The VPFO Senior Leadership Team has been working together to review, simplify, and prioritize the projects in our portfolio’s Strategic Plan. One of our early outcomes is an initiative to reimagine UBC’s budget process.
The scope of this project, while centered around how we budget, will be to collaborate across the university to review and improve our end-to-end handling of our finances — from projection and budgeting, to revenues, through to disbursement and reporting. This multi-year, university-wide initiative will be a close effort with both the Executive and the President’s office.
As part of this effort, our Vice-President Frank Laezza is taking on an active role in project oversight. To support him, our Operational Excellence team — currently reporting to the Finance & Operational Excellence division — has moved under Frank’s direct supervision as a support to the VPFO Senior Leadership Team.
This change will ensure we have key resources in place for VPFO strategic initiatives and other selected university-wide priorities. It is also intended to create the opportunity for our teams to realign and prepare for the challenge of operationalizing IRP Student in the coming year.
To recognize this change, the Operational Excellence team is being renamed as the VPFO Project Management Office (PMO). Janice Weigel’s title will be revised to Senior Director, VPFO PMO, and she will lead her team under similarly revised titles.
Accordingly, Elana Mignosa’s organization in the VPFO will shift titles from Finance & Operational Excellence to Finance & Integrated Services, with Elana similarly titled as Associate Vice-President, Finance & Integrated Services.
Partners within the university who are currently managing projects within the Operational Excellence pipeline should be reassured that all work will come across with the new VPFO PMO without disruption. For those working with the VPFO’s Project Services department in UBC Facilities, please note that this team is not affected in the change and will continue business as usual.
Over the next few days our portfolio websites and information will all be updated to reflect the transition, but in the meantime we would like to thank Elana Mignosa for her partnership in designing this change, and Janice Weigel and the new PMO team for rising to the challenges before us.