AbstractThis paper describes a study carried out for the Social Services Department of a UK County Council towards the development of a system for the evaluation and prioritization of project-based work. There are three major components of the study; an activity analysis to investigate how managers in the department spend their time, with a view to establishing a time budget for the project work; a pilot study to introduce a simple system for project planning and workload balancing with a specialist team; and the development of a multiple criteria model for the evaluation and prioritization of projects. We envisaged a Decision Support System which integrated all of these elements; however, this was never developed; instead, the resultant benefits were of a very different nature. We reflect on the reasons for this and the implications for the success of the study.