Botched BU project begs for comprehensive review

Opinion

In its final report to Brandon University over the failure of the “Renew BU” Enterprise Resource Planning implementation project with Florida-based computer firm Anthology, BDO Canada pointed to several systemic failures within the institution that contributed to the project’s ultimate collapse.

Recall that the ERP project, launched in 2020 under the “Renew BU” initiative, was intended to modernize the university’s academic and administrative systems by replacing its outdated 1978 homegrown software.

But after four years and millions spent in development, the project was officially halted in early 2024, leaving BU without a functional system.

First and foremost, the BDO report pointed to the university’s decision “to procure a solution that was fundamentally misaligned with its needs, a decision rooted in inadequate due diligence in assessing the ERP Vendor’s capabilities.”

That initial failure was then compounded by additional failures within the university, including weak governance and leadership, poor financial oversight, poor communication and a lack of a formal risk management framework — all of which contributed to the project advancing “without sufficient scrutiny,” a situation that led to unnecessary cost overruns and missed timelines.

And yet, as damning as the BDO report was regarding the ERP implementation, it failed to explain how the university ended up ignoring basic due diligence guidelines — something likely on the minds of both faculty and new and returning students who are aware of the circumstances.

After all, it is perfectly fair to ask how a post-secondary institution that has been in operation since 1899 managed to screw up such basic fiscal and procurement practices so badly. Of course, there were hints in the report at where the responsibilities lay.

In the Lessons Learned section of the report, which identified 10 recommendations for improvements, it was noted that the project’s “executive sponsor” — the senior project leader, essentially — provided “often filtered or overly optimistic” information to the university’s board of governors. The fact that the executive sponsor became the single point of dependency for the board to get information was a major problem.

The executive sponsor was the sole point of contact for senior project governance, held “significant influence” and was able to “make key decisions” without consulting other stakeholders or the project’s governance bodies.

“This concentration of authority, with limited checks and balances, resulted in ineffective and non-transparent decision making that culminated in the project team being compelled to move forward despite unresolved issues,” the report stated, “largely influenced by the Executive’s Sponsor’s desire to ‘make it work’ given that the system had already been purchased.”

Note that, even with costs mounting on the project, the review team conducted no financial audit — independent or otherwise — to define what the total price tag of the program’s implementation would be. And in spite of ongoing delays, the project schedule was not consistently updated, making it difficult for anyone who might have offered some hope of oversight to do so.

“Additionally, no formal financial briefings were given to the BU President or (Board of Governors) and financial updates were provided to these groups on an ad hoc basis by the project Executive Sponsor,” read the report.

Did anyone ask why? And if not, why not?

Back in early 2024, when board member David Huberdeau-Reid cited the university’s mishandling of the contract in a letter to Advanced Education Minister Renée Cable announcing his resignation from the BU board of governors, he said at the time that costs related to the project had snowballed because of a lack of oversight.

And he blamed the structure of the board itself for its inability to assess the situation.

“I don’t see the board having significant influence over the governance of the university,” Huberdeau-Reid said at the time. “I think they rubber stamp what the administration does and I don’t see a way that I can effectively change it.”

It’s noteworthy that the board of governors did eventually take Huberdeau-Reid’s recommendation that the project needed to be reviewed by a third party.

While the report itself identified several “critical areas” where the university oversight failed to stem problems with this project — including issues of governance and stakeholder engagement, project management, resource allocation, procurement and vendor oversight, financial management and risk mitigation — we have to consider the fact that the problems identified by BDO likely go well beyond this one IT project.

The BDO final report, which is dated June 19 of this year — more than two and a half months ago — should be of serious concern to Minister Cable, incoming university president Dr. Christine Cnossen and the current members of the BU Board of Governors.

This is a structural problem that goes all the way up the ladder. Considering that such issues have been proven to negatively affect this one multimillion-dollar project, similar problems may be inherent in many other projects.

If this project could go so far off the rails, what other projects could have been similarly botched?

The province and the university need to conduct a thorough and transparent overhaul of how this university governs itself. And the sooner, the better.