PM Network - November 2015

pays farmers in those areas to flood fields. In 2013, the project’s first year, 40 farmers participated, and 30 percent more of the targeted species were seen in participating fields than in other ones, Fast Company reported.

One of the biggest challenges communities face in implementing water projects is that cities, districts, municipalities, businesses and special interest groups all have a vested interest in how water is used, and their demands are heightened in water-scarce environments, Dr. Grigg says. “People are very emotional about water, so expect the stakeholder management process to take longer and to cost more money than you ever thought it could,” he says. “There are a lot of examples of failed projects due to lack of coordination between stakeholders.”

Planning for a Dry Future

There are also examples of how the drought has brought stakeholders together to focus on common goals. Consider the success of the Lake Mead intake project in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. Back in 2002, the city recognized that water levels were dropping at Lake Mead, the primary source of drinking water for the community. The drop was troubling both from a quantity and quality standpoint, as lower water levels can generate higher particulate rates, which means the water needs more treatment, says Erika Moonin, engineering project manager for the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA), Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.

In response, SNWA launched a project in 2005 to shore up the community’s water supply. Its scope included digging a new 3-mile ( 4.8-kilometer) gravity-fed intake tunnel well below the reservoir depth levels of existing tunnels and building a new pumping station.

SNWA invited local community groups, government agencies, representatives from various Las Vegas districts and city advisory panels to weigh in on the project and guide planning, which ultimately helped win support. “We needed to be sure that every jurisdiction was on board so that we had a unified voice and a unified approach,” says Bronson Mack, spokesman for SNWA, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.

theEdge
TRACKING
RISKS

With a high-speed railway plan in California, USA now in the execution phase, project leaders are paying closer attention to cost overrun risks. In April, the California High-Speed Rail Authority established a US$261

million contingency fund to handle potential overruns on a 65-mile (105-kilometer) stretch of the rail in the San Joaquin Valley between Los Angeles and San Francisco, which will be connected through the project.

Jeff Morales, the rail agency’s CEO, told The Fresno Bee that contingencies for highway projects are usually assessed on a flat percentage. “The approach we’re taking is quite different,” Mr.

Morales said. “We’re identifying
and assessing risk areas and
assigning people to minimize and
mitigate those risks as we go.”
Officially launched in January, the
US$68 billion project is broken into
multiple phases to be completed
between 2018 and 2028. The con-
tingency fund accounts for almost

20 percent of a US$1.37 billion phase ending in the city of Fresno.

The project team analyzed cost- and schedule-related risks, prioritizing them by likelihood and running computer simulations to see how each risk would affect the work. The simulations provide a 90 percent confidence level that the contingency fund will be able to handle unexpected construction costs.

Stakeholder challenges related to land acquisition may be the project’s biggest risk. In addition to numerous protests and legal battles that have impeded progress, as of March the rail authority had obtained only 15 of the 544