34th Annual Conference, Major Project Initiation – making the right start Short Report
The importance of good project initiation has been echoed time and again by industry leaders and government bodies including the Public Accounts Committee, the Infrastructure and Projects Authority and the National Audit Office as well as by the Major Projects Association:
“On every project we end up with lessons learned, but they are not – they remain as lessons to be learned, next time. But next time there is not enough time and so history repeats itself.” MPA 2007
“If we were more transparent in the initiation stage of projects we would get a lot of the bad news out of the way and not suffer from it later.” MPA 2014
“Success or failure is determined during initiation. The rest is just a battle to preserve or recover value.” MPA 2016
And yet, still, projects are not giving sufficient time and attention to this critical initiation period. This interactive conference will consider what lessons can be learned from successful project initiation under a variety of conditions and settings. We will try to understand what levers can be pulled to ensure that we learn from these examples rather than just repeating the mistakes of the past.
At a recent MPA event, Designing and Delivering Major Capital Programmes, participants articulated the conditions for the successful initiation of major capital programmes as being: alignment with a simply stated purpose; the adoption of a systemic approach to project initiation resulting in a very clear governance structure; and commitment, strong leadership and political consensus.
This year’s MPA annual conference seeks to explore these themes further by exploring questions such as:
• Is success dependent upon a clear vision and aligned interests?
• Do major capital programmes need a political sponsor to keep them from unravelling?
• Is sufficient attention paid to organisational design and leadership selection?
• What review systems and processes are used successfully in the various industries responsible for delivering major projects?
• What expertise is readily available within the public and private sector to support major projects at initiation or pre-initiation stage?
We are delighted that the keynote speech will be made by Lord Browne of Madingley, former Chief Executive of BP and author of the March 2013 report to government, Getting a Grip – How to Improve Major Projects Execution and Control in Government in which he clearly stated his belief that “There is still insufficient attention given prior to the initiation of projects.” International perspectives will be provided by Peder Berg of the Norwegian Treasury and Radia Benamghar of The World Bank.