PLF – what does it mean?

PLF – what does it mean?

The Portfolio Leadership Forum is held twice a year and is attended by approximately 60 of the executive and senior managers from across the Transport portfolio agencies – Department of Transport, Main Roads WA and Public Transport Authority. Each forum includes a presentation by the Director General, a 20 min guest presentation, followed by Q&A and then networking.

 

The event that I have been involved in organizing was themed around Customer Service (including technological impacts) and the guest presenter is Andy Weir, Chief Information Officer and Executive General Manager Enterprise Services from Bankwest.

 

The purpose of the forum

• Provide a forum to enable senior officers to hear and share the views of the Director General and agency heads
• Assist in achieving a shared understanding of the major portfolio issues
• Introduce a whole of transport approach
• Hear about specific agency issues that have a portfolio impact
• Identify and discuss cross-portfolio projects
• Raise awareness of portfolio budget, investment and planning issues
• Improve cross-portfolio relationships and collaboration
• Networking and relationship-building across the portfolio

 

I was lucky enough to be involved in this project from the initial planning stages. Marion, my placement supervisor and I met and she discussed the purpose of the forum and what the theme for the next one was. Then we established a checklist and distributed actions between ourselves.

 

My first task was to source a relevant date in July. I first confirmed the availability of all Governance Council members and placed a hold on the most suitable date. I contacted a number of hotels and venues to source options for a suitable room for the forum along with catering requirements. I put all of this information into an informal business case to present to Marion with my preferred venue based on availability, price, room suitability and location from agencies offices. I also detailed a proposed menu for the networking section. 

My preference was the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre (PCEC) and Marion agreed that this would be a good venue. I then confirmed these arrangements with Kiera at PCEC. Next I sent the previous attendee lists to the following areas assistants for them to be reviewed and again placed a hold in these attendee’s diaries.

There is still a lot of work to be done but I’m looking forward to the day and this has definitely opened my eyes to the ‘not so glamorous’ side of PR – cutting out 60 name badges and putting them into plastic holders was not the ‘event management’ I was thought it was!