then it was two years away and and that was absolutely alleged to be an issue that the that the issues at mid level were ground level were not being surfaced to the top And I think that's poor line management.
That's just that just is poor line management. Well, I think I'm not meaning to blame anyone. I think of all the people I work with on these things are are are generally very good and generally trying trying to do a good job. We're a PM, the only chartered membership organisation for the project profession. When you become an APM member, you'll receive the resources and support you need to make an impact delivering better
projects with better outcomes. Plus you'll access exclusive training and benefits to support your ongoing career development. Find out how we can help you reach your potential by visiting apm.org.uk, Because when projects succeed, society benefits. Can we move on to to business in the community because you mentioned that as well earlier on ahead of this kind of conversation.
I, I, I, I wouldn't have a a look on the website and and I really like the focus on kind of green and sustainability and and so on and combining that with the kind of the business side of things, it was obviously very strong within business in the community. I don't see that as strongly in every business. Do you think businesses have got a lot to learn from business in the community?
You know, why do you think not everybody has got that razor sharp focus on on green, the business in the community's got? When you get down to people who are really struggling with cost of living and things like that, whether you're being green is secondary to to whether you can eat for the day. So at business security, one of the things we're just newly doing is as a community climate fund.
Which is trying to help communities move to net zero and we're trying to be innovative about different ways of doing that. But it but it's really simplest, it would be putting solar panels on a on a community building or doing allotments to get local food production, whatever. But you can see perfectly well why there's residents don't have it as priority and that connects quite closely to SME's.
And so SME's likewise probably don't largely have it as a priority because they sort of don't have the luxury of thinking about it. If you then talk about larger companies, I guess you need to look through to the investors.
I'm not sure whether the city and their investors is is quite a sharp edged as they could be on on this green stuff and we wish you the green bond in in UCL which was which was interesting but but there's a question I guess as an investor are you prepared to take a slightly lower dividend or interest rate for something being green and and most companies aren't having that sort of conversation with their investors and that would be interesting.
So if you're not in that space, you're basically looking at technology which is is green or satisfying regulation or or stuff you can do that doesn't cost. You kind of touched on levelling up as well. I know this is something that's really close to your heart. I wonder if you might tell me what you see as the main challenges in rebalancing wealth and opportunity across the UK.
I don't know whether the aim is to whether whether a credible aim is to rebalance the economy and it does play into the question about London's role in the in the UK but and I'm very anti any suggestion that London should be levelled down but so I think if you're looking at a bunch of difficult places there there must be loads of around the UK.
It's probably 1000 from the sort of thing I do, which is to go in and try and get local stakeholders to buy into a a route map where where they with some help from others, can actually identify where they want to get to and start work on getting turning around a tower. So Blackpool I did a lot of work in, so setting an agenda for action and then actually implementing it. I would love the levelling up department to work better with what I do.
I I don't need a lot from them. I just need to strategic engagement and a bit of match funding for some of the stuff we do. They throw millions at places but but actually in the early days we're just trying to get people aligned to a common agenda. You don't need a lot of money at that front end but actually it's sometimes counterproductive to put in money before you've got
the trust built locally. But so I think places need to have the right dynamic to start levelling up and sometimes you've got weak councils and sometimes you've got weak business, sometimes the communities are at war with each
other, whatever. So it for me it feels like a constant ambition but going with the grain of where it's possible and and being smart about going in and supporting other Manchester combined authority if they if they if they're starting to move in the right direction, getting behind them and really helping make that happen. So it's a very difficult question now you level up a country and as any government of the future will be thinking about.
You obviously are a a huge advocate for for London as well. You mentioned that in there you know you don't want no suggestion at all of 11 debt levelling down London and I'm just reflecting on your your time running London first obviously now called Business London which advocated for still advocates for London as a business hub. There is that view that that we're quite London centric as a country and that's a kind of barrier to economic growth in
other places. What do you say to those kind of people who have that, who have that view? Are they right? Yes, Um, we've got power bases in London, which are the City, the government and to a lesser extent probably higher education. I'm always disappointed when ministers and civil servants say they're coming up to Sheffield or Blackpool or whatever and they they cancel because in their eyes something more important has come up. And that just to me says such a
lot about the attitude. So, you know, if you're going out to somewhere that really values your turning up and cares, you know, about work stuff, then that needs to be far better respected than thinking that a minister suddenly, I don't know, the Secretary of State called you into a meeting. The Secretary of State should be told I've already got a meeting up in Blackpool though I'm not coming but that's you know that that would be that's not the way it works.
So if I were thinking about UK long term I would definitely seek to move probably government out of London in some way. They're always theoretically doing that. I think devolution is the much the strongest lever for doing that. So I think the combined authorities, the mayoral things is is is a good, good direction of travel and and both parties are really heading in that direction. Let's talk a bit about securing government backing for projects at the moment.
