Customer impact story
Building a Smarter City: Local Government Project Portfolio Management at the City of Hobart
-
1 1
Single source of truth for all projects
-
5+ 5
Service team types governed end-to-end
-
100% 100
Financial data integrated from Business Central
The City of Hobart had a clear vision: make Tasmania's capital a stronger, more vibrant, and sustainable city. But without a structured system for project and portfolio management, 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. What began as a pioneering early build became a benchmark for local government project portfolio management across Australia, giving the Council one governed platform for every project, budget, and grant dollar.
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.
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. The Council also needed a robust way to manage and track grant funding, a critical revenue source for many community and capital projects.
-
01
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.
-
02
Fragmented financial data
Financial data sat in a separate system, making it impossible to report on project finances without manual effort and reconciliation.
-
03
No prioritisation framework
The lack of a structured evaluation and governance framework resulted in ad-hoc, inconsistent prioritisation of projects, with decisions not consistently aligned to the City’s advocacy or grant commitments.
-
04
Grant tracking gaps
Grant requests and revenue could not be tracked systematically within the same environment as project delivery, creating reporting blind spots.
-
05
Limited future planning
No consistent approach for performance reporting, forecasting, and resource allocation. Information was fragmented, resulting in ad-hoc risk identification.
-
06
Inconsistent standards
Without a common platform, different teams managed projects differently, undermining consistency, visibility, and organisational maturity.
“Our vision was simple: one platform where every project, financial figure, and grant dollar tells the same story. Rather than patch together fragmented systems, we built pmo365 as a single governed lifecycle, so City of Hobart could prioritise with confidence, report with consistency, and plan ahead with real data instead of guesswork.”
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.
-
01
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.
-
02
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.
-
03
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.
-
04
Centralised budget forecasting, tracking, and KPI measurement
A centralised project database and cloud-based PPM platform with integrated storage, supporting advanced analytics via Power BI dashboards and easy data extraction for reliable, data-driven insights anytime.
-
05
Financial integration with Dynamics Business Central
pmo365 was integrated directly with Microsoft Dynamics Business Central, allowing the City of Hobart to import financials automatically — 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 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.
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.
“pmo365 gave us the ability to build exactly what we needed, not a compromise, but a genuine fit for the way local government works. From lifecycle management to performance forecasting, everything is now in one place.”
Ready to transform your project portfolio?
See how pmo365 can bring governance, visibility, and financial clarity to your organisation.