The challenge

The Ministry of Justice is well served by the Judicial Appointments Commission who provide a managed flow of applicants and candidates for judicial posts. The catchment of applicants is broad, reaching into all parts of the UK. The methods are increasingly modern, with screen based testing centres now replacing traditional written tests.

We were assigned to deliver a pilot to evaluate whether JAC could modernise the testing process and take greater control over the venues and candidate management. A prime contractor was required to deploy a secure infrastructure of laptops at city centre locations, some secure public ones and some private sector venues.

What did we do?

Above all, we collaborated well with JAC from the start.

We understood that even a pilot for one of nearly twenty testing exercises each year, this had to be the real thing and treated as a fully planned, resourced and evaluated programme, including:

• Reconnaissance trips to all four city venues
• Close engagement with local site staff to make each event seamless
• Built in redundancy in systems provision as back up
• Hand picked supply partners and staff to engage with candidates
• Cross industry insights on how candidates would approach screen based applications (our clients include Ufi and the Home Office ‘Life in the UK’ testing evaluation)

What was the breakthrough for JAC?

Running the pilot as a full scale transition programme made a big difference for JAC. Quadrant was happy to over-deliver, in areas of PRINCE2™ project mitigation and control, to ensure all eventualities could be anticipated or resolved.

The key breakthroughs achieved were:

• Successful piloting of screen based, large scale JAC testing
• Proven pilot at government or private sector hotel style venues
• Cost scaleability and transparency to demonstrate best use
• Forward plan with assurance on when best and how to deliver further testing Quadrant has been invited to propose a programme for 2009.