Project autopsy

Thur 23rd February
You're Fired! And you're flirting!

Sorry, but I'm a sucker for Alan Sugar's latest series of his sitcom, 'The Apprentice'. Well, it is a sitcom, let's face it. It is pure TV comedy set against rehearsed situations and has nothing to do with an innovative recruitment process. Well, not the bit that we see on our TV screen's any way.

Last night's edition was wonderful. Again, as with the first series, Sir Alan initially split the group into girl and boy teams. Very creative. Celebrate diversity and mix it up some, why don't you. The assembled had to come up with a name for their team. One chap, Syed, came up with a real corker for the boys. Yeah, it was like "Wow Syed, how did you think of that one you crazy guy you!" Syed proudly proclaimed that the boys should call their team "The A-Team". To stunned silence, Syed bravely attempted to substantiate why this was an excellent ‘metaphor' for the team, and not actually a pile of poo that was stinking out the brian-storming session.

The poor guy who eventually was fired, Ben, was not really ever going to be a contender. He was not an ‘Alan Sugar man' and you can only think that he was chosen for his looks and not his brains. OK, that's a little unfair, but he had been on TV before in a Ballroom Dancing competition and his natural bent is leaning towards TV presenter. Which, me thinks, was his driver for being ritually humiliated on this intriguing programme.

The key skill in this TV game is project management, not business accumen and an entrepreneurial flair. You succeed or fail in just how well you project manage and lead your team.

Unfortunately, Ben's skills suck. Last year's finalist, the charismatic Saira, explained, very politely, on the programme's follow-up show later that night, that Ben had needed to demonstrate really creative project management skills when his back was to the wall, ie. when in the boardroom explaining his failure to Sir Alan!

You see, not only is his now ex-colleague Syed useless at idea generation, he is also to team participation what Jose Mourinho is to humility. During the boardroom show trail, after the girls unashamedly flirted, showed cleavage and blatantly used their womanly charms to out do the staid, grey and utterly bland boys team, Syed had the knife out for poor Ben. It was ‘Psycho' revisited.

Syed was quite correct. To save his bacon, Ben needed to have demonstrated throughout the assigned task he was project managing, the creative leadership attributes of communicator, coalition builder/team worker and, probably the key skills when your backside resembles toast, persistence and persuasion. All shown with aplomb by his female counterpart as she and her entire team scorched to victory in the ‘buy/sell fruit' business task.

I'll be tuning in and updating you all on this fascinating TV show over the next few months. Hopefully the eventual winner could be groomed not just for Alan Sugar's company, but also for project manager of the year. A really imaginative, innovative proactive project manager at that.

One who could successfully lead a project that is inherently a 'three-way complex beast' of design, construction and politics. The type of project that will be in abundance during the run up to the 2012 Olympics…

Tues 21st February
The risk of being innovative

Flicking through teletext last night I noticed the FA had announced that following a visit to the much maligned construction project in the London Borough of Brent, the 2006 FA Cup final will now be played at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. No great surprise there then.

Reports had been emerging over the last few days that not just the Cup final, but also the possibility that over 20 football matches and concerts that had been planned to be held in the new 90,000-seater stadium will also have to be moved to other venues, or cancelled.

The bigger surprise with this rather sorry tale of modern day UK construction is that it is alleged Wembley officials have no idea when the spectacular new ‘venue of legends' will be ready for use by the public.

Come Thursday, when Multiplex announce their latest set of figures, no doubt the Aussie firm will make a statement of when they intend to complete the construction works. I am sure they will make us all gasp with the latest projected total loss that they shall incur on this high profile job. Reputedly it is around £200m. The final cost of the stadium could be £1bn. That does not include the losses that will be incurred if the expected cancellation of matches and gigs does become reality.

I know that no other sports ground has used an arch to support its roof, specifically one that is 133-metres high, but these staggering costs dwarf any other stadium development I know of. It makes you just shake your head in disbelief at the apparent inability to prevent the haemorrhaging of money. It really is awful and cannot bode well for the construction programme to prepare London and other parts of the UK for the Olympics of 2012.

As Multiplex is holding the proverbial baby, it is being chastised for this debacle over our national stadium. The thing is, we should also be more than just a little upset at all the stakeholders who were responsible for managing the risk on the project.

It appears that rather than identify the risk, acknowledge that risk as an inclusive group of rational people and then manage it as an inclusive group who would all fail or win together, dependent upon how they manage that acknowledged risk, a decision was made early doors to apportion risk. The party apportioned that risk was then asked to place ‘a bet; can you bring in the Wembley project to the cost and time agreed?

Well, it is all geography now; the answer was a big fat no. Multiplex could not keep to the costs and times envisaged four years ago. Consequently division and a blame culture have beset the project team and the risk has got completely out of control. Everyone has suffered and it is a total no-win situation.

The truth is that because Wembley is inherently a three-way complex beast of design, construction and politics, the risks that were required to be managed via the contractual and associated financial arrangements set in place four years ago, and the administration there of, have proved ineffectual in controlling this beast.

What will we learn from the Wembley project? How can we as an industry prevent similar financial and reputation carnage as we have witnessed here? Come 2012, will we be reporting with pride the wonderfully efficient use of time and money, not to mention the innovation produced, in the realisation of the buildings and infrastructure for the Olympics?

I suspect that unless we as an industry change quickly our approach to:

• Continuous improvement and its intrinsic ‘lessons learnt'
• Managing risk,specifically in complex, innovative Wembley-like projects
• Disclosure and positive acceptance of our mistakes

…that come 2012 we will all be shaking our heads again and muttering: "Why did we not learn from Wembley?"

The big issue here is that Constructing Excellence and our other esteemed research organisations are not focusing on these problem projects. We need to put less into exemplar projects and best practice and get into project autopsy.

That's where the real learning can be made.

Let's get into the cardiac arrest project on its death, bring to the fore the where and why of its ills and get that knowledge back into the industry in the form of Preventative medicine. EC Harris partner Joanne Prior has been an advocate of this for years!

All the great innovators know this is the trick to improving the ‘product' and developing, managing and sustaining their innovation. Bill Gates swears his Microsoft Empire is built on celebrating mistakes, not success. The Arch ‘Geekan' of Technology says Awards can only be placed on the walls, they provide no valid feedback of the vital information; where have we made a mistake? The UK's home appliance ‘Uber Engineer', James Dyson, extols the virtue of recognising your mistakes and getting excited about them, because now you know what's failing. Edison always said that with each mistake he got nearer to his goal, what ever it was!

More on a culture of accepting and sharing risks, learning from and not repeating mistakes, plus the importance of teams, all in pursuit of sustainable innovation, in a week or two. Specifically in relation to the new Madrid Barajas Airport.

Meanwhile, all the best Multiplex, Wembley and the FA, you are going to need it…

And finally…

"Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other."
John F. Kennedy