Philip set up CBO Projects in 2011 in response to his belief that local industry, and the local economy, would benefit from a Guernsey-based management consultancy. This followed over 10 years’ experience in delivering programme and project management services.
Philip is a business and technology-focused Management Consultant with experience in delivering programmes and projects in retail, financial services and public sector organisations.
Philip has strong stakeholder management skills and is a strong team leader who always works to apply a pragmatic approach by integrating best practice with his own experience.
Since starting CBO Philip has delivered a number of large-scale projects and programmes, ranging from post-acquisition integrations and developing IT Target Operating Models to designing and implementing Project Management Offices for global organisations.
Articles by Philip
CBO’s director of Project and Business Analysis Services, Ed Mason-Smith, has been appointed chair of the Association for Project Management (APM) Channel Islands committee. In his new role, Ed will lead the local committee in its goal to develop and promote the value of project management in order to deliver improved project outcomes for […]
CBO Projects is growing rapidly, after appointing five new members of staff in the last month. The company, which specialises in project management, change management, business analysis, and wider management consultancy, was founded in 2011 by Philip Smith, who recruited his first member of staff two years later. The latest appointments span all business areas […]
Abigail Mason has been appointed to the role of consultant at CBO. With a wealth of experience in the retail and global payments sectors she aims to bring a sharp focus to delivering fit-for-purpose solutions and analysis with minimal impact on clients’ day-to-day operations. Her previous roles are varied, and include projects, product development, regulatory […]
CBO’s director of Project Services, Ed Mason-Smith, has been appointed to the UK-wide Association for Project Management (APM) Assurance SIG Committee for 2022/23. This appointment will allow Ed to directly influence the APM and Project Management community to collectively improve best practice project management standards and how major projects are reviewed and assured. The APM […]
CBO Projects has appointed a new senior consultant to build and deliver technology strategies and lead projects and programmes that create meaningful change. Stuart Low has more than 35 years’ experience as an executive level business change specialist. Before moving to Guernsey, Stuart delivered successful change programmes for global banks with budgets up to £130m, […]
At CBO Projects we love what we do, we love sharing how we can help organisations and we love shouting from roof tops about the fast-paced and varied nature of working within management consultancy. Most of all we love being able show people first-hand what a stimulating career with CBO will be like. So it […]
CBO has launched a change management offering to help organisations on their transformation journey, ensuring that they reach their ambitions and make a lasting impact. ‘The aim is to provide our clients with a dedicated change management offering and change-specific services, to help them deal with the challenges that come with any transformation, and to […]
Ed Mason-Smith, Project Services Director at CBO, has achieved Chartered Project Professional (ChPP) status with the Association of Project Management (APM). He joins CBO’s COO Alastair Bisson in gaining the status, highlighting CBO’s focus on internal professional development and investment in people. “The Chartered Project Professional (ChPP) standard is a professional benchmark that demonstrates attainment […]
Director Ed Gowan has surpassed his £5,000 target by walking 111 miles around Guernsey, Alderney Sark and Herm. He completed the feat over four days, starting last Wednesday and completing the epic challenge on Saturday evening. The current total raised stands at £5,413. ‘It’s absolutely wonderful to have surpassed our fundraising goal. Completing the challenge […]
CBO director Ed Gowan’s five-island walk will cover tougher terrain, as covid restrictions mean he will replace Jersey with a ‘Guernsey-Plus’ day. He was due to cover 111 miles by walking each of the five Channel Islands at the end of this month. Ed, who hopes to raise £5,000 for the Priaulx Premature Baby Foundation, […]
CBO director Ed Gowan will embark on a 111-mile walk later this month, covering each of the five Channel Islands. Ed, who hopes to raise £5,000 for the Priaulx Premature Baby Foundation, will set off in Jersey on 28th July, before heading to Sark, Herm and Alderney – finishing in Guernsey on 1st August. The […]
One of the things we’re really proud of at CBO is our Community / Charity Days initiative, where we give each of our team up to five days a year to put towards supporting a charity or community programme of their choice. We’re always amazed by the varied and valuable things our team gets involved […]
Project and Programme Management expert, Ed Mason-Smith has been promoted to service line director, heading up CBO’s Project Services. Mr Mason-Smith, the first member of the team to join CBO after its founding directors, is now responsible for driving forward CBO’s Project Management, Programme Management, Portfolio Management and Project Health Check services. ‘I will lead […]
CBO Projects, founded by Philip Smith in 2011, has reached a major milestone in its life as the corporate odometer clicks past 10 years in business. Those years have seen CBO grow to become the local market leader in management consultancy, with a 14-strong team of highly qualified consultants delivering everything from business acquisitions & […]
