Last month, ResoLex was invited to join the International Centre for Complex Project Management (ICCPM) roundtable series, in London. The ICCPM is a not-for-profit organisation, established in 2007 by the Australian government to gather knowledge and best practice from around the world to help improve the performance of complex projects. The global roundtable series is a thought leadership activity, harnessing the collective wisdom of complex project leaders from around the world to produce new insights and practical steps that organisations can take to improve project outcomes. The sessions also provide an opportunity to exchange knowledge and experience, and discover new insights from others across sectors, industries and countries.
The keynote was given by Murray Rowden, Global Head of Infrastructure at Turner & Townsend. As someone with over 30 years of experience in infrastructure delivery around the world, Murray shared his reflections on whether today’s approaches are fit for today’s challenges. His reflections called attention to the artificial nature of the boundaries between disciplines, teams, and organisations, and the impact that these boundaries can have on the delivery of complex projects and programmes. From his perspective, asset owners and operators have recognised that relationships are not where they need to be, and there is a move towards increasingly value-based, long-term relationships with the industry to be able to effectively manage and deliver complex projects.
During the day, we had the opportunity to explore the perspective of complex projects as open systems, interacting with both the internal and external environments, against the more traditional view of projects as closed systems with predefined boundaries. This description provides a shift in focus towards identifying the roles of varied stakeholders and their context or environment in shaping the project’s outcomes.
A number of central themes were explored during the day, with a rich conversation from a broad group of project professionals, clients and the supply chain. Discussion focused on four core areas:
- What is the correct level of collaboration and co-design between the different related functions in a complex project?
- What is the role of project leaders in orchestrating the integration of this intricate web of related, but traditionally distinct disciplines within complex projects?
- How can we/should we best reconfigure project boundaries to align with the full life cycle of assets
- By re-imagining boundaries, can organisations enhance project success rates, optimise resource allocation, and ensure long-term value creation?
Throughout the event, it became increasingly evident that there is a critical requirement to engage stakeholders early from across the project life cycle to define project boundaries and negotiate expectations and desired outcomes. The importance of the client in leading this stakeholder management was highlighted by many, and across the discussions, there was also a strong acknowledgement that the complexity inherent within open systems requires a less hubristic client model. The idea that clients can instead adopt a more collaborative approach with the supply chain, in which we co-design shared outcomes and set up a collaborative culture and behaviours, may allow the client to better support the broad stakeholder requirements and lead to better project outcomes.
The workshop outcomes will be integrated into the wider insights collected from the full roundtable series and will contribute to a better understanding of how we can manage open project boundaries and the relationship with key stakeholders. We look forward to seeing the final outputs of the research and continuing to contribute to the thought leadership in this important area of research.
Led and facilitated by: Collin Smith (ICCPM CEO), and Dr Naomi Mather, (ICCPM Director for Industry Liaison & Member Services)