“Many of our customers are economically challenged,” says
Steven Kurmas, president and COO. “So we’re very focused on
how we spend money, because ultimately it increases rates.”
To ensure it’s making the most prudent project invest-
ments in Detroit and the areas beyond, DTE opened a proj-
ect management office (PMO) in 2006.
“If you don’t have a PMO, you’re building everything on the
skill of each person, and consistency from one project to the
next is divergent,” says Ron May, PMP, executive vice presi-
dent, major enterprise projects. “At the end of the day, you
simply don’t know if you’re going to get the results.”
While Detroit may have gotten the high-profile press, the
PMO delivered bottom-line results across the company.
Laying the Foundation
One project in particular highlighted the company’s urgent
need for a PMO. Broken into six phases over 15 years, the
US$1.7 billion expansion of the Monroe Power Plant in Monroe, Michigan involved retrofitting a coal-fired power plant
to meet updated environmental regulations. Yet despite the
project’s high profile, its first phase closed behind schedule,
over budget and with operational problems.
“We benchmarked externally and found out that we were
in the bottom of the pack of companies doing similar expan-
sions,” Mr. Kurmas says. “We recognized that this project was
so big and would dominate our business results so significantly
for the next several years that we had to do something. Project
management was our answer to that problem.”
The big question was how to convince the rest of the com-
pany of that. To secure internal buy-in, the PMO commu-
nicated the outcomes it could help achieve, such as meeting
regulatory requirements, avoiding costly fines and penalties, meeting company
goals and cutting costs.
“At first it was a leap of faith,” Mr. May says. “Then it became clear that we
were delivering value to the enterprise.”
To address performance issues on the Monroe project, and across the portfo-
lio, the PMO developed two centers of excellence: one responsible for providing
resources and the other for ensuring quality. The resource-focused center of
excellence helps the PMO increase project efficiency by staffing to the precise
needs of each initiative, says Victor Allen, PMP, director of the project manage-
ment office, major enterprise projects.
“We’re able to react quickly to changing demands—whether we need to staff
up or staff down—rather than have people inside of a particular project perma-
“Many of our
customers are
economically
challenged.
So we’re very
focused on
how we spend
money, because
ultimately it
increases rates.”
—Steven Kurmas
