Project success statistics are widely agreed to be extremely poor and
most project practitioners across sectors of the industry will agree that they
have come across questionable practices in their project experiences, says
project and engineering management consulting firm SSG Consulting CEO Steven Golding.
In 2015, Engineering News reported that only 25% of
large construction projects surveyed in professional service firm KPMG’s Global
Construction Survey “were concluded on time and within budget over the last
three years”.
KPMG’s 2019 Global Construction Survey still cites improving the global
track record of delivering projects on time and on budget as a challenge.
Meanwhile, global project management professional association Project
Management Institute’s (PMI’s) 2018 Pulse of the Profession report indicates
that only 58% of organisations fully understand the value of project
management.
“The importance of fully valuing project management cannot be emphasised
enough; organisations that undervalue project management as a strategic
competency for driving change, report an average of 50% more of their projects
failing outright,” states PMI.
Pulse of the Profession is a yearly global survey conducted by PMI of
project, programme and portfolio managers charting the major trends in project
management.
“Megaprojects are possibly the most complex business ‘organisms’ on the
planet. We use the word ‘organism’ because a project is always a living,
changing, unique multitude of complex processes, which tend to possess a life
of its own,” explains Golding.
Mega projects are characterised by lengthy durations – generally
spanning over years, multiple phases that run sequentially and concurrently,
more than 150 different business processes spanning different departments,
multiple engineering disciplines, multiple locations, massive amounts of data
and documents and, generally, there are 100 or more companies that need to work
together, he says.
“Understanding this complexity is a fundamental pillar of SSG
Consulting’s success story and the company prides itself on having an
exceptional track record of more than ten years in effective project delivery.”
Golding says few organisations and project teams can strictly apply the
lessons from previous projects so that identified issues are not repeated.
Methodology and process is so imbedded in organisational culture that only the
boldest of organisations break the mould of poor execution sufficiently, he
believes.
According to him, most project practitioners have a very specific bias
based on their specific education and experience, which can lead to making
serious mistakes in project execution.
“SSG Consulting believes in following a very specific structure, which
represents a modified Project Management Body of Knowledge structure and
ensures that we never miss a certain area of a project,” he highlights.
Golding comments that project managers often pride themselves as being
termed “cowboys”, where risk identification and management processes are
ignored and replaced by misplaced bravado. He emphasises that SSG Consulting
takes risk management for its clients extremely seriously.
He says inadequate quality of engineering outputs impact all subsequent
project phases. Documentation and document management are also crucial, as
either can result in extensive losses which are seldom understood or quantified.
Meanwhile, SSG Consulting’s Key360 Management Platform can solve several
fundamental problems faced by megaprojects, mentions Golding.
“Existing systems used on projects are not integrated, only address a
fraction of the required business processes, cannot produce real-time dynamic
business intelligence required by projects and do not facilitate high
throughput accurate workflow.”
Key360 leads the industry in terms of integrated project management systems and operational systems as well as providing an unrivalled capability to produce dynamic, real-time business intelligence.https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/project-success-statistics-poor-2019-07-19
