Thinking about the Management of Projects

The Bartlett School of Construction & Project Management

THINKING ABOUT THE MANAGEMENT OF PROJECTS: A CELEBRATION EDITED BY ANDREW EDKINS

Dr Andrew Edkins

Sir John Armitt

Sir Jo

Professor Jeffrey Pinto

From left to right: Dr Andrew Edkins, Professor Jeffrey Pinto, Professor Gr Professor Andrew Gale and Sir John Armitt

Tim Banfield Professor Andrew Gale Professor Mike Bresnen

ohn Armitt

Professor Graham Winch

Dr Svetlana Cicmil

raham Winch,

Professor Nuno Gil

The Bartlett School of Construction & Project Management is an international centre of excellence in the teaching and research of project management and economics. We supply project-based organisations with exceptional graduates, and lead research in the field.

We are part of The Bartlett: UCL’s global faculty of the built environment.

An Introduction 7

SESSION 1

A FRAMEWORK TO FIT THE FUTURE 8

Sir John Armitt

12

Professor Graham Winch

16

Professor Jeffrey Pinto

20

Professor Andy Gale

25

SESSION 2

CRITICAL REFLECTION 26

Dr Svetlana Cicmil

30

Professor Mike Bresnen

35

SESSION 3

CURRENT AND FUTURE CHALLENGES 36

Professor Andrew Davies

40

Tim Banfield

44

Professor Nuno Gill

48

Professor Ray Levitt

53

SESSION 4

REFLECTIONS ON THE DISCIPLINE – DEVELOPMENT AND RESEARCH 54

Professor Peter Morris

58

Professor Alan Penn

62

END-PIECE

THINKING ABOUT THE MANAGEMENT OF PROJECTS: A CELEBRATION AN INTRODUCTION

The term ‘the Management of Projects’ has become synonymous with the work of Professor Peter Morris, who coined the phrase back in the early 1990s to make the point that successful projects aren’t just the result of actions to ensure the project is completed ‘on time, in budget, and to scope’ but that it also involves the management of many front-end activities designed to determine what those targets should be.

The corpus of Peter’s writing over the years, especially his books*, has both gathered up, encouraged, challenged and shaped leading thinking in this field. Peter’s success in creating, developing and promulgating the ideas and perspectives that comprise the Management of Projects is proved by enormous enthusiasm that greeted and supported an event – a colloquium – held at UCL on the 28th March, 2014, to reflect on the state of academic enquiry and practical application in the field.

This publication aims to capture the key points of the day.

The motivation for the event was the increasing recognition that the ideas and perspectives that comprise the Management of Projects was growing in both range and strength of support. The specific catalyst was the publication of Peter’s latest book – Reconstructing Project Management. Peter enjoys a global reputation as both a scholar and a practitioner and both the book and those speaking at the event reflected international academic scholarship as well as practicing excellence.

But this publication is not about Peter Morris. It is about work on the Management of Projects. It is more than simply one man’s view. Although it is certainly about how Peter’s observations and arguments have influenced the thinking of others in this field, it is an assessment and reflection on the dynamics and characteristics of the discipline 20 years after it was first introduced by Peter.

*Morris, P.W.G and Hough, G., The Anatomy of Major Projects (John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, 1987); Morris, P.W.G., The Management of Projects (Thomas Telford, London, 1994); Morris, P.W.G . and Jamieson, H.A., Translating Corporate Strategy into Project Strategy (PMI, Newton Square, PA, 2004); Morris, P.W.G. and Pinto, J.K. (eds.), The Wiley Guide to Managing Projects (Wiley, Hoboken, N.J., 2005); Morris, P.W.G, Pinto, J.K. and Söderlund, J. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Project Management (Oxford University Press, 2010); Morris, P.W.G., Reconstructing Project Management (Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, 2013).

2

THE MANAGEMENT OF PROJECTS

What is ‘the Management of Projects’? A full explanation would involve many topics and much evidence, but the principles are succinctly illustrated in a diagram originally developed by Peter.

At its core, the Management of Projects recognises that there is a project that needs to be delivered. A project is a temporary endeavour to manage change through the deployment of resources and efforts. Projects are distinguished from non-projects in that all projects develop according to a development sequence (often referred to as a life cycle) as shown at the base of the diagram opposite.

This project life cycle implies a start and a finish, but understanding and defining the start and finish is not as simple as one might initially think. As we’ve said, projects are normally measured against the time they took, the money they cost and other resources they consumed, or the specification they achieved (all compared to original estimates). However, Peter’s observation on his and others’ research on project performance was to not only ask where these estimates came from but where did the project come from - what are its drivers - and how did they become embedded in the project? Investigating these questions revealed that many projects operate in unstable environments; where people, objectives, strategies and policies are uncertain and vulnerable to change; where managing technical and commercial issues are as important as the more usual project planning and monitoring activities.

“Peter’s observation on his and others’ research on project performance was to not only ask where these estimates came from but where did the project come from and how did they become embedded in the project?”

AN INTRODUCTION | THINKING ABOUT THE MANAGEMENT OF PROJECTS: A CELEBRATION

The Management of Projects Professor Peter Morris Interaction with the business and general environment

Project Definition

Strategy & Finance Technology

(requirements, design, make, test)

Commercial

(supply chain, procurement, etc.)

Time Budget Scope

Delivered

(defined)

Project Delivery Integration Time Cost

Scope Risk Human Resources

Stakeholder Management Communications Quality Procurement

Organizational

(structure & people)

Concept

Initiate

Feasibility

Definition

Plan

Execute

Execution

Control

Close Out

Close out / Operation

As research developed, so it became increasingly evident that rather than simply being an execution discipline, good project management involves the management of a variety of issues, many of them strategic and often found very early in the project’s life – seen in the figure as ‘project definition’ and increasingly referred to as the project’s ‘front-end’. Whether this is termed the project’s conception, initiation or select phase, one of the contributions from the Management of Projects approach is the recognition that all projects are the results of forces that have driven the project to this point, and that these forces and the resulting desired outcome may be shaped. The argument, now widely accepted, is that if you understand the context in which the project arose, you (as project managers) will appreciate not just what the project is, but why it is as it is and is not some other; and that this can be managed, possibly to a significant degree. This sets the tone, pace and environment for the project, from which all else flows – decisions on commercial arrangements and risk, use of technology and innovation, leadership and team style, and much more. The front-end is also the area where value can most easily be created. (And execution is where it can most easily be destroyed.)

4

THE ARGUMENT FOR AND STRUCTURE OF THE EVENT Putting on an event such as this was itself a project and one fraught with challenges. It was a novel project that had a high risk/high return profile.

Universities aren’t usually known for putting their own money into such risky ventures. We like to push the knowledge frontiers as we conduct cutting-edge research, but we normally like to win grants to fund this type of boundaryexpanding work.

The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management decided that it would commit to arranging the event that led to this publication as it was simply ‘the right thing to do’. Business cases were prepared, stakeholders engaged, authorisations were sought and a project team created. The objective was simple, clear and elegant. We would orchestrate a gathering of some of those who had been influenced or affected by the work inspired by Peter Morris and the Management of Projects concept, put in front of this audience a selection of leading thinkers and actors engaged in the Management of Projects, capture the event in both written and video format and then make all this publicly available.

We gathered leading players from both near and far, drawing views from those who have made a career from studying the world of projects and their management through to those who have made a career from delivering the most complex of these projects.

It is this diversity of perspectives and expertise that makes the area of the Management of Projects such a rich vein to explore. Whether one is situated in the world of the deeply theoretical or the highly applied, the Management of Projects can speak to you sensibly and usefully. We used this variety to assist us in structuring the day.

SESSION 1: A FRAMEWORK TO FIT THE FUTURE

This introduction has run its course and done its job.

The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management was proud to have been the hosts and orchestrators of the day and as a School we are sincerely grateful to the speakers, audience and the many who toiled behind the scenes in making the event the success it so clearly was.

AN INTRODUCTION | THINKING ABOUT THE MANAGEMENT OF PROJECTS: A CELEBRATION

SESSION 1 A FRAMEWORK TO FIT THE FUTURE Session 1 sets the scene and raises a number of topics that sit within the Management of Projects.

This session demonstrates the range and depth of interest in the many and varied topics that now sit under the umbrella of the Management of Projects. Some of the presentations capture the entirety of the Management of Projects (Sir John Armitt), others dwell primarily on one key aspect (Professors Graham Winch and Andy Gale) or a specific perspective (Professor Jeffrey Pinto). Whether broad or narrow in focus, the first session provides an insight into what those practising and researching the Management of Projectst have concluded or are actively engaged studying.

SESSION 3 CURRENT AND FUTURE CHALLENGES Session 3 explores the current and future challenges facing both project management practice and project management research.

Professor Andrew Davies reflects on the role of innovation in projects, and in particular megaprojects. Tim Banfield reflects on what the UK Government is doing to improve the performance of its own projects. Professor Nuno Gil’s presentation considers the issues associated with the project’s governance and leadership. In doing so it raises the issue of the way that the project management entity is designed, something that sits at the heart of Management of Projects thinking. The final presentation in session three was by Professor Ray Levitt. This wide-ranging presentation recasts projects and their management as being the vehicle by which organisations translate intended strategy to real action.

