Engineering Project Management Framework white paper
- 1. White paper – engineering & construction project management principles 1. Introduction This paper outlines an approach to achieving effective management governance of programmes and projects, ensuring tight control of costs and risks and delivery of work to schedule, budget and specification. The governance concepts adopted are based on best practice employed by industries undertaking major infrastructure projects and professional bodies such as the Association for Project Management (APM), PRINCE and the Office of Government Commerce (OGC). Governance is provided through implementation of a Project Management Framework. This framework provides the necessary process, system, people and organisational improvements to enable effective control and delivery of work across a portfolio of minor and major projects/programmes. 2. Project Management Framework 2.1 Aim Implementation of Project Management Framework (PMF) must be viewed as a substantial business change programme, taking many months to define and then implement across a business. Successful implementation will provide improved project control and delivery. It will also provide consistency and standardisation of approach, improved visibility of performance and predictability of project outcome. This will impact not just those within a business, but also working relationships with its contractors. From a people perspective, the PMF will also ensure the development of professional standards and the development of project management capability across the organisation involved. 2.2 Elements The PMF will define and integrate the 3 fundamental elements of project management: processes, systems and people. Consistent application of process is key to effective project status reporting, facilitating control and therefore improved delivery of projects. This will involve defining and promulgating top level lifecycle management process (e.g. GRIP in Network Rail, LCM in BAES) to control investment and programme risk, as well as a project control cycle process to ensure effective day to day management of estimating, costs, planning, subcontractors, change control and project risks. The control cycle will need to be flowed down to contractors where relevant, including specification of reporting requirements, work breakdown/cost breakdown structures etc. Page 1 of 3
- 2. White paper – engineering & construction project management principles The Seven Elements of the Project Control Cycle Establish Baselines Prepare & Plan, schedule Authorise organise And cost work Change Manage management change Manage Risk Manage and control work Work Review and management control Enterprise Programme Solutions Ltd All rights reserved © 2008 EPS Consulting Effective management information systems underpin and enable efficient project control and delivery by providing the early warnings necessary to avoid deterioration in schedule and cost performance. In essence – the “radar” for the project. This will involve ensuring new or existing systems accurately automate well designed processes to accelerate the visibility of project performance threats and allow the pro-active interventions to mitigate any consequences BEFORE too much time or money is wasted. If new systems are required, the most cost effective method is to tender and deploy those that are able to be integrated with each other and within an industry standard central repository such as Oracle or MS SQL Server. Essentially the case for an enterprise data model. Only with such an architecture can an organisation expect to get rapid visibility of project performance across different functional management tools, often made by different manufacturers. Systems are needed for estimating (e.g. RIB), planning (e.g. P3e), cost control (e.g. Oracle Projects), earned value management (e.g. Cobra) and risk management (e.g. ARM). Excellent project management skills are essential for successful project delivery. This requires matching personal skills sets to requisite project roles and developing peoples’ capability in a structured, progressive and professional framework. This can be achieved through establishing a competence framework, Page 2 of 3
- 3. White paper – engineering & construction project management principles which initially needs to address basic skills and systems training to support the fundamentals of implementing the PMF. In the longer term, the focus can shift to developing the professional disciplines of the wider project management community, e.g. commercial, engineering, estimating, planning, procurement etc. 3. Implementation timescales Typically a PMF may be developed and rolled out in 3 phases: Phase 1 (definition) will involve defining the basics of the framework specific to an organisation’s work. This will cover assessment of current capabilities across process, systems and people; authorisation of business case for the PMF; establishment of PMF project team; definition of core processes; compilation of new system specifications and tendering for them; definition of revised management arrangements for contractors; and definition of a competence framework and associated training and development programme. Phase 2 (roll-out) will involve preparation and initial implementation of the PMF across targeted areas of an organisation. This will cover implementation of core processes; procurement, testing, integration and go-live of new systems; establishment of revised management arrangements for contractors; user training based on the competence framework; and a period of specialist support. Phase 3 (consolidation) will involve the bedding in of the PMF into the business. This will cover periodic maturity assessments to judge the rate of take up of the PMF; continuous improvement programmes; wider professional development of project staff; and benchmarking of capability with similar organisations. During this phase an organisation may then wish to consider roll out of the PMF to other parts of its business. In all, the above programme could involve up to 3 years work, depending upon the extent of implementation, current capability levels, new systems/processes deployed and duration of phase 3. Page 3 of 3