Lessons From Our Archive – Unresolved Issues Of Project Organisation

Summary

Forty years ago, the report from the Major Projects Association seminar identified a raft of problems associated with the way projects were organised and the bodies established by the main stakeholders to deliver the assets and outcomes. The introduction to the report flagged “economic uncertainties, technical complexities, political influences and organisational conflicts’. So what’s new!

Dr. Christine Unterhitzenberger offers some insight on how and where things have improved in the intervening period since 1982 but equally flags those areas where the report card remains a definite “could do better”.

Read the full report (Members Only)

In the first of her series of short videos, Christine Unterhitzenberger explains what drew her to the original report and shares her first impressions.

Unresolved issues of project organisation

 

These are all issues of governance!

Her second short video looks at progress with project governance, which seems to have been a novel concept in 1982, or rather something that was recognised but had yet to be named.

 

How and why people engage together on projects and why there is conflict

Christine’s third video picks up two of the themes in the report, the contracting culture in major projects and the human dynamics of the process.

 

It’s the implementation of these techniques which is poor

In her final video, Christine reminds us of the aphorism ‘it’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it’. How projects suffer, not from a shortage of techniques and approaches, but from a lack of understanding of which techniques should be used when and how they should be sensibly applied.

View the complete series of Lessons from our Archives interviews