In so doing, it explains why those who instigate projects should, and increasingly do, concern themselves with how projects are managed from their earliest stages through to their post-delivery operational phase.

SESSION 2 CRITICAL REFLECTION Session 2 is focused specifically on critical academic evaluation of project management drawn from the organisational behaviour and sociological theories. The presentations given by Dr Svetlana Cicmil and Professor Mike Bresnen consider projects from perspectives that aren’t drawn from the technical end of engineering, but from the world where people and their impressions create understanding and, indeed, entities – such as project organisations.

SESSION 4 REFLECTIONS ON THE DISCIPLINE – DEVELOPMENT AND RESEARCH Session 4 was occupied by Professors Peter Morris and Alan Penn, the Dean of The Bartlett, UCL’s Faculty of the Built Environment.

This session had two fascinating sets of reflections. First Professor Peter Morris delivered his personal, indeed impassioned view of the discipline of project management and its academic study. He noted what has been achieved and what is still left to do.

Professor Alan Penn’s closing address was his non-project management reflection on the day and on the contribution that Peter and others have made to furthering our understanding and appreciation of the challenges that managing projects presents.

6

SIR JOHN ARMITT

PROFESSOR GRAHAM WINCH

CHAIRMAN, OLYMPIC DELIVERY AUTHORITY

PROFESSOR OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT, MANCHESTER BUSINESS SCHOOL

Project Management for Tomorrow’s Infrastructure. There is a worldwide demand for $57 trillion of infrastructure in the next 20 years. How should we learn from the past to ensure that these projects can be delivered successfully?

The competent owner: a dynamic capability model. What can be outsourced and what must be retained as core?

SESSION 1

A FRAMEWORK TO FIT THE FUTURE

PROFESSOR JEFFREY PINTO

PROFESSOR ANDY GALE

PROFESSOR OF MANAGEMENT, PENN STATE UNIVERSITY

PROFESSOR OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT, UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER

The Management of Projects paradigm: exploring new research opportunities and reassessing the old. The need to reconsider what was thought to be ‘settled’ science prior to the introduction of the Management of Projects.

Reflective professional development and the Management of Projects.

A case study in international education.

“We face massive challenges in meeting the global infrastructure needs of the future”

JOHN ARMITT Sir John Armitt became chairman of the UK’s Olympic Delivery Authority in September 2007. He is Chairman of National Express Group, Chairman of City and Guilds, Deputy Chairman of the Berkley Group, and a member of the Board of Transport for London and the Airports Commission. The Armitt Review, Sir John’s independent review of longer-term infrastructure planning in the UK, was published in September 2013.

Sir John was Chief Executive of Costain from 1997-2001; Chief Executive of Railtrack plc from 2001 and Chief Executive of Network Rail from 2002-2007. He was Chairman of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council until March 2012.

SESSION 1 A FRAMEWORK TO FIT THE FUTURE

Project Management for Tomorrow’s Infrastructure. There is a worldwide demand for $57 trillion of infrastructure in the next 20 years. How should we learn from the past to ensure that these projects can be delivered successfully?

10

Sir John Armitt’s vast experience of major infrastructure projects has led him to a very clear conclusion: that the most important player is the client.

“I define the client as the body who has the need for the project; owns the vision; determines the objectives of the project; and takes the financial risk of delivery and operation,” he said. “Designers, contractors, funders can all support the client in bringing clarity to the definition of the project, its required outputs, its risks and how best it can be funded. However, uncertainty, ambiguity, a desire to move quickly, poor risk assessment, and a focus on the short term are all weaknesses which will ensure the future failure of the project. The starting point therefore must be clear governance. There needs to be a single body which is representative of the main stakeholders in the future success of the project.”

“It is clear from reading Peter Morris’s excellent book that a number of academics across the world are considering what works or not, which of the many theories it discusses can be developed and how they should be applied” At the start of any individual project or programme there are three simple questions which must be addressed: why, what and how? Why do we need to do something? What are we going to do to address the need; what scale and what form is our solution? How are we going to deliver the solution?

Drawing upon the many significant projects that he has worked on throughout his career, the seven main lessons Sir John has learned regarding the management of major infrastructure projects are: 1. There must be a consensus between the key stakeholders on the objectives or the ‘why’ of the project.

2. The approach of the client is critical.

3. Decisions made before construction starts will be the most important and impact the likelihood of success.

4. A culture of collaboration between client, end users, designers, contractors, supply chain is vital.

5. There should be a fixed completion date and a sensible contingency in the budget.

6. Projects cannot be viewed in isolation. Their long-term effectiveness will depend on how well they are integrated within an interdependent system.

7. Personalities will dominate, for good or for bad.

JOHN ARMITT | THINKING ABOUT THE MANAGEMENT OF PROJECTS: A CELEBRATION

Given these key lessons, Sir John’s recommendations, indeed commandments, are: 1. Recognise the three key questions: Why do we need to act – what need are we seeking to meet? What is our solution – how does it interact with other systems? How will we deliver our solution, particularly how will we fund it, what commercial and contractual approach is to be adopted? How will the project be operated post-construction?

6. Introduce the end user/operator to the specification and design process at the beginning.

2. Be clear and consistent, decide what is most important – time, cost or quality?

They are rarely complementary.

9. Recognise the power of personalities.

Be prepared to change key people if they are obstructing a collaborative environment.

3. Guard against an optimistic budget.

Success is coming in under budget.

10. Set high standards in safety, risk assessment, quality, schedule and cost reporting, from day one.

7. Commit adequate time and resources before construction starts.

8. Create an open collaborative approach between the various organisations/players.

4. Establish a clear governance structure representing key stakeholders - set it up as soon as the ‘why’ debate is concluded.

11. Adopt a stage gate review process to force clear decisions at appropriate stages.

5. Establish a strong project client team with clear, delegated authority.

12. Set short-term objectives every 3-6 months and celebrate success.

“We face massive challenges in meeting the global infrastructure needs of the future but I believe a focus on these 12 commandments, which can be delivered in any culture, will enable us to meet those challenges successfully,” said Sir John.

Academic research also has a role. Most project managers do not write up their experiences so much is lost or relearned but researchers working inside projects can provide independent assessment.

“It is clear from reading Peter Morris’s excellent book, Reconstructing Project Management, that a number of academics across the world are considering what works or not, which of the many theories it discusses can be developed and how they should be applied,” said Sir John. Having noted this interest and engagement from and with academics, Sir John voiced a note of discord about communication between these two communities, “One concern I have is the gap between academic language and that of practitioners. I found myself reaching for a dictionary but knowing that the result would be a desire for plain English. I am not sure we need more and more ‘-ologys’ to define our normal actions.” This observation reinforces the point that making the management of projects successful is in all our interests and that the wisdom that resides within both project management practitioners and scholars needs to still be further understood and combined.

“My criticism of the current way we think about projects is that we tend to focus on the temporary rather than the permanent”

GRAHAM WINCH

Professor Graham Winch is Director for Social Responsibility and Professor of Project Management at Manchester Business School, the University of Manchester. Prior to joining the University of Manchester in 2001, he taught at The Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, UCL’s Faculty of the Built Environment. He is a member of the Peer Review College, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and is a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Project Management.

SESSION 1 A FRAMEWORK TO FIT THE FUTURE

The competent owner: a dynamic capability model. What can be outsourced and what must be retained as core?

14

The importance of a strong or capable owner, was argued by Professor Graham Winch, Director for Social Responsibility and Professor of Project Management at Manchester Business School.

“This draws very much on Peter Morris’s work. In The Anatomy of Major Projects (Morris & Hough, Wiley, 1987) there is a discussion about the strong owner, and the variation of outcome of different projects through the assessment of how strong the owners were,” Professor Winch began.

And here, definitions are important. “The term ‘client’ emphasises the commercial function but commercial matters are only part of the owner capability. The term ‘owner’ on the other hand emphasises the investment accountability for the asset being developed.” The term ‘operator’ implies full function accountability: how is this thing going to work and how is it going to create wealth?

Competencies capture resources and skills held by people and routines they have, and capability is the ability to deploy those resources and practices to create value and wealth.

“Operational capability is the ability to configure resources to deliver value for customers, and all successful organisations have to have those core capabilities,” said Professor Winch. “Dynamic capability is the ability to change the configuration of those resources, and that’s what project management needs.”

On that basis, he said, a strong criticism can be mounted of the way we think about projects.

“Independent Project Analysis, the benchmarking organisation, shows that an integrated owner team performs better”

“Project capabilities are fundamentally rarely core to the owner or operator; they’re not what defines their core business. Network Rail’s core business is not to build railway lines, it’s to enable people to be transported by rail.”

“My criticism of the current way we think about projects is that we tend to focus on the temporary rather than the permanent, which is the capabilities of suppliers and the owners and operators; and we don’t distinguish who does what. And further, relatively little attention is paid to how firms allocate their resources.”

“Independent Project Analysis, the benchmarking organisation, shows that an integrated owner team performs better,” said Professor Winch. “It’s superior in front-end loading; superior on teamwork, schedule, budget and operability – in other words, all the key parameters. All the required skills are in the owner project team; but critically, you also have the voice of operations.” (See Merrow: Industrial Megaprojects, Wiley, 2011).

