Practical Delivery Management in Local Government
This course introduces practical, human-centered delivery management skills tailored specifically for project managers working in local authorities, city councils, and town councils.
It introduces low-friction habits, tools, and ways of working to help you keep projects moving smoothly. The focus is entirely on the people side of delivery; making team members feel heard, reducing day-to-day chaos, and building practical confidence without using heavy agile jargon or rigid frameworks.
You’ll learn how to make hidden work visible, handle stubborn cross-departmental dependencies, run brief blocker-focused check-ins, and give calm, reassuring progress updates to senior leadership.
This course is ideal for:
Traditional project managers in local government looking for practical, modern delivery skills
Service managers, transformation officers, and council leads who feel stuck between waterfall governance and agile theory
Anyone wanting to build team confidence, protect staff capacity, and make local government project delivery calmer and more predictable
The course is delivered live and online by Jon Rhodes, drawing on 20 years of hands-on delivery experience across public sector and government environments.
The course
Managing projects in local government often means balancing fixed governance and rigid reporting with a real need for everyday flexibility. Teams frequently get bogged down in dense status meetings, hidden workloads, and long sign-off delays.
This course gives you simple, actionable tools to make work visual, clear up bottlenecks, and keep project momentum alive.
You’ll leave with a clearer understanding of:
How to use simple visual boards to manage workloads and protect team capacity
How to run quick, supportive check-ins that focus on solving problems rather than status updates
How to slice large, intimidating council milestones into calm, bite-sized steps
How to navigate internal delays with empathy and communicate progress clearly to senior stakeholders
Course details
Duration: 2 × 3.5 hours
Location: Online
Group size: Max 10 people
Cost: £395 + VAT per person (or available as an in-house team booking via G-Cloud 15)
What you’ll learn
Across the two sessions, you’ll learn how to:
Make hidden workloads visible using lightweight visual boards
Run brief, supportive check-ins that unblock team members
Break complex project deliverables down into calm, continuous steps
Handle stubborn dependencies and delays across council departments with practical empathy
Turn heavy status reports into clear visual updates that give senior leaders confidence
Who this course is for
This course is designed for project professionals in local public services who want practical tools without the buzzwords, including:
Project managers working in local authorities, city, borough, or town councils
Service managers, PMO officers, and transformation leads wanting lightweight delivery methods
Anyone feeling overwhelmed by traditional project administration who wants a calmer, more people-focused way to work
No prior agile or formal delivery management experience is required.
How it works
Delivered live and online in two interactive 3.5-hour sessions
Small group size (maximum 10 participants) to ensure a safe, calm environment with space for quiet reflection and no pressure to present back
A balanced mix of practical teaching, quiet thinking exercises, interactive digital boards, and real local government scenarios
A light, optional practical exercise between sessions to try out a tool on your real day-to-day work
Sessions are specifically designed to be calm, supportive, and introvert-friendly
What you get
A live course delivered by Jon Rhodes
The Local Gov Delivery Action Kit (PDF guide with templates, cheat sheets, and prompts)
Course materials and slides for reference
A certificate of completion
About your trainer
Jon Rhodes is a delivery leader with 20 years’ experience supporting public sector teams.
He has delivered projects and services across central and local government contexts, with a constant focus on building high-trust, calm environments where people can do their best work.
