Published
I was fortunate enough to take part in a project development course that tackled the challenges of major projects hosted by the Major Projects Association (MPA), a community of practice for organisations engaged in the initiation and delivery of major projects, programmes, and portfolios (P3M). It involved a blended experience of virtual and in-person events, hosted by leading professionals in the field of P3M, discussing their insights and lessons learned in confronting the demands of large and complex projects.
Designed to capture the successes and failures of major projects from different perspectives of owners, contractors, and others, the MPA’s flagship development course concentrated on understanding the key pressures and tasks in the early phases of projects and studied policy and strategic issues for successful major project development.
The course used case studies, based on real projects which have proved especially challenging to manage, to provide opportunities to explore both the detailed workings as well as the basic principles of initiation, management, and delivery of major projects.
The unique opportunity to learn with peers from across industries and from leading figures, helped to define two key factors that affect the delivery of major projects – fragility and turbulence.
Fragility
One characteristic of major projects is their unusual binary outcome, compared to small and mid-sized projects. Major projects are either quite good, such as the London Olympics, or quite poor such as Crossrail. Understanding major project fragility is key to successfully managing these ventures. If typical project dimensions of cost, time, and quality are considered, a common trait shared is when one dimension fails on a major project, such as schedule slippage, due to their fragile nature, the other dimensions also quickly fail. As teams try to recover lost time by spending more, or sacrificing quality to maintain milestone dates, the fragility of major projects leads to poor outcomes.
But why are major projects fragile? Well, in part this is due to their inherent complexity and interdependent nature. Major projects typically involve large capital costs with several partners, large fields of stakeholders, and multiple distinct scope elements, usually spread geographically and involving numerous interfaces. If problems appear in one area of the project, much like a crack in a mirror, they spread quickly and cause problems in other areas.
Major projects that have been successful have done so through getting the project fundamentals right and being tightly integrated to achieve success. The development of complete and correct input data for major projects, whilst time consuming, is critical and the initiation phase of any project must allow sufficient time in its schedule for requirement development and interrogation. Knowing and defining a clear scope, cost profile, resource strategy, contracting strategy, and stakeholder field for example are basic data input requirements all major projects should gather before moving onto delivery phases. Getting the basics right up front, will ensure that the complex networks of processes and people will run better and be more resilient when challenges occur.
Turbulence
Another challenge of major projects is ‘turbulence’, usually encountered in the initiation and/or delivery phases. Turbulence can be characterised as delays, changes in scope, or redefining project strategy. These are elements that, if changed, can introduce turmoil and disruption into projects, most often caused by unhappy stakeholders imposing changes. The goal for any major project is to stabilise quickly through ensuring pan-stakeholder satisfaction (or at the very least satisfaction amongst the most impactful and influential stakeholders) and for leaders to configure their projects to achieve their desired outcomes.
HS2, for example, has over 35 construction contracts totalling £15b alone and supports over 22,000 jobs to date. With more people to manage, more functions to integrate, and more concurrent activities underway requiring constant management, it is critical to minimise turbulence as much as possible to avoid failures across such a vast project enterprise.
One way to mitigate is to invest, up-front, time and effort in cohering and gaining agreement from key stakeholders involved in the project in the fundamentals of scope, responsibilities, and governance. Like building resilience into major projects by spending time gathering key input data, also bottoming out these elements will enable major project leaders to align stakeholders on what the agreed requirement of work is, who is responsible for what, and how the project will be ran in terms of reporting, decision-making authority, and escalation routes, for example.
Speed kills! Spend more time up front to ensure smoother delivery
Major projects are both fragile and subject to turbulence. To minimise, the Association’s course helped to reaffirm the necessity of investing time and effort at the start of a major project. This affords leaders the space in which to compile accurate input data to inform the set-up and structuring of the complex processes and people that are involved, and enables richer, more value-adding discussions and agreements with stakeholders. Through investing time at the start of a project, completing the foundational work and not rushing straight to delivery, this builds resilience into major projects and subdues any impacts of turbulence throughout.
The next time you are about to start a major or complex project, why not reflect on the amount of time that is scheduled at the start of it? An aggressive schedule that compacts the initiation phase risks the project suffering a failure during delivery as one or more inputs into the project are either ill-defined, or not considered. This can manifest as a problem in one area and quickly spread across the project due to its fragility.
If you are in the middle of a project that you recognise as suffering from its fragile nature (perhaps costs are creeping unexpectedly), or from turbulence due to stakeholder dissatisfaction, consider re-investing your time into re-defining or re-baselining the project input data. This will allow you to review any gaps in the project and enable you to plot a path back to recovery.
Dr. David Jones, Principal Consultant,
PA Consulting
About the author
David Jones is a Chartered Project Professional, Fellow of the Association for Project Management, and an alumnus of Harvard Business School Online who has worked in projects for over 10 years across the UK and Europe. He was a finalist in the 2021 APM Awards and has taken part in both the Association’s Major Projects Simulator and the Challenge of Major Projects.
The Major Projects Simulator
The Challenge of Major Projects Development Programme