Balanced Project Management Practice

A systematic approach to managing projects better

Practice of Project Management Principles
Major Hurdles

Mr. Madhukar MD and CEO, Project Managers Pvt Ltd. Most of us would have come across projects in our daily life. When it comes to the word projects, it can be anything from building a small shed which involves a few trades with minimal services to a complicated data center. It could also be a complex system like an airport where multiple expertise and interplay between subsystems like structure, electrical, audio-visual, conveyor systems, air-conditioning systems exist. Whether we are dealing with the most basic project or the most complex mega structure, the elementary and underlying principles remain more or less same. Being a practitioner of the profession of Project Management in

various capacities and roles for well over 25 years now, I will try and bring some real life situations and challenges faced in executing projects big & small to attention of readers so that these can be addressed. Over the next few issues, I will try and cover the most basic or what I call 'Big Stones' which hinder good project management practices thereby posing challenges to the successful completion of projects.

WHAT IS BALANCED PROJECT MANAGEMENT?

A Balanced Project Management Practice involves planning the project to achieve all the desired objectives of the Project Mandate or simply put, end-user requirements. It calls for a diligent and systematic approach to all aspects of a project life-cycle including but not limited to preparation of a well thought out Project Mandate by the project Owner, a Good team designed to deliver, commitment of stakeholders, choice of good practices and above all a proven control & management mechanism that is put in place right from day one. The approach gives equitable weightage to various aspects like budget, ehs, quality, time and compliance matters.

Project Mandate

Right at the top of wishlist of requirements of a successful project lies Project Mandate. A clear set vision & mission statement of the project sets out what the goal of the project is and what are the roles & responsibilities of various stakeholders including that of end-user. This is something that needs to be cleared right at the beginning of the project initiation. This task is normally accomplished by the Developer or the Project Owner in consultation with the project Architect (who is normally the first person other than the Developer on-board). Increasingly, Developers are also using the services of professional project managers to prepare the project mandate. Regardless, a typical project mandate includes the following guidelines (box 1) as a minimum and may be extended to include other pertinent information as per the complexity / requirements of the project.

Many projects fail at Mandate level due to several reasons and those that could be avoided are shown in box 2. All of this can be avoided or mitigated by following diligent process of risk evaluation, anticipation and mitigation. Many a times, it is found that the Project Owner devotes very little time to define these critical issues at the initiation stage and persons delegated with responsibility down the line assume things which may not be in line with the expectations of the Project Owner or end-user thereby leading to major disconnect as project progresses.  

There will always be pressures of getting it done here & now situations in every project. The challenge is in anticipating as many of these and implementing a system of resolution so that the focus shifts back to managing projects in the way originally planned albeit with some course corrections. 

The Fictitious Saga

From the point of view of this series of articles, an imaginary project with various fictitious stakeholders is set up and lessons learnt during the life cycle of a project from initiation to eventual facility management is visualized. Even though the project and the stakeholders are fictitious, the events and the lessons learnt are from real life experiences from real projects. The main players are: Know-all Property Developers Ltd, (KPDL) a start-up headed by Ravi Raj (RaRa), an engineer with more than 15 years of experience in working with various property developers of south India. He has good funding support from angel investors and his vision is to occupy the space of mid-sized developers catering to needs of commercial & residential spaces. He has an ambition to make it big in a short time so that he can show results to the investors in about 3 years. Arty-Crafty is a well-known architectural design firm based out of Bangalore headed by architect Bobby Chethan who is credited with creating some of the most well-known and commercially successful projects in and around Bangalore. Ardent Designs (AD) pride themselves as the most forward thinking design house in Chennai with branches all over south India. Ardent has ambitions of making itself an all-India company in the near future and has high hopes on its aggressive regional head, Venky, a young design engineer who is heading their operations in Bangalore. Completing the picture is Project Management Consultant firm of Dream Project Solutions India (DP) started by engineers Siva and Raghu, both from PMC background with exposure in Indian subcontinent….

...to be continued

As a thumb rule, more accurate the information at Initiation Level, the better for project control & monitoring

Project Mandate – Basic information required                                       

• Type of Development (Residential, Commercial, IT/ITES, School)
• Name of Project, Plot size & Planned Gross Floor Area
• Type of Construction
• Required Date of completion
• Expected date of approvals
• Expected date of construction start
• Major Stakeholders
• Category of Development & Budget
• Any constraints (phased handover, traffic restriction, working hours, etc)
• Evaluation & acceptance criteria

Major avoidable failures during project mandate stage

• No clarity on type of development or change of land-use midway
• Change in proposed gross floor area or number of floors
• not identifying the project stakeholders completely or choosing wrong stakeholders
• Wrong budgetary provisions or lack of financial closure
• Overly ambitious delivery timelines
• No clarity on end-user requirements or on evaluation & acceptance criteria at time of handover

In conclusion, it is possible to create world class best practices in managing projects by taking a whole-to-part approach that considers every aspect as well as every stakeholder of a project as important as the other and treating them in an equitable manner.