Mace Group

UK local authorities are currently delivering some very expensive and complex waste-disposal projects - in many cases bigger than anything attempted before. Phil Butler, chairman of the ICE waste and resource management board, reports on many useful project-management lessons that have been learned.

Many UK authorities are in the middle of delivering significant waste-disposal facilities and support infrastructure worth hundreds of millions of pounds as they secure alternatives to their exisiting landfill-disposal routes. However, procurement and delivery of these complex infrastructure projects has proved particularily challenging.

Waste has been a "Cinderella" service for many years with little or no investment, so local authorities have rarely had to play a major client role. As such, their in-house programme and project management skills have sometimes been found wanting. Many have also retained project-management consultants to advise them through the process, ensuring everything is managed efficiently and to schedule; but they still need their own process, becoming, intelligent, clients themselves.

Mace has gained significant project and programme management experience on a number of UK waste and environment-related infrastructure projects and we have recently reviewed what makes successful project delivery happen. Analysis of the many useful lessons has identified some essential elements that should ideally feature in all successful infrastructure procurement.

Building the client team
First, continuity within the project team is essential. Client organisations often place too few of their staff on the project, drawing mainly from consultants on an ad hoc basis. Although understandable - knowledge can be gained, skills learned and attitudes adjusted in this way - this can impact cost and quality, whereas a good balance of internal and external resources allows knowledge transfer and project ownership within defined budgets.
Good project managers also bring ‘free advice' from a wealth of best practice from their other projects - this should be part of their added-value offer. They should therefore be truly integrated into the client team, bringing experience encompassing the entire life of the project and offering management stability.

Focus on project and planning
In a time-pressured environment, the focus is always on outputs rather than establishing delivery processes. The adoption up-front of recognised methodologies, protocols, procedures, tools, templates and case studies provides a robust framework for timely delivery of outputs and objectives in accordance with expectations.
In addition, development of complex documentation, requiring several disciplines and multiple stakeholder input and review, can also lead to ‘silo' working and challenging management issues. Clear work packages and associated management and communications plans will always assist delivery outcomes.

Good planning is a prerequisite on all projects. Detailed planning involving the team, and effective reviews and scrutiny, are the best way to consider the widest variables. Weak planning increases the risk of requiring unbudgeted resources at short notice.

Reporting and leadership
Planning is linked to project reporting, which must be used to update, assess and monitor and benchmark against plans and programmes. This will ensure the original objectives are still being pursued - it is sometimes easy to get sidetracked.
To use reporting effectively, it is important to understand the process, objectives and outputs, as well as the function of management. The use of change-control and issues management is a solid way of dealing with unforeseen or extended risks, especially combined with effective contingency planning. The time and discipline to listen., step back and generate ‘thinking time' will always pay back in saved time at later stages.
Strong leadership, yet careful upward management of strategies and thinkers, is also important for project success. understanding personal motives and goals is also essential.

Finally, the focused deployment of project transactors sponsored by the UK Department for Environment, Food and and Rural Affairs can add real value to projects - transactors are regarded as honest brokers in a project team environment.
www.macegroup.com/waste

As seen in the Institution of Civil Engineer's 'Civil Engineering Proceedings' publications.

To find out more
Mace is running free one-to-one workshop sessions and gateway 'readiness to procure' reviews for interested parties. To arrange please contact:

Paul Higgins, Head of Waste, Resource and Environmental Management
+44 (0)20 7068 8000
paul.higgins@macegroup.com