Published
In this age of rolling news and wall-to-wall social media, we often look down on the humble soundbite but there is another side to it.
I am approaching the end of my review of all forty years of Major Projects Association Reports. One of the elements that I have been capturing is a short soundbite from each report. Let me share a collection of these with you, from the 1980’s and and you can make your own judgement of their value. I think collectively, they remind me of the power of the soundbite; at its best, a short, memorable, expression of significant idea.
I have included a date for each of the quotations, along with a the title of the report from which they are drawn because I think that gives another opportunity for reflection. Is this something that was very ‘of the moment’ but which is no longer particularly relevant or is it something that gives us real food for thought today, precisely because of the passage of time since it was uttered?
“The seventh lesson is that the raison d’etre of the project should have been resolved at the beginning. There was a fundamental difference that France was committed to the project as a public service … while Britain saw it simply as a business opportunity” The Channel Tunnel, Lessons of 1970-75 (1981)
“As the negotiations proceed, both the client and contractor discover the inadequacies of the feasibility study. Each party discovers an increasing number of risks of great variety which it fanatically desires to transfer to the other party as rapidly as possible.” Risks in International Project Finance (1982)
“Sponsors are an entirely different breed of people from those individuals who have ideas about new projects and also from dream pedlars. We do need some way of distinguishing between these types of people.” Cause and Effects of Delay in Major Projects (1982)
“The most pervasive risk and sometimes the biggest risk is the risk of misunderstanding and being misunderstood.” Unresolved Problems of Risk (1982)
“If at all possible, avoid bringing governments into collaborative projects. Their money may be welcome, even indispensable, but it must be remembered that quite justifiably, they play the game by a different set of rules.” The Concorde Project (1983)
“It is overall project cost that should be the target of every client. The overall project cost includes the feasibility study, plus design, plus construction, plus maintenance, plus operating, plus demolition.” Negotiation of Construction Projects (1983)
“We employ a lot of engineers; they are clever people and we hire them for that. However, if you do not control them, they will spend years optimizing something that you really ought not to bother with and over-engineer the project.” The Broad Problems Facing Owners on Giant Megaprojects – Past and Future (1985)
“The trouble is the philosophy of ‘define and quantify’ … is still very much with us. I would suggest it be replaced by ‘describe and interrogate’ or ‘inquire’.” Political Risk in Major Projects (1985)
“To the uneducated or even to the educated, it looks as though we set out with no real strategy in mind.” Organizational Implications of Large Information Technology Projects – Big Bang (1987)
The good news is that Association members can access all of these reports via a new page on the website, where we have collated them. And if you are a member of the Association and would like to take part in the Lessons from our Archive project, which is a series of short interviews in which a member offers commentary on one of the Association’s part reports, then we’d love to hear from you. Just e-mail us and we’ll help you select the most interesting and most relevant report on which to comment. I can’t emphasize enough the value of this extraordinary archive as a lens to look at current and emerging project practice and learn from the past.
Jonathan Norman,
Knowledge Manager
Lessons from our Archive recordings
The Archive of Association Reports