Business transformation and change management expert Dominic Ash has been promoted to director, to lead two key service lines at CBO. Mr Ash, who previously worked for a London-based management consultancy firm, joins the management team with a specific focus on maturing the Consultancy and Change Management service lines, leading business development activity, guiding relevant work and […]
Data Protection Health Checks Bringing clarity and confidence to your data protection controls. When processing personal data, it is vital for businesses to ensure that the appropriate safeguards and controls are in place, and that they are effective. This is critical in order to build and maintain customer trust and to avoid both financial […]
Context The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) became legally effective from 25 May 2018 in all EU member states with equivalent legislation in Jersey and Guernsey. Carey Olsen – a leading offshore law firm who advise on Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Guernsey and Jersey law across a global network of nine international offices – engaged CBO to lead a project to ensure that the firm was compliant with the […]
We are very pleased to announce that as of 1st August Rudi le Roux has joined the company as an Associate Consultant. CBO is a Guernsey-based management consultancy business with a proven track record of delivering successful projects and consultancy services for a wide range of private and public sector clients. Rudi is an experienced Senior […]
No one should underestimate the effort and energy it has taken for business leaders to manage the challenges faced during the past 8-12 weeks. As operations, hopefully, start to stabilise after the initial white heat of lockdown, leaders are starting to look at what all this change means for their organisations’ strategy, structures, systems and operations. Leaders must also remember to […]
Covid-19 is currently at the top of the agenda for businesses, and for good reason. Here are some of our thoughts on key points to consider to ensure your business is fully prepared. Ensure your employees are protected – ensure you have people monitoring local government and World Health Organisation advice. Keep all staff up […]
In response to the Coronavirus pandemic and the impact on people, communities, business and infrastructure across the world, we wanted to provide an update on our response at CBO. Guernsey recently joined the growing majority of countries with its first case. At CBO we continue to monitor the situation and we are following the States […]
Running ultra marathons and taking on the occasional epic challenge has taught me that the body needs a regular health check, or ‘MOT’. This health check often has two outputs, confirming you’re in good shape or telling you that you need to focus on a specific area to avoid injury. Interestingly, the few times I […]
Context The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) became legally effective from 25 May 2018 in all EU member states with equivalent legislation in Guernsey. The Data Protection (Bailiwick of Guernsey) Law 2017 allowed some deferrals for implementation until May 2019. Through a GDPR Health Check, led by CBO in conjunction with the States of Guernsey […]
When delivering multiple projects, being able to effectively manage the collection of projects becomes a critical task. First of all, what is a portfolio? Well, it’s a collection of projects that are currently active within an organisation. The active projects will (should) have the shared objectives of delivering a number of benefits to the organisation, […]
Privacy policy on the website updated – Tick Data protection policy updated – Tick Communications sent to staff about data protection – Tick Training rolled out to staff – Tick Cue the sigh of relief on 25th May 2018 as GDPR is done with, right? Not quite… The EU legislation, as well as the local […]
Context Salamanca Trust & Fiduciary has offices in Jersey, Geneva and Mauritius. Part of their IT strategy in 2015 was to move to a cloud-based infrastructure service, a significant change in direction from managing all of their IT infrastructure in-house, including hosting hardware in a computer room within their Geneva office. The project timelines were […]
In a 2012 survey by IBM, 71% of CEOs responded that they see human capital as a key source of sustained economic value. Organisations must ensure that they have not only the project management and technical prowess, but also the leadership, strategic and business management skills necessary to get projects and change successfully delivered. In a recent […]
There are many potential reasons why a project may be heading towards failure. Some are easy to spot and easy to rectify, others may indicate more deep-rooted issues which can derail the best-laid plans. In this post we look at a few signs to recognise which may indicate your project is heading towards failure. The […]
Continual improvement is something many businesses strive for, but it can be difficult to achieve. This is primarily down to it being a cultural challenge rather than a process, platform or event. At CBO we have found having the following values at the core of an organisation’s culture helps with the continual improvement challenge. Listen to […]
A guest blog from Rudi Le Roux, COO, Investec Bank (CI) Limited. Leadership, as a topic, covers a very wide area of research and ideas. We are still trying to define what leadership actually is. I’m not going to define leadership for you, as I believe that the definition of leadership is specific to you […]