GRAHAM WINCH | THINKING ABOUT THE MANAGEMENT OF PROJECTS: A CELEBRATION

If this voice isn’t heard there is a risk there will be requests for change, which will result in cost and time overruns. Project monitoring and forecasting need to be done by the owner, and they also need to do their own estimating and scheduling so they can challenge suppliers if necessary. “The owners need to have their eyes on the project” said Professor Winch.

So what does this mean in terms of the capable owner?

The first element is leadership. The owner raises the capital and manages the project into beneficial use. The appropriate level of hands-on engagement by the owner has to be considered. Should the owner’s presence on the project be daily, weekly? Should it be during execution? Should they have step-in rights to visit the factory to check on the supplier?

“Doing a project right requires proactive input from the owner.

Owners own the project.

They’re paying so it’s to their benefit to really articulate this”

“There’s a lot of debate around how far you go because it creates cost, but not going far enough means there’s a danger you’re going to get projects that may not operate well,” said Professor Winch.

Governance is also a critical area.

Assurance can be provided through various lines of defence: controls and internal and external audit.

But it is also vital that governance thinks about the development of their projects managers’ competencies and capabilities.

In project management practice literature there is very little discussion of who does what on a project, said Professor Winch. “We need to move beyond talking simply about the universal set of competencies. We need to focus beyond this, beyond even the client. Even the notion of the intelligent client goes only part of the way.”

“We need to complete the shift from client to owner. Doing a project right requires proactive input from the owner. Owners own the project. They’re paying so it’s to their benefit to really articulate this.” A competent owner offers the advantages of providing clarity on what they want and why, and they can respond quickly to queries. And it’s not negative towards contractors and suppliers: it actually gives suppliers a better opportunity to make a profit.”

“When I look at research through the ‘Management of Projects’ lens I get a much broader, richer view and, encouragingly, a real well from which so many ideas can be pulled: so many additional responses, and so many different, fruitful avenues for research”

JEFFREY PINTO

Professor Jeffrey Pinto is the Andrew Morrow and Elizabeth Lee Black Chair in the Management of Technology in the Sam and Irene Black School of Business at Penn State University, USA. He is the lead faculty member for the university’s Master of Project Management programme. He has twice received the Project Management Institute’s Distinguished Contribution Award (1997, 2001) for outstanding service to the project management profession and received the PMI’s Research Achievement Award in 2009 for outstanding contributions to project management research.

SESSION 1 A FRAMEWORK TO FIT THE FUTURE

The Management of Projects paradigm: exploring new research opportunities and reassessing the old. The need to reconsider what was thought to be ‘settled’ science prior to the introduction of the Management of Projects.

18

To date, settled science in the project management field is the product of having bought into the idea of what constitutes the conceptualisation of project management. Fundamentally this is an execution focused model, and Peter Morris has argued against this for many years, said Professor Jeffrey Pinto, Professor of Management at Penn State University, USA. “The Management of Projects model raises a lot of settled science questions that we have to consider and critique. Do we know what we think we know, is the question I’m asking,” he said.

Professor Pinto identified four basic areas where this needs to be considered.

First, is Critical Success Factors research. Are we trying to understand Critical Success Factor research in light of modern realities, or merely just generating lists? “Most of these lists came out in the 1970s and 1980s but have continued apace. In Reconstructing Project Management Peter Morris identified 65 plus CSF studies,” said Professor Pinto.

The second area is HR practices and the question of what is a competent project manager.

“I would argue that it depends on what context you’re creating,” said Professor Pinto. “Once we understand that, we start to ask follow-on questions: What should it be? What should be the project manager’s role in front-end definition and environmental interaction?”

The third area is knowledge management which, historically, has been rooted in action knowledge – the actions needed at each stage of the project. However, now the perspective is broadening from pure execution to the institutional level, but here Professor Pinto has a word of warning.

“Talking about processes for transferring knowledge is fine, as long as we’ve mutually settled on what should be transferred. I submit that we haven’t, so why are we getting ahead of ourselves?” he said.

“We should be focusing our attention on power and political relationships starting at the front-end, before we get to the execution stage ”

The fourth area to be considered is power – political relationships – which has had limited research attention. Most studies have explored political relationships against the backdrop of execution, said Professor Pinto, although Bent Flyvbjerg is now looking at bargaining and influencing behaviour in the target setting area, the front-end, which is the right approach.

JEFFREY PINTO | THINKING ABOUT THE MANAGEMENT OF PROJECTS: A CELEBRATION

“Talking about processes for transferring knowledge is fine, as long as we’ve mutually settled on what should be transferred. ”

“The front-end that Peter Morris has been pushing so hard is exactly where these issues get settled or where we create the conditions for acrimonious issues to surface downstream because we haven’t done this well up front.

We should be focusing our attention on power and political relationships starting at the frontend, before we get to the execution stage,” said Professor Pinto.

This raises the question of how we continue to validate how we manage projects through the use of research.

One approach is key stakeholder assessments to identify the real body of knowledge needed to succeed.

However, said Professor Pinto, this creates an ethical implication for the Project Management Institute (PMI), as Peter Morris points out. “The PMI’s Body of Knowledge – PMBOK® Guide – underscores the point of almost missing completely management’s role in the development of the project front-end, the establishment of the project definition and targets, precisely the area where evidence shows management needs to concentrate.”

In Professor Pinto’s view, this hasn’t improved, even though the latest edition of the PMBOK® Guide has expanded from nine to 10 knowledge areas, with the addition of stakeholder management. “The changes to the PMBOK® Guide have always been incremental, just adding and adding without ever taking a hard look at what’s really taking place,” Professor Pinto said.

This, he added, raises some ethical issues.

“What are PMI’s reasons for not taking those hard looks? Isn’t it appropriate from an ethical perspective that they go back to square one and say, ‘What does this really consist of?’ ‘What is this body of knowledge really?’“ In Reconstructing Project Management, Peter Morris asks the question: “What have we learnt from all this reading and writing and talking about the discipline of management projects, about ‘reconstructing project management’?”

Professor Pinto’s answer is that it has provided a broader view.

“When I look at the project management I’ve been involved in through the lens of the Management of Projects, I get a very different perspective than when I look through the lens of the PMI PMBOK® Guide, which is how I was trained.

“When I look at research through the ‘Management of Projects’ lens I get a much broader, richer view and, encouragingly, a real well from which so many ideas can be pulled: so many additional responses, and so many different, fruitful avenues for research,” he said.

“Educators have a responsibility to promote front-end thinking, not just in project management education but in education in general”

ANDY GALE

Professor Andrew Gale is Leader of the Management of Projects Research Group at the University of Manchester and founding academic for the MSc Project Management Professional Development Programme – a flexible modular programme led by an industrial consortium.

SESSION 1 A FRAMEWORK TO FIT THE FUTURE

Reflective professional development and the Management of Projects. A case study in international education.

22

In 1999, Professor Andrew Gale from the University of Manchester’s School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering worked with Peter Morris to create an educational programme at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology for Rolls-Royce, AMEC and BF Goodridge called the Project Management Professional Development Programme (PMPDP).

“The front-end of the PMPDP project – the curriculum development and the pedagogy – were founded on a holistic perspective of the in the Management of Projects,” said Professor Gale. “That was where we started from. We had to include all this front-end thinking, but how do you do that and what does education look like when you have a PMBOK® Guide that doesn’t include it?”

“It’s a really good contradiction to have, especially if you’re an academic.”

Professor Gale noted.

On the course there is a strong emphasis on the front-end, educating the students to understand what it is to be a reflective practitioner.

“Students need to understand context,” said Professor Gale. “Words mean different things in different contexts, so why should it be different for projects?”

These front-end issues that Peter Morris identified have been a recurring point and to illustrate, Professor Gale explained a project that he undertook with fourth-year MEng students and masters students at Manchester School of Art. The students’ brief was to produce a concept for a ‘non-monument monument’ to commemorate the relationship between Manchester and St Petersburg during the latter’s tri-centenary.

“Organisation, people, and structures in every possible way you can conceive were fundamental to all of this and those words all appear on Peter’s excellent diagram representing the Management of Projects.”

ANDY GALE | THINKING ABOUT THE MANAGEMENT OF PROJECTS: A CELEBRATION

“The project was about conceptualisation, which took 16 weeks. The notion of the non-monument monument project, which I developed with Professor John Hyatt, took six months before that, so this is very front-end,” said Professor Gale.

“Organisation, people, and structures in every possible way you can conceive were fundamental to all of this and those words all appear on Peter’s excellent diagram representing the Management of Projects.”

After much work, the team of artists and civil engineers eventually agreed on a theme, demonstrating, said Professor Gale, that ideas are in the front-end.

But how do you create them and control them?

If the front-end is considered from a psychotherapeutic perspective, it makes sense, he said. “It’s not about being good at tools, but the selection and application of those tools.” Projects, he said, are the result of normal human activity so perhaps that is the context in which the front-end should be explored.

