6pm wins offshore business from UK

Earlier this month, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors' (RICS) director of Programme Management and Technology visited IT solutions company 6pm's offices in Malta to discuss off-shoring pieces of work here.

The company has now been working with RICS for over a year delivering Agile mentoring and more recently, resourcing into RICS. The organisation is now comfortable enough to dip their toe in the offshoring market. Some development work as well as a support and maintenance contract kicked off towards the end of last year.

RICS had typically steered clear of offshoring due to the cultural issues and barriers that typically cause problems.

In late 2007, RICS attended one of 6pm's Agile executive sessions and immediately bought-in to the Agile framework and its pragmatic approach. The course instantly struck a chord with the challenges and issues that RICS were facing and clearly highlighted how the Agile toolbox would strengthen the way that they delivered projects; 6pm was brought in to deliver Agile mentoring and over the past year the Agile methodology quickly became the 'RICS approach to delivery'.

This new 'way of thinking' has been implemented and embraced across various areas of the business at RICS including IT, information management, application development, and overall programme management.

During the course of the Agile mentoring carried out by 6pm, RICS changed their approach to the governance and regulation of surveyors. This essentially changed what RICS were trying to regulate and who they were regulating and the way that RICS operated in some areas.

RICS were looking for a flexible partner that they could 'switch on and off' as and when the need arose. The project was delivered onsite in Coventry and was closed successfully on time and to budget.

6pm are now working with RICS to develop an Agile project manager portal that will provide RICS with a customisable knowledge base and resource centre that will enable them to sustain their 'new approach to delivery'. Besides exploring the potential for outsourcing development work to 6pm offices in Malta, RICS are also looking into offsite support and maintenance and testing.

RICS is an international organisation covering all aspects of property, construction and associated environmental issues and has 86,000 chartered members and 55,000 members in other categories of membership globally. It represents, regulates and promotes the work of these property professionals throughout 146 countries.

6pm offer services ranging from business intelligence and information management, to resourcing, testing and support and maintenance.