Last night we had the pleasure of attending the 2015 Guernsey Awards for Achievement, they were celebrating their 30th year. CBO had been shortlisted for the NatWest Best Small Business award, along with Situations Recruitment, Island FM and Karting Guernsey. The annual awards event is a celebration of Guernsey business as well as community initiatives. […]
A vital aspect of project management and project leadership comes down to soft skills. You can create amazing plans and the most aesthetically pleasing scorecards, but if you can’t communicate, lead and motivate your team with effective soft skills then your hard skills will become more and more irrelevant. In this post we look at […]
In my first blog about my trip to Estonia in 2014, I wrote about two of the key drivers behind the eGovernment Strategy and their approach to a Digital Society in Estonia. The key drivers were (and continue to be): Will this benefit the citizen? Will this improve services across internal government departments? During my […]
Kaizen is a Japanese word which means ‘Good Change’. The word refers to any type of improvement, one time or continuous, large or small, and it is something that we have been looking at in the context of project and programme management. Whilst the basics of project management remain simple, the difficult task for project […]
ESI released their Global State of the PMO report; the report makes interesting reading around the services provided by a Project Management Office (PMO), whether a PMO sits at department or corporate level, and the overall value and benefit of a PMO. One area of the report which stood out for the CBO team was the […]
Whether the catalyst is new technology or a global crisis that has reshaped an industry, the need for major change in the past decade has been unavoidable for organisations. The pace of change has accelerated, its scale has amplified and its complexity has intensified Restructuring, cost reductions, post-acquisition integration, geographic expansion, new product or service deployments […]
‘He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.’ Harold Wilson When change happens, the usual response from human nature is resistance. Why does that happen? It could be down to any number of reasons, from fear of the unknown to a mindset of ‘this […]
Organisations must embrace change and adapt to the ‘new normal’ of constant change. The pervasiveness of advancing technology is one of the key drivers of intense levels of change, requiring businesses to adapt and evolve. Levels of uncertainty and change are at an all-time high. The force of this change on businesses causes the requirement […]
Context CBO were instructed in a multi-jurisdiction eDisclosure case by a leading global offshore law firm. CBO’s Approach The first stage of the process for CBO was to work across jurisdictions to identify potential sources of relevant information. The identified data spanned a time period of over five years and comprised of Outlook emails in […]
Project management: it is not rocket science. Something that I have noticed over the past 12 to 18 months is how uncomplicated projects are being made complicated by people. It appears that somewhere along the road called ‘learning and developing’, the basics have either been forgotten or become ‘old hat’. It is time to go back […]
In May 2014 I spent a week in Estonia meeting the people involved in the vision, strategy and delivery of their Digital Society, eGovernment and Tech Startup EcoSystem. As it is always good to start with the ‘why’, why did I go to Estonia? There are a couple of main reasons behind why I went, which are: […]
The volume and variety of digital information is growing at an incredible rate as the world becomes more instrumented, interconnected and intelligent. 2.2 million terabytes of new data is created every day. With the volume of data increasing and in the current economic climate, organisations face the challenge of having to analyse information faster and more efficiently. Timely […]
A study carried out by IBM in 2009 on ‘Making Change Work’ included the results of a survey from 1,500 Change Practitioners worldwide, and the results were staggering. Just 41% of projects were considered successful in meeting project objectives within planned time, budget and quality constraints The remaining 59% of projects missed at least one objective or […]
Context In early 2014, the States of Guernsey commissioned CBO to deliver a detailed report on the organisational structure and delivery of their IT Services, following a number of service delivery challenges experienced by the organisation. The States commissioned CBO in October 2014 to manage and deliver the IT Improvement Project, which addressed the challenges […]
There are many articles out there about leadership that claim they have ‘the top five’ or ‘the best’ leadership tips. At CBO we’re not claiming that we have the top five or the best ever tips on leadership, we simply have tips and approaches that have been successful in our experience and have become part […]
Context In 2013 Investec Private Bank agreed the sale of their Trust Business Units, Investec Trust Jersey, Investec Trust Mauritius and Investec Trust Switzerland to Salamanca Group. CBO were engaged to lead the project management role for the separation of all IT services for the three acquired businesses from Investec Private Bank. The scope of […]
This paper is designed to educate organisations and increase awareness in the area of eDiscovery processes and technology. eDiscovery is a critical challenge for all organisations, and one that can only be successfully addressed through a combination of people, processes, and technology.