“It’s not about being good at tools, but the selection and application of those tools. ”

“The emphasis should perhaps be on process rather than outcome, which is a contradiction in some respects in relation to what we say about the Management of Projects, but if we don’t follow the process, the outcome won’t be of high quality,” said Professor Gale.

Educators have a responsibility to promote front-end thinking, not just in project management education but in education in general, especially for engineers.

Practitioners also need reflection skills, said Professor Gale, citing Gibb’s cycle of reflective practice (Learning by Doing: A Guide to Teaching and Learning, Oxford Polytechnic FEU, 1988). “It’s about looking back in the moment and looking forward. You could argue it’s playing with words but it’s about being aware – aware of application and where theory and application converge,” he said. It’s analogous to a cloud containing different bits of theory which are pulled down and applied as needed to a problem.

24

SESSION 2

CRITICAL REFLECTION

DR SVETLANA CICMIL

PROFESSOR MIKE BRESNEN

DIRECTOR OF DOCTORAL RESEARCH, UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST OF ENGLAND

PROFESSOR OF ORGANISATION STUDIES, MANCHESTER BUSINESS SCHOOL

A processual-relational approach to the Management of Projects: practical insights. What the Management of Projects might mean from a socially constructed and emergent perspective.

Embodying and embedding project management knowledge: practical imperatives and institutional challenges.

What might be learned from continuing to explore the counterpoint between practice and institutionalisation in the development of the discipline?

“Projects and project outcomes are the result of ongoing structuring and sense-making among people who are different but have a shared goal�

SVETLANA CICMIL

Dr Svetlana Cicmil is Director of Doctoral Research in the Faculty of Business and Law at the University of the West of England. A civil engineer by training, she is perhaps best known for her involvement in pioneering the intellectual movement known as Making Projects Critical, with Damian Hodgson of Manchester Business School.

SESSION 2 CRITICAL REFLECTION

A processual-relational approach to the Management of Projects: practical insights.

What the Management of Projects might mean from a socially constructed and emergent perspective.

28

The processual-relational, or social constructionism, approach taken by Dr Svetlana Cicmil, of the University of the West of England’s Faculty of Business and Law, explores projects as social arrangements.

“It means focusing on how people interact and the impact of their own fears, feelings of freedom or restriction and equality, and also change and indeterminism, which are always present in project environments,” she said.

The aim of this paradigm is to create a new understanding of projects as practice, but not necessarily move to predictive theory.

First, it is about what kind of knowledge is needed to be able to talk about more effective project management. Here, Dr Cicmil took inspiration from Peter Morris’s Reconstructing Project Management. “Peter has identified that the current knowledge base has failed to cover all the experiences, not only the project failures and successes, but the many other experiences that people have in project settings,” said Dr Cicmil.

Many regard projects as definable and recognisable for one common feature – the project development life cycle. However, said Dr Cicmil, project development life cycles are constructions, depending on what is included and what is not.

“We cannot create or study project practice without being part of that practice the best we can”

So what can social constructionism offer?

“Social constructionism is based in a hermeneutic tradition where there is no knowledge from outside, beyond individuals’ subjective interpretations of the reality in which they are together. Social phenomena, therefore, are human constructions,” said Dr Cicmil.

“Projects and project outcomes are the result of ongoing structuring and sense-making among people who are different but have a shared goal.”

Dr Cicmil argued that language is also important. “On projects we constantly communicate with each other, either verbally or through symbols or power games.

But language is not innocent or neutral; language carries a particular power of imposing certain meanings and disguising others.”

This raises the question of how the choice of language is influencing the construction of project management knowledge, perhaps marginalising or not paying sufficient attention to some expressions.

In terms of understanding the ‘it’ that project managers presume to manage, an important implication is that a project is both constructed and made sense of in individuals’ social interactions in a specific context and over time. And it is the task of research, said Dr Cicmil, to enhance our understanding of these interactions.

“It is not necessarily the researcher’s task to produce the theory of predictive power, but it is the researcher’s task to understand better what goes on in those interactions,” she said.

This raises the question of the relationship between perceptions, knowledge and practical rationality and its impact on research. The phenomenon studied, including the model

SVETLANA CICMIL | THINKING ABOUT THE MANAGEMENT OF PROJECTS: A CELEBRATION

“Project collaboration is then seen as a process which emerges over time through meaning-making and sense-making”

made about it, guides the researcher towards a particular way of accounting for that reality and so to develop knowledge it is important to have dialogue between different approaches.

Project members reinterpret themselves as the project evolves and this has implications for how we study project teams, how we talk about project culture and about the project manager’s role in establishing a culture conducive to collaborative work.

“Project collaboration is then seen as a process which emerges over time through meaning-making and sense-making. The work that has been done on project collaboration and project culture from this particular perspective sees culture as a social-relational practice rather than something that can be known in advance,” said Dr Cicmil.

The view of project managers as shared meaning-makers is very different from the one that talks about expert project managers, good controllers and rational decision-makers.

Social constructionism regards project managers as intuitive social and political actors. “Being a social and political actor and being a skilful technician is a different paradigm, not more important or better, but different and empirically justifiable,” said Dr Cicmil.

A social actor in the project context focuses not just on techniques and goals but also reflects on the values of the community being managed. The political actor is one who does whatever is necessary to get the job done.

But the key role of the manager, said Dr Cicmil, is to identify and reconcile differences and sense-making so people have common ground to act.

“That process of engaging is called praxis. The difference between project management as a discipline and project management as praxis is the latter is not restricted to explicit formal expert skills,” she said.

Dr Cicmil had some recommendations for researchers interested in social constructionism. She advised they should always state their assumptions, their perception of the world, in their research; create the model while trying to understand the practice, not before; and take broad inspiration from a variety of theories.

She also urged researchers to be engaged with practitioners. “We cannot create or study project practice without being part of that practice,” she said.

Social constructionism encourages pluralism in project management and Dr Cicmil said dialogue between researchers with different perspectives is important. “It’s not about fighting over whose paradigm is better but how they go hand-in-hand to understand better what it is we’re trying to do and how to manage in project environments.”

“… we need to think carefully about standards; how fixed they are, who defined them, are they valid. ”

MIKE BRESNEN

Professor Mike Bresnen is Head of the People, Management and Organisations division and Professor of Organisation Studies at Manchester Business School, the University of Manchester. He is Associate Editor of the journal Organisation and a founding member of the Innovation, Knowledge and Organisational Networks research centre based at Warwick Business School.

SESSION 2 CRITICAL REFLECTION

Embodying and embedding project management knowledge: practical imperatives and institutional challenges.

What might be learned from continuing to explore the counterpoint between practice and institutionalisation in the development of the discipline?

32

For Professor Mike Bresnen, Professor of Organisation Studies at Manchester Business School, there is a telling phrase in Peter Morris’s Reconstructing Project Management. “Actors – us: people – can act and make a difference”.

“That phrase signals three things for me,” he said.

“First, we’re reliant and thankful for the action that Peter has taken to develop the discipline and practice of project management.

“Second, Peter made a huge difference to me personally at a particular point in my professional life. His PhD inspired me in my thinking about the relationship between structures and modes of governance in projects in very complex task conditions.

“It’s something that’s missing from the discipline – an institutional agreement that we have a combined body of knowledge that enables us to move forward in improving project and programme performance”

“And, as a third way this phrase signals another theme – the importance of actors and the concepts and the structural context within which they act. Actors can make a difference but too often they are embedded in structures which constrain and influence the development of knowledge.”

Professor Bresnen titled his presentation ‘Embodying and embedding project management knowledge: practical imperatives and institutional challenges’. It draws on ideas from Frank Blackler, an organisational theorist at Lancaster University Business School. Among the forms of knowledge he identifies are those that are embodied in the competencies of individuals and those that are embedded in the processes, policies and practices applied to activities, including project management.

Blackler also talks about encultured knowledge or shared understandings, which pose a challenge for the development of the Management of Projects. “It’s a hearts and minds battle for those encultured, shared understandings and the internalisation of that knowledge in the practice of project managers,” said Professor Bresnen.

“It’s a challenge worth rising to but it’s problematic given that project management has established competing bodies of knowledge.”

Peter Morris highlights another challenge when he says that the Management of Projects as a discipline is “neither reliable enough nor engaged enough in helping to improve clients’ performance” and he later asks whether it is a discipline or a domain.

Professor Bresnen agreed that the developmental life cycle is the key thing that differentiates projects from non-projects but the study of projects can be considered from many perspectives and within different frameworks. “For example in the Manchester Business School, and this is common in business schools generally, project management is subsumed within an operations management discipline.

Elsewhere it’s more freestanding,” said Professor Bresnen.

MIKE BRESNEN | THINKING ABOUT THE MANAGEMENT OF PROJECTS: A CELEBRATION

Peter Morris, however, looks across the various schools of thought that have characterised project management. “It’s something that’s missing from the discipline – an institutional agreement that we have a combined body of knowledge that enables us to move forward in improving project and programme performance,” said Professor Bresnen. However, the diverse perspectives of project management mean it is difficult to talk about a project management community. We need to talk to each other to translate these sets of meaning from one community of practice to another.

Boundary objects – shared models, narratives or classification schemes – enable communities to transmit knowledge. In some respects, the body of knowledge associated with projects is not just part of a professionalisation project, but also a vitally important boundary object linking communities.

