Topic: Assurance

By Jonathan Norman
November 3rd 2021

Assurance 2030 – Creating a Project Assurance Profession Highlight Report

Assurance in projects has been around for a long time. However, it’s traditionally been fragmented, with specific aspects of a project (e.g. technical, safety and quality) being assured by specialists in those areas somewhat in isolation from each other. Furthermore, those specialists typically do not see themselves as project professionals; they are quality assurers, internal auditors, etc, probably as interested in non-project activities as they are in project ones, and subject to ways of working and reporting lines that lie outside of project management.

Integrated Assurance approaches have been an attempt to bring together these disparate assurance providers into single frameworks, but with only limited success. Who has the responsibility to make an integrated assurance work for a project? And who actually has the required authority? Who ‘owns’ project assurance as a whole?

What has been emerging in recent years is a breed of project professionals whose sole job is to provide integrated assurance on a project – or more typically a number of projects. They may originate from more specialised areas of assurance, or from specific delivery roles, but now their perspective is different: it is now the success of the entire project that they’re interested in, not just specific aspects.

Whereas quality assurance, safety assurance, internal audit and other project professionals have their own standards, competency frameworks, communities of practice, etc, wheere does the project assurance professional turn for those things? How can an organisation ensure that its project assurance people have the right skills and experience?

The challenge for this seminar is to identify what is needed to ensure that project assurance is provided efficiently and effectively by competent people following robust and effective processes against robust known standards.

In short, how do we create a project assurance profession?

 

By Jonathan Norman
November 3rd 2021

Assurance 2030 – Creating a Project Assurance Profession Full Report

Assurance in projects has been around for a long time. However, it’s traditionally been fragmented, with specific aspects of a project (e.g. technical, safety and quality) being assured by specialists in those areas somewhat in isolation from each other. Furthermore, those specialists typically do not see themselves as project professionals; they are quality assurers, internal auditors, etc, probably as interested in non-project activities as they are in project ones, and subject to ways of working and reporting lines that lie outside of project management.

Integrated Assurance approaches have been an attempt to bring together these disparate assurance providers into single frameworks, but with only limited success. Who has the responsibility to make an integrated assurance work for a project? And who actually has the required authority? Who ‘owns’ project assurance as a whole?

What has been emerging in recent years is a breed of project professionals whose sole job is to provide integrated assurance on a project – or more typically a number of projects. They may originate from more specialised areas of assurance, or from specific delivery roles, but now their perspective is different: it is now the success of the entire project that they’re interested in, not just specific aspects.

Whereas quality assurance, safety assurance, internal audit and other project professionals have their own standards, competency frameworks, communities of practice, etc, wheere does the project assurance professional turn for those things? How can an organisation ensure that its project assurance people have the right skills and experience?

The challenge for this seminar is to identify what is needed to ensure that project assurance is provided efficiently and effectively by competent people following robust and effective processes against robust known standards.

In short, how do we create a project assurance profession?

 

By Jonathan Norman
June 12th 2019

Assurance of Major Projects – What is Assurance and why do we need it? Full Report

We have held many seminars over the years to try to understand why major projects fail.. Whilst, failure can be subjective, few could argue that recent projects like Crossrail, Rail Timetable Introduction and Universal Credit have not had their problems. Supporters of the role of Assurance claim that it has a vital role to play in avoiding these problems.; but what constitutes ‘project assurance’ is not always clear. For some, it is about being sure that they are going to get what they expect; for others it is about risks being effectively managed. The Association for Project Management defines assurance as “the process of providing confidence to stakeholders that projects, programmes and portfolios will achieve their scope, time, cost and quality objectives, and realise their benefits”. The IPA uses the assurance process at critical points in a project’s life cycle to ensure progress is kept on track, help identify and mitigate risks. Assurance providers have many demands on them. Project sponsors want to be confident that their projects will be delivered to time, cost and quality. Project managers want confidence that suppliers will meet their contractual obligations. Boards want confidence that strategic objectives will be met. The aim of this half-day seminar is to consider how these various demands for confidence can be met efficiently and effectively. Through the eyes of different project stakeholders, we will explore how to set up an assurance regime that satisfies this diversity of need; what ‘good assurance’ looks like; why assurance sometimes fails; and how assurance needs change through the life of a project. We will also look at what the terms ‘Integrated Assurance’ and ‘Progressive Assurance’ mean.

By Jonathan Norman
June 12th 2019

Assurance of Major Projects – What is Assurance and why do we need it? Highlight Report

We have held many seminars over the years to try to understand why major projects fail.. Whilst, failure can be subjective, few could argue that recent projects like Crossrail, Rail Timetable Introduction and Universal Credit have not had their problems. Supporters of the role of Assurance claim that it has a vital role to play in avoiding these problems.; but what constitutes ‘project assurance’ is not always clear. For some, it is about being sure that they are going to get what they expect; for others it is about risks being effectively managed. The Association for Project Management defines assurance as “the process of providing confidence to stakeholders that projects, programmes and portfolios will achieve their scope, time, cost and quality objectives, and realise their benefits”. The IPA uses the assurance process at critical points in a project’s life cycle to ensure progress is kept on track, help identify and mitigate risks. Assurance providers have many demands on them. Project sponsors want to be confident that their projects will be delivered to time, cost and quality. Project managers want confidence that suppliers will meet their contractual obligations. Boards want confidence that strategic objectives will be met. The aim of this half-day seminar is to consider how these various demands for confidence can be met efficiently and effectively. Through the eyes of different project stakeholders, we will explore how to set up an assurance regime that satisfies this diversity of need; what ‘good assurance’ looks like; why assurance sometimes fails; and how assurance needs change through the life of a project. We will also look at what the terms ‘Integrated Assurance’ and ‘Progressive Assurance’ mean.

By Jonathan Norman
December 5th 2007

The Growing influence of IT on major projects Full Report

All major projects now have an IT component, which includes control and monitoring systems for all functions of both the facility itself and the people who operate it. Since IT is usually the most innovative feature, it tends to be the most difficult to manage through to effective and reliable operation. Its installation has also become essential to operating the finished project, yet is the one which is finished
last.

Most project management processes, such as financial modelling, communications, design, scheduling, cost control and document management, use IT, but they tend to have developed in isolation and not be well integrated. Chaired by Sir Michael Latham, this seminar had two objectives: to investigate how best to integrate the design and commissioning of those systems which include IT in the totality of the project work, and to establish how best to utilise IT in the management of projects.

The seminar also looked at why IT project work has a poor reputation for successful outcomes, and what can be done to de-risk the management of the IT component. Speakers presented specific examples across a variety of sectors, talked about the reasons for poor success rates and suggested ways to improve the management of major IT projects