Recovering the BP Pulse charging rollout

The challenge

A major energy business had set out to build one of the largest electric vehicle charging networks in the world, a programme spanning five continents and a large base of contractors and suppliers. It was exactly the kind of programme that looks unstoppable on a plan and turns fragile in delivery. When the programme director left, the cracks opened quickly. Delivery lost momentum, governance weakened, accountability blurred across the contractor base, and financial control began to slip at precisely the moment the numbers most needed watching. The programme could not simply be paused. Sites, grid connections and suppliers were all in motion, and every week of drift added cost and risk. What it needed was someone senior to take hold of it, stabilise it and put it back under control, without stopping the work.

What PEF did

We took control on an interim basis and treated stabilisation as the first and only priority. Rather than redesign the programme, we made it deliverable again.

• Stabilised delivery across the UK, Spain, Germany, Australia and China, holding the live workstreams together while control was rebuilt.
• Reimposed governance and clear accountability at every level, so decisions had owners and status had a single honest version.
• Directed a global programme office across a large contractor base, aligning many suppliers to one plan and one set of priorities.
• Took a global ERP and Microsoft Dynamics implementation from a position of real risk back to controlled delivery.
• Restored financial control and visibility, so the board could see the true position in time to act on it.

The result

The programme was stabilised and handed back to permanent leadership as a governed, financially controlled and fully operational transformation. The work carried on, the suppliers were aligned, and the organisation had a programme it could run rather than one it was fighting. It remains the clearest illustration of what we do best, taking on a complex, multi country programme in real difficulty and giving back something that works.