Peter Morris’s insistence on the importance of interdisciplinary thinking echoes the shift in the social sciences’ approach to the generation of knowledge, from an academically controlled environmental view, to Mode Two, where knowledge is co-produced by practitioners and academics. “Project management in many respects has always been in Mode Two,” said Professor Bresnen. “It’s always been spread across a heterogeneous, diverse, flexible range of different types of organisations.” However, as Peter Morris points out, this diversity challenges the development of a unitary kind of disciplinary base and here the academic community can make a contribution.

“It’s a challenge worth rising to but it’s problematic given that project management has established competing bodies of knowledge.”

And there are also challenges in the leveraging of institutional theory and structuration theory that Peter Morris suggests. Structuration theory emphasises the recursive relationship between agency and structure. As agents, we reproduce the structures in which we operate but, bearing in mind that structuration is the basis of many practice-based perspectives, it also suggests existing power relationships, structural constraints and constraints on natural behaviour.

With regard to institutional theory, the challenge is in creating a new sense of what is legitimate so that this can become accepted as representing ways of operating – ways that are based on deeper processes rather than being conditional on the actors’ embodied skills.

Peter Morris’s work recognises that the neo-institutional perspective has a dominance in understanding organisations in general and it offers potential in understanding project organisations in particular. It stresses that “…we need to think carefully about standards; how fixed they are, who defined them, are they valid.”

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PROFESSOR ANDREW DAVIES PROFESSOR OF THE MANAGEMENT OF PROJECTS, THE BARTLETT SCHOOL OF CONSTRUCTION AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT

The challenges and opportunities to promote innovation and improve the performance of large UK infrastructure projects. Insights from recent UK major projects.

TIM BANFIELD DIRECTOR OF STRATEGY, MAJOR PROJECTS AUTHORITY, CABINET OFFICE

Doing better. Almost 1 in 6 of the UK Government’s major projects is in danger of not delivering as required.

Why, after so much reflection, is it still so hard to manage major projects well?

SESSION 3

CURRENT AND FUTURE CHALLENGES

PROFESSOR NUNO GILL

PROFESSOR RAY LEVITT

PROFESSOR OF NEW INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT, MANCHESTER BUSINESS SCHOOL

KUMAGAI PROFESSOR OF ENGINEERING, STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Linking evolution in organisational structure to ambiguity in performance: the case of large infrastructure projects.

The link between structure and performance on large infrastructure developments and the fundamental importance of the design production.

Project Management 2.0. New project governance models that can better address the current political, economic, technical and human resource realities of major projects.

“I want to look at how innovation can change the way we think about projects”

ANDREW DAVIES

Professor Andrew Davies is Professor of the Management of Projects at The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management, UCL’s Faculty of the Built Environment.

He is on the Editorial Board of the Project Management Journal and an Associate Editor of Journal of Management, Industrial and Corporate Change, IEEE Transactions of Engineering Management, and Engineering Project Organization Journal.

SESSION 3 CURRENT AND FUTURE CHALLENGES

The challenges and opportunities to promote innovation and improve the performance of large UK infrastructure projects. Insights from recent UK major projects.

38

Professor Andrew Davies, Professor of the Management of Projects at The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management, explored the role of innovation in improving practice and theory in infrastructure projects.

“I want to look at how innovation can change the way we think about projects,” he said. “I am particularly interested in megaprojects, those with a price tag of more than US$1bn.” Peter Morris’s earlier work, The Anatomy of Major Projects, set the scene for the current thinking about the complexities and uncertainties of delivering such projects and the kinds of capabilities required. They are so complex and involve so many parties, how do we actually improve their performance?

“Innovation is very much associated with industries like IT, where companies such as Apple have built their reputation on being innovative, but what about innovation in megaprojects where we need to think about the new generation of processes, products and business models?” he asked. “There’s a real opportunity to understand how innovation occurs in that kind of setting and really think through the issues of complexity, and how projects are broken down into different subsystems that have to be integrated. However, there is an element of uncertainty around megaprojects: their planning, design and delivery can take years and the outcome is not always definite. Innovation can add another layer of uncertainty, and a challenge.”

“I think we can impact on practice, but the challenge of creating theory is a big one”

“Innovation is often associated with risk and uncertainty so why introduce innovation into high-risk megaprojects? One reason is that innovation can bring real opportunities. You can improve performance and bring in new ideas to improve the delivery of the project,” he said.

With Sam MacAuley of Imperial College, Professor Davies has explored three megaprojects where innovation has been key to their delivery: Heathrow Terminal 5; the London 2012 Olympics; and Crossrail. This in-depth collaboration with these projects has proved to be a symbiotic process, enabling the project institutions to improve their performance, and Davies and MacAuley to generate theory.

“I think we can impact on practice, but the challenge of creating theory is a big one,” said Professor Davies.

In terms of innovation’s impact on practice in megaprojects, Davies and MacAuley have identified four windows of opportunity – bridging; transacting; leveraging; and exchanging.

ANDREW DAVIES | THINKING ABOUT THE MANAGEMENT OF PROJECTS: A CELEBRATION

The bridging phase occurs at the beginning of a project, when there’s the opportunity to consider lessons learned from other projects and other industries, such as automotive and oil and gas, and bring in new ideas about collaboration and just-in-time production. It’s an approach that was adopted on Heathrow Terminal 5.

Transacting is about using contracts in a much more positive way. “Too often in the past we’ve regarded contracts as looking for the lowest bid to reduce the cost, but why not think of contracts in a more flexible way to introduce new ideas, bring in great designs, and perhaps even reconfigure them during the process,” said Professor Davies. Crossrail has placed greater emphasis on quality, moving from a 60:40 quality/cost ratio to 70:30.

The third window of opportunity, leveraging, is to engage with the supply chain to develop a strategy on how to improve the project. This is not a practice often employed.

“It’s as if that word – the lowly word ‘project’ – simply cannot be uttered in the lofty language of strategy speak”

The fourth window – exchanging – is the notion of transferring knowledge and innovation from one project to another, so lessons learned on the London Olympics may be applied to Crossrail and, in turn, HS2. “It’s an active process that needs to be enabled by people, and researchers can play a role in working closely with people from other projects,” said Professor Davies.

The challenge in generating theory is that project management is too often thought of as an operational activity and is neglected or ignored in mainstream management and organisational theory. As Morgan, Levitt and Malek wrote in Executing Your Strategy (Harvard Business School Press, 2007): “It’s as if that word – the lowly word project – simply cannot be uttered in the lofty language of strategy speak”.

Professor Davies has identified two pathways to generate theory from his research. One is to take a substantive problem in the research setting and select and apply a theory and, as a result, improve the understanding of the substantive problem. These findings could be published in project management journals.

The second pathway – and the one that he believes will make a greater contribution to management theory and organisation theory in general – uses the setting to generate theory. “Here we look at a theory, take a problem and then think about the setting. We design our setting to explore and answer the research question so that our setting becomes an opportunity to generate theory,” he said.

These findings, he added, could be published in more general theory journals.

“The reason we do projects in Government is to deliver policy intent, and about 90% of policy is delivered through projects. If we get projects wrong, the government doesn’t achieve”

TIM BANFIELD

Tim Banfield is Director of Strategy of the Major Projects Authority, part of the Cabinet Office’s Efficiency and Reform Group, where he has a critical leadership role developing the project delivery profession in Government. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Association for Project Management, a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy and, in 2013, was one of the first cohort to pass through the government’s Major Projects Leadership Academy. He was previously a Director at the National Audit Office.

SESSION 3 CURRENT AND FUTURE CHALLENGES

Doing better. Almost 1 in 6 of the UK Government’s major projects is in danger of not delivering as required. Why, after so much reflection, is it still so hard to manage major projects well?

42

For the UK Government, the success of projects is about delivery, said Tim Banfield, Director of Strategy of the Government’s Major Projects Authority.

“The reason we do projects in Government is to deliver policy intent, and about 90% of policy is delivered through projects. If we get projects wrong, the government doesn’t achieve,” said Mr Banfield.

“So it’s not about management, it’s not about process; it’s about focusing on delivery itself.”

The Major Projects Authority was established following the Major Projects Review in 2010. It was signed off by the Prime Minister and has the support of Parliament and the Public Accounts Committee, both of which can be heavily critical of Government projects.

“That’s indicative of the overall recognition that something has to change,” said Mr Banfield.

Prior to the Major Projects Review, two-thirds of Government projects failed.

The reasons included: a lack of central oversight; no understanding of the number or complexity of Government projects; little accountability or responsibility for under performance; little collaboration between departments and the centre; and lack of effective senior project leadership capability.

This focus had been lost because the Government hadn’t delivered projects since the 1970s. “We went through a period of contracting out work, “said Mr Banfield.

“A lot of agencies were created and the delivery capability and ability to be an intelligent client started to move out with it”

“A lot of agencies were created and the delivery capability and ability to be an intelligent client started to move out with it.” There was also an adversarial relationship between Government departments. The Government lacked even the basic data on the number and value of its projects. In fact the MPA has now identified the government’s top 200 projects, worth more than £400bn.

