And that’s an awfully nice position to
be in—especially in a slumping economy.
“Typically these projects are revenue-generating so every additional day of
production has a huge impact,” Mr.
Prieto says.
Megaproject management operates
under a whole different set of rules.
On smaller or even regular-size
initiatives, project managers can
focus on the specific technical issues
at an operational level. But the
megaproject manager must take a
broader approach, says Johnny Xu,
senior planning engineer at Shimizu
Corp., a global general contractor,
architecture and engineering firm in
Singapore.
“Besides having a keen understanding of the project goals and
strategies, megaproject leaders must
have macro-level knowledge of the
political and cultural issues surrounding the project,” he says. “They must
be familiar with local construction
practices and customs.”
And yet they’re not entirely exempt
from keeping up on the action at the
micro-level, either.
“They may not need to know the
details of the technical issues, but they
should appreciate and have insight into
the issues that their teams will face,”
Mr. Xu says.
NUTS AND BOLTS ISSUES
Overseeing a megaproject is not simply
a matter of taking conventional project
management experience and applying it
on a larger scale. There are fundamental
differences that can make or break a
megaproject manager, Mr. Prieto says,
particularly when it comes to small
flaws in the system.
“Little things happen on typical
projects all the time that have no impact
on the project outcome,” he says. “But
on a megaproject, those same little surprises can kill you.”
While visiting the remote site of a
recent construction megaproject, for
example, he noticed two team members
kept returning to a storage facility for
new nuts and bolts as they worked on a
hopper. Intrigued, Mr. Prieto investigated and discovered the construction
required eight different kinds of nuts
and bolts, each of which required a separate tool. When asked why, the engineering group explained the choices
were made to optimize the design—
smaller bolts and screws cost less. The
savings amounted to US$147 per hopper. Yet without realizing it, the team
racked up at least US$10,000 in lost
efficiencies due to the added time the
contractors spent collecting different
tools and materials.
“On a small project no one has to
worry about eight nuts and bolts, but in
a megaproject, that creates major problems and financial inefficiencies,” he says.
WHEN GOOD
PROJECTS GO BAD
No one wants their projects to fail, of course. But with
megaprojects, the stakes are even higher for the company’s bottom line—and the project manager’s career.
When a megaproject fails or even just doesn’t
quite live up to expectations, it’s seen as the project
leader’s fault even if other factors were to blame.
There’s always the risk that unforeseen events
will cause problems, says Mansour Almalik,
Almalik Holding Co. To reduce the impact, he
encourages project managers to document everything that happened on the project, including why
failures occurred, the rationale for decisions and
the lessons learned.
“Whether it’s an issue of funding, lack of
resources, hostile circumstances or environmental
challenges, the project manager should make clear,
through good documentation of events, what happened and why,” he says.
That takes on added importance if the project
manager wants to move to a different position or
take a job at another company.
“You can only explain why a project failed
through clear documentation,” Mr. Almalik says. “At
least you will be able to say ‘The failure was due to
these three events that were beyond my control.’”
