Our Projects

The following recent projects illustrate the range of facilitation processes and organisation improvement programs we undertake:

Marion City Council Strategic Plan.  Marion City Council contacted Mark Douglas with a need to redraft their strategic plan.  The existing plan, written two years previously, was comprehensive but difficult to understand by elected representatives and staff.  There were a multitude of ‘strategic plans’ throughout the operations of the council that were not linked into the organisational strategic plan. This was contributing to the confusion.  As a result, reporting against performance was difficult and hard to manage.  Mark Douglas worked closely with senior staff and designed an internal and elected representative consultation process to distill all major plans into a single, easy to understand strategic plan with performance measures.  

University of Newcastle Strategic Plan. Following a period of restructure and major leadership changes, the University of Newcastle required a blueprint for the future that would mark a period of growth, a distinctive market positioning with enhanced staff and community confidence.   Mark Douglas designed and facilitated a process of staff and community consultation to lay the foundation for a new strategic plan.  Mark then conducted senior management workshops and further staff workshops to refine and distil the key issues into an organisation strategic plan that is now driving implementation plans through Faculties and Schools across the University.

DSTO Focus Group Community Consultation.  Ethos Consulting was approached by DSTO to facilitate a national community consultation process exploring issues of community response to emergency situations.  Ethos Consulting designed the focus group methodology, facilitated the focus groups, recorded the results, and delivered a comprehensive analysis of the results.

University of Adelaide, Faculty Restructure.  Ethos Consulting was approached by the recently appointed Executive Dean to assist in the facilitation of a process to restructure the Faculty of Health Sciences.  The criteria for the project was to design a structure to which there would be broad ownership and that it be consistent with the structure of other Faculties in the University. A process of individual interviews was conducted and followed by several large group workshops.  Many issues were strongly expressed.  A new structure was designed and successfully implemented. 

Curriculum Review, University of Adelaide Ethos Consulting was approached to design and facilitate a process to ‘start with a blank sheet’ in the development of a new undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering.   The existing curriculum had evolved over many years by adding and subtracting various courses and programs.  The result was a course that student feedback was pointing to a number of key issues of learning, and industry was expressing some concern about graduate qualities.  A two day retreat was organised with all academics of the School of Chemical Engineering with an invited academic from another Australian University.  At the end of the first day a broad structure for the four year degree was agreed and by 4.00pm on the second day many of the details had been agreed and a plan for implementation established.

Industry Cluster/Network Facilitation: Mark Douglas in one of the most experienced industry cluster facilitators in South Australia.  Having worked extensively in the water industry, environment industry and ageing sector in building across-sector collaborative processes for business and research collaboration.