“The projects are not just the big infrastructure projects or the big capability equipment projects dominated by defence; there’s almost an equal balance of transformation, transactional and ICT-driven projects,” said Mr Banfield.

Now the MPA knows the scale of what it is dealing with, it is aiming to be recognised as a centre of advice for Government departments and have access to a wider range of expertise and capacity externally.

TIM BANFIELD | THINKING ABOUT THE MANAGEMENT OF PROJECTS: A CELEBRATION

“In Government we don’t have to generate great lessons learned databases because nobody ever looks at them”

“The idea is that we move from a model that’s about challenge and assurance to something that offers specialist support,” said Mr Banfield.

That process starts with a project validation review, then moves through the traditional gateway processes and the Major Projects Review Group.

This body considers the risks and deliverability, suggests changes, applies a RAG [Red, Amber, Green] rating and recommends to the Chancellor whether the project should be funded. An exit review is held on project completion.

The aim is to move from a generic assurance review model, where involvement is centred on implementing approval points, to a front-end loaded support model which focuses on deploying the right resource at the right time.

Mr Banfield said that in practice, something between the two models would be achieved but, ultimately, it would result in much greater involvement throughout the project’s life cycle.

The nature of projects means there will inevitably still be problems but they will be identified earlier.

“That’s a real shift for us in terms of the people, skills and resources we have, and it’s a big shift for departments as well,” he said.

To address the lack of leadership capability the Major Projects Leadership Academy has been established, delivered by the Said Business School at the University of Oxford. By the end of 2015, 350 people will have completed the course.

The MPA is also looking at developing a course for other project players, such as finance people and Senior Responsible Owners.

A big challenge is to ensure that project leaders are rewarded appropriately and that there’s a career path that rewards excellence in project delivery and execution.

The MPA also wants to develop strong links and share knowledge with companies and academics.

“In Government we don’t have to generate great lessons learned databases because nobody ever looks at them,” said Mr Banfield. “The best way I’ve found of sharing knowledge and sharing lessons is to get people to talk, and to talk in safe places. It’s one of the successes of the Academy – getting people together to talk where no-one is going to blame them.”

“Designs are instructions to allow us to build things. If we don’t understand how we design them I think we struggle to understand how we deliver projects”

NUNO GIL

Professor Nuno Gil is Professor of New Infrastructure Development at the University of Manchester. He is the co-founder and Research Director of the Centre for Infrastructure Development at Manchester Business School, the University of Manchester

SESSION 3 CURRENT AND FUTURE CHALLENGES

Linking evolution in organisational structure to ambiguity in performance: the case of large infrastructure projects.

The link between structure and performance on large infrastructure developments and the fundamental importance of the design production.

46

To advance the understanding of megaprojects, the design element needs to be understood, argued Professor Nuno Gil, Professor of New Infrastructure Development at the University of Manchester.

“Designs are instructions to allow us to build things. If we don’t understand how we design them I think we struggle to understand how we deliver projects,” he said.

This builds on Peter Morris’s work which heavily influenced Nuno Gil in two areas when he was a junior researcher. The first was front-end strategising.

“Now everyone takes it for granted but when Peter wrote his book it was a breakthrough in intellectual thought and it impacted directly on my work,” said Professor Gil. The second contribution is on the perennial tension between efficiency and effectiveness, or flexibility. “This strikes the right balance between efficiency delivering on time and within budget - with effectiveness, which is really adapting to evolution in needs, requirements and technology,” said Professor Gil. Building on Peter Morris’s legacy, Professor Gil is addressing what he identifies as a large deficit of design theory in the megaprojects literature.

The design, he said, essentially informs the organisational structure, as suggested by the mirroring principle. “If you want to deliver an integral asset, like Crossrail or HS2, you have to create an integral structure. If you’re delivering something more modular you create something more modular from an organisational point of view,” said Professor Gil.

“If you want to deliver an integral asset, like Crossrail or HS2, you have to create an integral structure.”

The problem, however, is that it’s difficult to modularise design organisations.

Megaprojects are meta organisations, a network of many autonomous parties unified under a system-level goal. No one party has ownership stakes over another, so it’s all about deals.

At the heart of any project is a core of players and this core opens to allow other organisations in as the project develops. This is where the difficulty arises: close the core too much, and the megaproject will never happen; open it too much and it becomes chaotic.

“The people that belong to the core share rights to directly influence the design requirements and performance targets and, as a result, we have bargaining,” said Professor Gil. “You can see that now with HS2 - you have gory fights, power struggles and compromises. This is the DNA of the core.”

This struggle, he said, is termed high rivalry and this, combined with the low excludability created by the porous nature of the core, creates a common pool resource, a resource to be shared by many people.

NUNO GIL | THINKING ABOUT THE MANAGEMENT OF PROJECTS: A CELEBRATION

“The problem is that organisations that are party to a megaproject have to share design rights, whether they want to or not,” said Professor Gil. And if design rights are shared, the governance structure must also be shared.

“We have to create multiple centres of decision making and devolve decisionmaking authority to local groups,” he said.

However, for shared governance to be effective there must be some boundaries.

Roles must be clearly delineated; sanctions imposed on those who break the rules; and there needs to be proportionality between costs and benefits.

“And, crucially,” said Professor Gil, “we have to invest in flexible design architectures because even if you have a relatively robust governance, it will take you only so far.”

Professor Gil outlined further areas of research he is exploring.

“Core membership is an intriguing question for me,” he said. “Should we mirror the meta organisation in use, or should we be democratic at least up to a point?

Where do we draw the line and say, ‘I listen to you but as far as strategy is concerned, you stay out?’”

Another question is: which design rights are shared, and which are ring-fenced?

“I liken this to a pre-nuptial agreement,” he said. “There are things that you’re willing to share, other things you’re not, and it might be a good idea to have that conversation right at the beginning.”

“Conceptualising megaproject organisations as a design commons creates massive opportunities,”

Another question is how does design structure affect governance effectiveness?

“We know that delivering an Olympic park is not the same as delivering HS2 or Crossrail. The architecture and issues are fundamentally different, but how does that affect governance?” Professor Gil asked.

And how does the design structure affect the design of the megaproject organisation, or the contracting and procurement strategy?

The geographical location could also impact on design choices, he said, citing infrastructure plans in India and Nigeria. “We can do a lot of research in London but we have to be careful about generalising the way we think we can do things here when we move into a country like Nigeria,” he said.

In summing up, Professor Gil reiterated that while complex projects require complex governance structures, complexity need not be chaos if the governance is right.

“Conceptualising megaproject organisations as a design commons creates massive opportunities,” he said.

“A project is really a means to execute a strategy. We have to stop talking about project delivery and talk about strategy execution or strategy implementation”

RAY LEVITT Professor Ray Levitt directs the Sustainable Built Environment research and outreach programmes of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University.

In 2009 he was appointed to the state of California’s Private Infrastructure Advisory Commission. He is a director of Stanford’s Collaboratory for Research on Global Projects and academic director of the Stanford Advanced Project Management Executive Program.

He co-founded and served as initial trustee of the New England Chapter of PMI and was a co-founder and past director of Design Power Inc, VITE Corp and Visual Network Design Inc. In 2008 Professor Levitt was elected a distinguished member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

SESSION 3 CURRENT AND FUTURE CHALLENGES

Project Management 2.0. New project governance models that can better address the current political, economic, technical and human resource realities of major projects.

50

There is the chance to make project management more strategic and more powerful as sectors such as construction move towards providing long-term service rather than one-off projects, said Professor Ray Levitt, Kumagi Professor of Engineering at Stanford University.

“A project is really a means of executing a strategy. We have to stop talking about project delivery and talk about strategy execution or strategy implementation,” he said.

Strategy cannot be delivered without project management and, while Peter Morris argues the importance of the front-end, it also has to be taken up at the organisational level, said Professor Levitt.

“There’s a project in the middle, then the host organisation, then the bigger environment,” he said. “We need to look at the bigger picture of projects and understand that every project is part of somebody’s strategy.”

“We need to look at the bigger picture of projects and understand that every project is part of somebody’s strategy”

To execute a strategy five areas must be aligned.

The first is ‘ideation’ or choosing the right project. “It’s about an organisation having a clear sense of its purpose, its identity and its long-range intention,” said Professor Levitt.

That identity must be linked to the second area: the ‘nature’ of the organisation.

The identity is associated with a recognised organisational culture and structure.

The third area is ‘vision’ and here the long-range intentions need to drive the setting of goals that can be measured via metrics. Ideation, nature and vision combine to be the activities and areas where strategy-making takes place.

For projects to be seen as the means by which strategy is executed a two-way conversation between strategy-making and strategy execution is needed.

This is the fourth area –‘engagement’.

The fifth area, ‘synthesis’, is where the results of the conversation lead to the selection of the portfolio of projects and programs that will be delivered and moved or transitioned into operations, thus executing the strategy.

In Reconstructing Project Management Peter Morris argues that while we need to be more flexible and adaptable in projects, Agile Project Management, as developed in the software industry, ignores the role and importance of the project development cycle and is really a form of task management. Professor Levitt disagrees. He argues that an agile approach is necessary to keep pace with today’s quickly changing world.

