Annual Conference 2022 – Escaping the Major Projects Echo Chamber (REVISED DATE)

This Annual Conference was postponed from September 2022 following the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Registrations remain in place for those confirmed to attend and joining details will be circulated in January 2023.

Over the course of the 40 years since the Association was formed the approach to major projects has continually evolved in response to the delivery environment of the day. Today’s delivery environment is unrecognisable even from just a few years ago, let alone from the early days of the Association. We may need radical changes, but if we continue to refine our approach based on memoirs of past successes are we in danger of incrementally solving past problems rather than those of today and tomorrow? To free ourselves from the shackles of past paradigms we need to escape the major projects echo chamber.

At last year’s Annual Conference we considered the past, present and future practice of initiating and delivering major projects. We identified some current practices we’d like to consign to the past and some practices we’d like to bring back. When considering the future we concluded the pace of technological change, aligning to socio-economic drivers, the urgency of addressing and avoiding environmental catastrophes and the general volatility of geopolitics would mean that major projects and the way we deliver them will need to be different.

This year’s conference builds on that and looks at how they will be different due to four paradigms that do not fit our current and future needs:

• A hierarchical delivery model.
• An inherently linear project lifecycle in a complex dynamic world.
• Simplistic ROI or Cost-Benefit models that do not reflect how we get value from systems.
• An assumption of infinite resources where growth is the goal/solution.

Are there non-hierarchical delivery models already available and it’s just a case of applying them more widely (e.g. Construction Playbook, Project 13, Value Toolkit)?

Do we need a portfolio approach to major project delivery, where each project is adaptive to emerging needs and opportunities within the overall ‘system’. This may require us to rethink our current focus on requiring firm ROI or Cost-Benefit commitments per project up front.

Have we become selfish toddlers in our competitive pursuit of growth and all things new? Do we need to re-learn how to share, re-use and repurpose? How do we marry owner/stakeholder competitive expectations and non-growth solutions in a major project context?

These questions need to be addressed for all types of major projects whether that is for infrastructure or other major projects such as policy and transformation.

The conference will be delivered as a physical event and we are offering one space per organisation on a first come, first served basis (additional spaces may be available closer to the time of the event). Spaces are offered at no charge (attendance is covered under your organisation’s membership fee) and include accomodation at the venue for the evening of Monday 12th September.

The conference is currently fully booked. Please let us know ASAP if you are no longer able to join us, as we do have a waiting list in place.