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Developing a Project Management Work Process

Client Situation:  A petrochemical company that had a history of capital projects coming in late and over budget and with frequent legal disputes with its contractors asked for our support.  They had a cadre of project execution people with a lot of experience, but no particular process for planning and executing projects.  Our objective was clear "find a way to have more predictable project performance and more congenial relations with the contractors."

Bob Bobst

Bob Bobst
Senior Consultant - Portfolio Management and Program/Project Management


Lesson Learned: I can still be surprised when a reengineering initiative redistributes power and the people who lost a bit are actually happy about it.

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Endeavor Management Solution:  

We approached this situation in several stages -

  1. Organizational assessment:  During discovery we interviewed representatives of all capital project stakeholders – Commercial Sponsors, Engineering Managers, Technology Managers, Project Mangers, Manufacturing Mangers, Maintenance Mangers, Design Engineers, et al.  We also reviewed available methodology documentation and sample work product.  Findings from these efforts led us to a set of recommendations.  
  2. Design:  With CEO support, we formed a "natural work team" composed of representatives of key client personnel and proceeded to develop a gated work process for executing capital projects (maps and narrative explanations) along with a standardized project organization model, defined deliverables with preparation guidelines, improved role descriptions, accountability/responsibility assignment matrices, gate-keeping philosophy and checklists, and a variety of forms and other tools.  A fundamental feature of the design was "starting well" – both the projects themselves and the individual stages and contractor relationships.   
  3. Communication:  Throughout this effort we supported the client in developing communication pieces, executive reviews, "all-hands" meetings and other mechanisms to keep everyone aware of what was going on and why it was important.
  4. Implementation & Training:  The client was so eager to "start doing things better" that the new system was implemented incrementally with training provided for each increment.  This is not an  ideal approach, but in this case it worked.  
  5. Coaching:  As real projects began to use the new system (or pieces of it, as they became available), we provided real time coaching to facilitate the rapid adoption of the new system.
Results and Benefits:
Our client transitioned  smoothly into the new approach.  Project execution personnel, especially, found that the documented process, role definitions and tool kit truly made their jobs easier. Within 24 months  the benefits are apparent: more accurate cost and schedule forecasts and a reduction in legal disputes with contractors.  Feedback indicates that empowering the project managers and implementing a change control procedure had particularly beneficial impact.