“Institutional contexts are changing very quickly,” he said. “In the middle of Heathrow Terminal 5 new planes like the Airbus A380 came out and 9/11 occurred, which must have had drastic ramifications on the airport’s security requirements. So thinking you could create a big plan and then slap the world

RAY LEVITT | THINKING ABOUT THE MANAGEMENT OF PROJECTS: A CELEBRATION

into place wherever you have variants, which is the essence of project management 1.0, is ludicrous on a 10-year project.”

Smartphones and social media, which have made information ubiquitous, unscheduled and continuous and available in real time, have also changed expectations. “People who have grown up in this media world don’t want 100,000 activities scheduled and budgets and targets,” said Professor Levitt.

“If you run projects that way you will drive out the most talented people.”

The response, he proposes, is to decentralise decision-making, create shared global awareness and have overlapping skillsets so people can self-synchronise, assisting peers and swapping tasks and roles when needed.

Not all projects can be totally agile, but in Balancing Agility and Discipline: A Guide for the Perplexed (Addison Wesley, 2003), Boehm & Turner identified five axes to help aid the decision about whether the project should be managed in the more traditional ‘command and control’ way or using more agile approaches. These axes are: the stability of requirements; the prevailing organisational culture; the size of the team; the consequences of failure; and the skill levels of the workers.

Plotting projects against these measures will suggest the most appropriate project management approach. However, it isn’t a binary choice: there are multiple dimensions to agility. Professor Levitt believes there’s a need to develop a theory of which kinds of decisions can be decentralised.

“It’s about an organisation having a clear sense of its purpose, its identity and its long-range intention”

The final part of Professor Levitt’s presentation speculated on the future – a world that has left traditional project management (version 1.0) and even moved beyond the current thinking (version 2.0) to a world of possibilities made ever more exciting by developments in technology, especially modelling and visualisation. This is a world Professor Levitt and his team at Stanford have researched for many years, and it is now offering tantalising opportunities to appreciate the complexity of projects, interrogate the costs and benefits that would be expected to arise from projects, and engage in conversations about projects with wider communities of stakeholders.

These emerging technologies and approaches will extend and enhance our ability to manage projects. They will be ever more vital as we grapple with many competing constraints such as climate change.

Some people may need to change what they do, others will need to change how they perform, but only through continual development of the technologies, approaches and skills of project management we will be able to tackle these challenges successfully, Professor Levitt concluded.

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SESSION 4

REFLECTIONS ON THE DISCIPLINE – DEVELOPMENT AND RESEARCH PROFESSOR PETER MORRIS

PROFESSOR ALAN PENN

PROFESSOR OF CONSTRUCTION AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT, THE BARTLETT SCHOOL OF CONSTRUCTION AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT

DEAN, THE BARTLETT FACULTY OF THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

Developmental milestone and future challenges. What are the essential drivers, the gaps, the challenges and the opportunities for the next generation?

Abschied. Transitions.

“Create a project management capability fit to meet tomorrow’s needs, placing the discipline firmly on the university curriculum. Support practice.

Respect methodology. And, if I have not already made this clear, do all this with good humour and a respect for people.”

PETER MORRIS Professor Peter Morris is Professor of Construction and Project Management at The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management, UCL’s Faculty of the Built Environment. He was Head of School from 2000 to 2012.

He has had a long career as an international project management consultant, construction executive and academic. A past Chairman of the Association for Project Management and Deputy Chairman of the International Project Management Association, he received the Project Management Institute’s 2005 Research Achievement Award, IPMA’s 2009 Research Award, and APM’s 2008 Sir Monty Finniston Life Time Achievement Award.

SESSION 4 REFLECTIONS ON THE DISCIPLINE – DEVELOPMENT AND RESEARCH

Developmental milestone and future challenges. What are the essential drivers, the gaps, the challenges and the opportunities for the next generation?

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Professor Peter Morris, Professor of Construction and Project Management at The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management, began his presentation with the intellectual origins of the discipline of project management, emphasising integration as a core intellectual base and how the amount required on projects varies according to the project’s size, speed and complexity. He reflected on the study he carried out of project overruns (The Anatomy of Major Projects, Wiley, 1987) which has proved crucial in the development of the discipline, and to today’s discussions.

Working off a data set of over 1,600 projects, he found 98% overran. The causes of these overruns were not the things typically associated with project management, such as scheduling and cost control, but were to do with what we now refer to as the ‘front-end’ – unstable or unproven technology, owner changes, and externalities such as stakeholder action, environmentalist opposition, changed economic conditions, new regulatory requirements, geophysical conditions.

Managing, or at least influencing, these many factors as far as possible is often critical.

This led to a new paradigm: the importance of setting-up the project and shaping its design and implementation – its definition. This is what Professor Morris later termed ‘the Management of Projects’, where the project and its successful management is the unit of analysis.

This new conception of the discipline has a pluralistic knowledge base and gives greater attention to the management of the whole project life cycle. This allows greater insight into many issues – for example, how managing change varies depending upon the stage of the life cycle one is working in.

In fact, the management approach used must vary not just with the characteristics of the project life cycle but more generally according to the aims of the project promoter, the technologies employed, and the contextual conditions the project is operating in. Importantly, management can, to an extent, shape the project’s context. Doing so calls on political skill and is a responsibility of senior management.

Professor Morris then discussed building institutional project management capability. If managing a project is a challenge then transferring management knowledge is genuinely difficult. Much of the richest project management knowledge is experiential and tacit, and so is difficult to formulate, transfer and embed. But sound educational frameworks coupled with people-based support, such as Subject Matter Experts and Communities of Practice, help shape our corporate and individual knowledge to the needs of the project, the enterprise, and individual staff.

People are the hardest elements to manage: unlike the other resources deployed on projects, people have agendas and the ability to act independently of, and even contrary to, management’s intent. Yet they are central to project performance. Hence Professor Morris’s phrases: “projects are built by people, for people, through people,” and “never compromise on people, but we always do.” Why? Because you never quite know how they will perform. This is where professionalism comes in: the professional is supposed to provide sound judgement and reliability.

Unfortunately there are still problems and inconsistencies in some of the professions’ published guidance. Professor Morris provided the example of program management, which, in his view, is conceptually confused. For some, it is the approach for achieving strategic change; it is about achieving outcomes as opposed to outputs, an interpretation which Professor Morris considered to be illogical and erroneous. To be fair, neither OGC nor PMI distinguish program management on this basis but on the presence of Benefits Management. But this again, Professor Morris argued, is erroneous. And further, project management itself is inappropriately conceptualised by PMI, not

PETER MORRIS | THINKING ABOUT THE MANAGEMENT OF PROJECTS: A CELEBRATION

“projects are built by people, for people, through people”

least in that it misses completely the work involved in the project’s front-end.

Why, asked Professor Morris, has academia found it so difficult to challenge and help the professional bodies address inconsistencies such as these?

Why aren’t universities recognised as the home of the real, cutting-edge knowledge on the management of projects, as they are in most other disciplines? One reason may be that the knowledge required to manage projects is heavily skill-based as well as, or rather than, book-based. This creates barriers for those academics who find it difficult to engage with and thereby explore practice, particularly at the summative level of the discipline. The result is that project management lacks intellectual weight at its overall, integrative level. Maybe coaching as a form of Action Research offers a way of engaging academics more into the reality of the Management of Projects, Professor Morris suggested.

In any event, the time is ripe for a more sustained program of research into the effective management of projects, he felt. The UK has recently been swamped by floods, nagged by climate change and energy supply concerns, challenged by infrastructure integration, and embarrassed by major systems projects that don’t work properly. As managers of projects, our role in addressing such major issues is central. For after the science, after the policy, must come implementation.

Implementation will inevitably involve projects and programs, albeit in varied, new and innovative forms, ranging from hard engineering projects to softer, more diffuse change programs.

Leadership is now increasingly recognised as important for the discipline, particularly given the urgency of many of the issues now facing the world of projects. Project managers – leaders – need to work with sponsors, designers, constructors, manufacturers and others to create solutions that provide genuine value for the project sponsor.

The sponsor - the owner - is key here. He, or she, has to make decisions about integrating project and corporate thinking which are genuinely difficult, but which are exacerbated by an absence of shared available theory and guidance. The sponsor could well be the person who exercises the most influence on the conduct of the project, and yet critically also be the person who has received the least formal training in the discipline. There is very little framing of how we should be training or educating the sponsor.

Our work should be as relevant as possible, Professor Morris argued. Given the challenges facing us we should avoid wrapping ourselves in theory for theory’s sake. Of the papers we write, the research we publish, ask ‘so what?’, ‘how are we helping?’ Even if the work is essentially theoretical, it must surely ultimately have practical application. Certainly one of the discipline’s biggest challenges now is to get papers in 5-star academic journals but, he said, let’s be true to society’s bigger needs: management is a social construct, so let’s construct it for social good.

“See holistically; think critically; act integratively, with a bias for action but with respect for the front-end,” Professor Morris concluded. “Create a project management capability fit to meet tomorrow’s needs, placing the discipline firmly on the university curriculum. Support practice.

Respect methodology. And, if I have not already made this clear, do all this with good humour and a respect for people.”

