Impact by Design — Win the Pennine Flagship at Aldermoor Exec Ed

A four-round, advanced executive-education strategy simulation set inside Aldermoor Business School Executive Education, the open- and custom-programme unit of a research-intensive UK university business school (GBP 18M turnover, 55% custom, 34-staff core team running 40–50 client programmes a year at a 34% target contribution margin). On 20 April 2026 Pennine Energy Networks plc — a GBP 4bn regulated utility — issues an RFP for a custom leadership-and-transformation programme to equip 240 senior managers to deliver a regulator-mandated operating-model change over 18 months. Pennine's brief is unusually demanding: the programme will be judged on MEASURABLE BUSINESS IMPACT (project cycle-time reduction and cross-functional decision speed), NOT participant-satisfaction scores. The budget is fixed at GBP 1.6M over two cohorts (~GBP 6,667 per participant); two rival schools and one global consultancy are also bidding. Playing the Director of Executive Education, you (1) DIAGNOSE — restate Pennine's vague brief as a measurable business outcome and locate the impact gap on the Kirkpatrick hierarchy, resisting the satisfaction trap; (2) ALIGN — design the programme backward from the outcome, linking each module to a Pennine business metric and committing to a real measurement design (baseline, comparison, 18-month follow-through) in Camilla Jonsson's design-for-impact tradition; (3) CHOOSE — select among the residential, blended-plus-coaching and embedded action-learning delivery models against both transfer-of-learning and the capacity reality of a lean team already running 45 programmes, deciding faculty mix and what other client work is deprioritised; and (4) PRICE & DEFEND — set the fee inside the GBP 1.6M envelope, commit to a measurable, attributable KPI scorecard, protect the 34% margin, and pitch to the facilitator playing the Pennine sponsor and procurement lead. The scoring rewards designing for measurable impact, choosing high-transfer delivery with a credible capacity plan, committing to hard but attributable Level 3–4 KPIs, and pricing on value while protecting margin; it punishes the five classic errors — a satisfaction-optimised 'happy-sheet' design, vague unmeasurable KPIs, choosing residential purely for day-rate margin, committing to embedded action-learning with no staffing plan, and pricing to win below the margin line. Final KPIs track Impact Score, Win Probability, Contribution Margin %, and Programme Cost committed against the GBP 1.6M cap.