Sometimes we see projects getting approved which are, I don't know, maybe pet projects or vanity projects or ones that are politically expedient rather than necessarily always the right projects and programmes that will be, you know, the best for society long term. Why do you think that kind of thing happens, and and what do you think government could or should do about it? Well, I I mean I hoped the National Infrastructure Commission was going to be, um,
helpful on this. I mean we seemed to be so bad at committing to long term plans and infrastructure plans in this country. I have to go across across parliaments. So you know you need to be 20 years. In fact my the chief executive of Heathrow Southern Railway was in was in Berlin two days ago and just talking about how the Germans do to who of course have a much clearer plan which has the disadvantage of if you can't change it very easily. So I'm probably mindless that
the wrong projects are done. So I think if there are infrastructure projects which have some benefit and have little disc benefit, I mean not not enough are done by thinking about the wider wider social environmental impact which which I hope the treasury is beginning to get better at but but but you know who who is 1 to judge what are what are right and the wrong project is but but I do think we desperately need a long term direction of travel and and and I'm thinking particularly of the
airport stuff so. So you know we set up the Airports Commission to decide what we were doing, but then we've essentially not been doing what it recommended for 10 years now or whatever it is. So we just seem to be incapable of taking that long view. I when you when people talk about restructuring the Lords and the and the Commons, I would be quite interested in some relationship between the Lords and the Commons where where the Lords sort of owned the longer
term plan. So so you could have some 20 year plans on housing, education, whatever which will need to go across parliaments and and somehow the Lords could be the conscience of that where where the Commons is doing all the political infighting and you know their their day-to-day stuff. That would seem to me to be a helpful role for the Lords. Yeah, it's really interesting
idea. I've never thought about that before, but it does make sense because obviously you've got more continuity in in in that house. Just one final question before we probably need to wrap up. Sometimes when I talk to senior civil servants, occasionally politicians as well, they talked to me about the fact that sometimes trying to get the right projects approved is really, really difficult because either they're going to cost too much money, they're not going to be completed within their
political tenure. Maybe they've described the situation where they kind of almost are not completely transparent about the full complexity or full cost or how long the project's going to take up front. Because they say, uh, it's much easier to get a project approved by going for something simpler and then and then to go through the change control process once a project is already approved. And that's an easier way of getting to the end game.
And and of course, that just ends up costing the public purse a lot more because, you know, because we're not being clear about costs and things from the outset and it takes longer. And then we end up with all of this, you know, stuff in the media about projects failing because they're late and so on. I mean, that feels to me like a, a really wrong way to go about things. I mean, is that a genuine problem, do you think? Or or is it just something that
happens occasionally? I mean I haven't thought about it quite that way, but when certainly what I see is, is projects going in that cost 2 billion which you know probably common sense would tell you cost 5 billion. I mean I I think the Treasury must be quite quite aware of
this sort of issue. I I was thinking earlier about the the Department of Transport and Treasury and in managing projects like Crossrail or HS2 because I I always think the client really has to bear the brunt of the project doesn't
work. So it's all very well saying HS2 or Crossrail have failed but actually the governance going back up the chain is failing and you know it's all it's very easy again to beat up government departments but I think because no one quite has the authority to to be the client probably you know you've got the Treasury looking over your shoulder if you're the DfT so you never feel like you're quite in charge and it's something around that we we did it just two I think where I
think that the the risks on a project we're doing would looked at 9 times before they were authorised and we actually worked out that we were building risk in by doing that process rather than reducing risk. So there's something about that whole process which which is very unhealthy.
I think the Infrastructure Projects Authority, you know there's there's been attempts to to to to deal with these things better, but they're thought of as processes, whereas actually the sort of accountability that needs to be sorted out probably why you've got a strong lead. I think Michael Gove is a strong leader on on on levelling up. You can then sort of hold the Fort a bit better, but mostly things aren't strongly led to the minister changes, Secretary of State changes, etcetera.
So I don't. I don't know what the solution is, I'm afraid. OK. Well, yeah, it's good to hear your reflections on that. But Baroness Valentine, thank you very much for your time. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. I've enjoyed talking to you. Thank you for joining us for this episode of the APM Podcast. If you enjoyed it, don't forget to subscribe. Leave us a review, but why not contact us with your feedback at apmpodcast@thinkpublishing.co.uk?
For more on levelling up, check out the resources published by APM as part of its Future Lives and Landscapes campaign, which seeks to raise awareness of the social value of projects by highlighting the many benefits they create for people and communities, and by helping practitioners and organisations incorporate benefits into projects to shape the future economic, social and physical landscape of the UK.
To find out more such future lives and landscapes at apm.org.uk or see the link in the episode description. That's it from us for today. Thanks for listening.