“Every single project is radically different so how do you compare one with another? Methodologically it’s almost impossible, so we’re forced into case study narrative methods from which it’s incredibly hard to draw generalisations”

ALAN PENN

Professor Alan Penn is Dean of The Bartlett, UCL’s Faculty of the Built Environment, a HEFCE Business Fellow and a founding director of Space Syntax Ltd, a UCL knowledge transfer spin out. He is a member of the Space Group, an EPSRC Platform-funded research group. He is also Chair of the Architecture, Built Environment and Planning sub-panel 16 and a member of Main-panel C for the Research Excellence Framework 2014.

SESSION 4 REFLECTIONS ON THE DISCIPLINE – DEVELOPMENT AND RESEARCH

Abschied. Transitions.

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When Peter Morris gave Alan Penn a copy of his book, Reconstructing Project Management, he wrote a note in the cover asking Alan to “suspend his disbelief” that there was a powerful intellectual basis for the field of project management and that he hoped the book would help him to appreciate what was in the area.

“Reading the book did help me to understand that there is an intellectual basis,” said Professor Penn, Dean of The Bartlett, UCL’s Faculty of the Built Environment.

“However, I think the intellectual basis in this field is in that stage of science much like physics was before the Second Law of Thermodynamics was written, when practice was well ahead of theory.”

People build projects, massive projects. They may fail to deliver on time, or to cost and they may even get the scope wrong but, generally, they deliver, and this is where Peter’s work on the front-end is critical, he said.

“It’s at the front-end that people define the costs and the schedule and unless you get those things right, you’re bound to miss,” he said.

However, one of the problems of the field of project management is the complexity of projects. “Every single project is radically different so how do you compare one with another? Methodologically it’s almost impossible, so we’re forced into case study narrative methods from which it’s incredibly hard to draw generalisations,” said Professor Penn.

Professor Penn observed that some of the approaches described during the day were starting to bear fruit and, as BIM (Building Information Modelling) and new technologies enabled uniformity of data gathering across radically different projects, academics could begin to theorise.

“It’s at the front-end that people define the costs and the schedule and unless you get those things right, you’re bound to miss”

ALAN PENN | THINKING ABOUT THE MANAGEMENT OF PROJECTS: A CELEBRATION

“What I’ve realised in reading Peter’s book is that it’s all in Chapter 15, which is about teams and people. Peter points to a number of things in project management which are absolutely central: emotional intelligence; power and politics; how people relate to the institutional context around them and how that drives their behaviour.

“It took a number of years to achieve but, having done it and unified construction project management in The Bartlett, the whole field is now taking a real step forward”

“I would say the issue of soft power is generated through trust. It’s important to be credible, to be understood and to take an ethical position.

Those are the lessons that Peter has personally embodied throughout his career and which are absolutely central to it as an academic field.

Building on this theme of emergence and unifying Professor Penn went on to note how UCL has developed its own academic area in project management.

“One of Peter’s great achievements at UCL and the Bartlett has been to forge a single school for the field of construction and project management,” “It took a number of years to achieve but, having done it and unified construction project management in The Bartlett, the whole field is now taking a real step forward and that’s a great legacy for Peter within our institution, for which I’d like to thank him.”

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END-PIECE What can one learn from a brief set of presentations on a new, complex and difficult subject such as this, even with such an expert and distinguished set of speakers? This was not a seminar for the uninitiated. The ideas presented and discussed proved rich and varied. But how effective are they, as an ensemble, in creating something useful?

First of all there can be little doubt that there is something new and important here, whether ‘here’ is in management, social science, project management, engineering, or practice or theory. Professor Morris developed the core idea in the early 1990s, as he describes in his contribution. Since then its influence has grown steadily. There can be little doubt that, in the strict sense given to the term by its author, Thomas Kuhn, with ‘the Management of Projects’ there has been a genuine paradigm shift.

As Professor Morris describes in Reconstructing Project Management, the Management of Projects: “covers both programs and projects. Its unit of analysis is the project. The project is defined, pre-eminently, by its development life cycle. The Management of Projects is as concerned with managing the front-end as with down-stream execution. (‘Front-end’ is defined as either the period prior to definition of the project’s, or program’s, requirements – or the period prior to ‘sanction execution’ being given.) The Management of Projects stresses the need for the project’s strategy to flow from the sponsor’s. It emphasises the creation of value for the sponsor. It includes pro-active stakeholder management. It recognises the challenges frequently found in technology and innovation and the importance of having an appropriate and well-managed commercial platform to work off. And it acknowledges that people are central to projects, and programs. ‘Projects are built by people, for people, through people’ (Reconstructing Project Management, page 235.)

Compare this with the standard conception of project management, with its very strong emphasis on execution delivery, with no real appreciation of both who and what is involved in developing the definition of the project, and the difficulties many people in project management have in understanding the linkages between project, program and portfolio management. One therefore shouldn’t be surprised at the greater power and potential generated through the vastly increased richness of this broader conception.

Jeff Pinto brought this out clearly in his presentation, suggesting inter alia that areas such as Critical Success Factor studies, HR generally and within this competency specifically, knowledge management and power are hugely enlarged when examined under the Management of Projects conception. Mike Bresnen offered a similarly richer perspective, stressing “the importance of actors and the concepts and the structural context within which they act”, pointing out therefore the confusing and troublesome impact of the discipline having differing Bodies of Knowledge – in effect different ontologies.

END-PIECE | THINKING ABOUT THE MANAGEMENT OF PROJECTS: A CELEBRATION

Similarly our understanding of strategy, design and innovation are all areas that benefit from taking a Management of Projects perspective, as Ray Levitt, Nuno Gil and Andrew Davies, each leading researchers in these areas, described. Though recognised as important, these are not well explored, understood nor performed aspects of managing projects and desperately need mainstreaming into the discipline. The Management of Projects perspective helps do this, taking them way beyond standard project management thinking.

An area that emerges as crucial in the Management of Projects paradigm is the role of the owner, as Graham Winch and Sir John Armitt both emphasised.

In traditional project management-speak we generally see no further than ‘the project manager’. Graham Winch, expanded this role, distinguishing between the sponsor and the supplier-facing versions of the project manager function.

Graham’s view on this is that it is the owner of the project who decides to invest in the project and that it is therefore important that this recognition of ownership is appreciated by those who will follow as the project life cycle unfolds. Although the terminology changes, the sentiment was the same for Sir John Armitt who noted “the most important player is the client….the body who has the need for the project; owns the vision; determines the objectives of the project; and takes the financial risk of delivery and operation….There needs to be a single body that is representative of the main stakeholders in the success of the project.”

The day honoured by this book, the 28th March, 2014, was quintessentially an academic one: one that celebrated the role of education and theory in a pre-eminently practical world. Hence it should come as no surprise to find the issue of learning and performance lying at the heart of much that which was discussed. Sir John Armitt had ‘learning the lessons’ as his major focus.

Arguably so did Mike Bresnen. Svetlana Cicmil examined the challenges of diverse contexts in creating shared social constructs of what we have learnt.

Peter Morris addressed the particular need to develop leadership abilities, for we, as citizens of Planet Earth, now face major disruption and change. Projects and programs will be the means of implementing solutions to these needs. Yet our ability to deliver projects reliably is still not as solid as it should be. Tim Banfield showed how the UK Government is using a whole armoury of means to try to improve performance, while Andy Gale showed how higher education can bring the Management of Projects to bear on a trans-national, multi-firm competence building program.

Alan Penn may believe we are still at the equivalent stage in physics pre the discovery of the Second Laws of Thermodynamics – if only management, as a subject, were that straightforward! – but it is clear that we are making progress – as was evident by the enthusiasm of the speakers to accept the invitation to present their thoughts as part of this celebratory day, and by the energy built up by the audience during the day.

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So what have learned from this day that we didn’t know beforehand? First of all, that the Management of Projects has stood the test of time as a conceptualisation of projects and their management. Second, that by taking a broader perspective one enables the contribution of many differing academic perspectives and their associated theories. Third, that the points that the Management of Projects touches on are neither limited by national location, sector orientation, nor skill or knowledge specialism. The Management of Projects does challenge the purely tactical, technical view of project management, but it doesn’t limit the areas that contribute to the understanding of how best to manage projects successfully.

Finally, the event held on the 28th March sparked discussion and debate about the Management of Projects, as this publication hopes also to do.

Whether you agree or disagree, if you are interested in projects and their management, and especially if you are interested in researching and developing our collective knowledge of this area, then you should have gained more than just a little from reading this account of a remarkable day as well as a powerful set of ideas and insights.

The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management The Bartlett UCL Faculty of the Built Environment 2nd Floor 1-19 Torrington Place London WC1E 7HB www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/cpm Telephone: 020 3108 3220

Published by The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management Words by Keren Fallwell Editing by Andrew Edkins Production by Donna Gage Design by Studio Special Photography by Kirsten Holst and Mary Hinkley Printed by Calverts

Professor Ray Levitt

Professor Peter Morris

Professor Andrew Davies

Professor Peter Morris

Professor Peter Morr Dr Svetlana Cicmil

ris

Professor Alan Penn

Professor Nuno Gil

Professor Graham Winch

Professor Andrew Gale