Customer Impact Story: City of Hobart & pmo365

The City of Hobart had a clear vision: make Tasmania's capital a stronger, more vibrant, and sustainable city. But without a structured project management system, delivering on that vision across a complex portfolio of services, from transport and waste management to community programs, grants, and public spaces, was a significant challenge. By partnering with pmo365, Hobart became one of pmo365's earliest clients, co-building a solution from the ground up that became a benchmark for local government project portfolio management across Australia.

ABOUT THE ORGANISATION

The City of Hobart

The City of Hobart is the local government authority responsible for Tasmania's capital city. With a workforce of up to 700 employees, the Council oversees a wide portfolio of services that touch every aspect of city life, including parking and transport, waste and recycling, pet and animal management, community programs, health and safety, grants and funding, venues and events, visitor services, and digital city infrastructure.

The Council's mission is simple but powerful: to work together to make Hobart a better place for its community. Delivering on that mission requires disciplined project governance, reliable financial management, and the ability to coordinate complex, multi-service initiatives at scale.

Learn more at hobartcity.com.au

THE CHALLENGE

Governing a City Without a Unified System

Before pmo365, the City of Hobart lacked a dedicated system for managing its project portfolio. Projects were tracked inconsistently, financial data lived in separate systems, and there was no standardised lifecycle or governance process to bring projects, or the many services that support them, from idea to completion.

The complexity of local government projects added further pressure. A single capital works initiative might involve multiple specialised service streams: design, estimation, surveying, and construction, each needing its own oversight, approvals, and reporting. Without a centralised platform, keeping these streams aligned was manual, fragmented, and prone to risk.

The Council also needed a robust way to manage and track grant funding, a critical revenue source for many community and capital projects, alongside a structured approach to prioritise which projects should receive funding approval in the first place.

1. No Project
Lifecycle Management

No overarching project management framework existed to manage project stages or sub-service streams such as design, construction, estimation, and surveying from a single platform.

2. Fragmented Financial Data

Financial data sat in a separate system, making it impossible to report on project finances without manual effort and reconciliation.

3. No Prioritisation Framework

The lack of a structured evaluation and governance framework resulted in ad-hoc, inconsistent prioritisation of projects, with decision not consistently aligned to the City's advocacy or grant commitments, contributing to delays.

4. Grant Tracking Gaps

Grant requests and revenue could not be tracked systematically within the same environment as project delivery, creating reporting blind spots.

5. Limited Future Planning

No consistent approach for performance reporting, forecasting, and resource allocation. Information was fragmented, resulting in ad-hoc risk identification and limited capacity to deliver insightful data-driven reporting and effective resource alignment.

6. Inconsistent Standards

Without a common platform, different teams managed projects differently, undermining consistency, visibility, and organisational maturity.

THE SOLUTION

A Platform Built From the Ground Up Together

The City of Hobart was one of pmo365's earliest clients, and that relationship set the tone for everything that followed. Rather than implementing an off-the-shelf configuration, the Council had the opportunity to start from a blank slate, co-designing a solution that reflected exactly how local government project delivery works.

After building and maturing their initial version over several years, the City of Hobart upgraded to pmo365's EPM Council edition, retaining the customisations that had proven most valuable while gaining the governance rigour and enterprise-grade capability of a purpose-built local government platform.

	Formalised Project Lifecycle with Sub-Service Approval *pmo365* introduced a structured lifecycle and approval process that extended beyond projects to cover every related service stream, design, construction, estimation, and surveying, each governed with its own stage gates and approvals within a single platform.
	Comprehensive Project Prioritisation System A tailored project prioritisation framework was developed, complete with governance and approval workflows, enabling the Council to evaluate and rank projects consistently against strategic and community objectives. This model proved so effective it was later adopted by other *pmo365* clients.
	Grant Request, Approval, and Revenue Tracking A dedicated grant management process was embedded within *pmo365*, including request and approval workflows and a built-in embedded report to track grant revenue alongside project delivery, giving the Council full visibility over one of its most important funding streams.
	Centralised Budget Forecasting, Tracking, and KPI Measurement pmo365 provides a structured solution to these reporting challenges through advanced budget forecasting, tracking, and measurement of key project performance indicators. It enables a centralised project database and cloud-based PPM platform with integrated storage, supporting advanced analytics via Power BI dashboards and easy data extraction, allowing access to reliable, data-driven insights anytime for better decision-making and resource alignment.
	Financial Integration with Dynamics Business Central *pmo365* was integrated directly with Microsoft Dynamics Business Central, allowing the City of Hobart to import financials automatically, making *pmo365* the single source of truth for both project delivery and financial reporting without duplication of effort.

THE RESULTS

One Source of Truth for a Whole City's Projects

The impact of pmo365 at the City of Hobart has been transformative. For the first time, the Council has a single, integrated platform that standardises how projects are managed, governed, and reported from initiation through to completion.

Financial data from Dynamics Business Central flows directly into pmo365, giving project managers and executives real-time visibility over budgets, actuals, and grant revenue, all from one application. The days of reconciling data across multiple systems are gone.

The prioritisation framework developed for Hobart gave the organisation a consistent and defensible method for deciding which projects get funded and when, a model so robust it has since been adopted by other councils and pmo365 clients. And with the Funding Approval App in place, governance over capital decisions is now transparent, traceable, and efficient.

Perhaps most significantly, the City of Hobart now has a platform that has grown with them. From a pioneering early build to a mature EPM Council deployment, their journey with pmo365 reflects what's possible when a technology partner truly listens, and builds alongside their client.

Derek Halawa Delivery Lead

Dan Stopher Head of Customer Success

Laith Adel Principal Consultant

Building a Smarter City: City of Hobart & pmo365

INDUSTRY

LOCATION

ORGANISATION SIZE

The City of Hobart