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Tag: Technical Project Management

When and How to Implement Managed Services in Your Organisation

Written by Francis Miers on . Posted in Articles.

What are Managed Services?

Managed services are the process of outsourcing some or all of your day-to-day IT operations to an outside provider. Most organisations do it already. If you have Office 365 or G-Suite, you have software as a service, which is a form of managed service. The days of the organisation that runs all of its IT from its own data centres, managed by a team of in-house staff, are all but over. The question of when and how to implement managed services applies better to separate services than to the whole organisation.

Do I Need to Outsource?

So, when should you outsource a service, which is an IT system used by your organisation’s staff or its customers, such as email, CRM or online services for customers? A key factor is often whether the service is specific to your organisation or not. If it is, it may well be rare or unique, perhaps the website that provides a differentiated service to your customers. Such a service may require to be managed by in-house staff trained in its particularities. If the service is more off-the-shelf, however, such as email or CRM, even if it is strategic, managing it with your in-house staff could distract them from more value-added work that only they can do. This is where it makes sense to consider managed services. Your organisation and its staff should focus on its core competencies, not on standard activities which can be done just as well by others.

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In fact, standard activities can often be done more cheaply by others.

 What are the Benefits of Using Managed Services?

Managed Service Providers (MSPs) will be able to spread the cost of the staff required to do these activities over many customers, and so can deliver the service less expensively than in-house teams at all but the largest organisations. The economies of scale can also deliver benefits in other areas. The MSP may well be better equipped to keep your organisation compliant with regulations such as GDPR, and they may provide stronger security against malware and accidental data loss. When you engage an MSP, you can negotiate contractually binding service level agreements (SLAs) with them. The SLAs provide clarity about the level of service expected, which may be better than the best efforts of an in-house team.

Other reasons to adopt Managed Services include increased efficiency – MSPs can implement best practices and industry standards, as well as help you with planning, procurement, and governance. Of course, you may be able to do this in house, but to do so as cost-effectively as an MSP requires a large scale.

An increasingly strong reason to use an MSP is that it can enhance security. You can write it into your SLAs that the MSP must keep your software updated, something which can drop down the priority list when IT is kept in house. This can affect even the largest organisations. One of our customers, a large logistics firm, suffered a major financial loss caused by malware which exploited a vulnerability in its operating systems, a loss which could have been avoided if those systems had been kept up to date.

It is important to keep the services you delegate to MSPs and those you keep in-house under review. The technology is changing rapidly, and more and more services are reaching the point at which it is better to outsource them than keep them in-house.

How to Implement Managed Services

Once you have identified a service which could probably be outsourced to an MSP, how should you go about it? Even if you have a trusted supplier in mind, it is normally worth evaluating proposals from several others, if only to keep up with current pricing, and what new services might have emerged in the market. Write up a set of requirements and send them to each prospective supplier. This, of course, is normal procurement best practice, but, aside from competitive pricing, what should one look for in an MSP?

Key Factors to Consider

A good MSP will always have strong technical skills. Ask to see whether they are accredited as a company with important software and other IT vendors. For example, if you are implementing a managed service for your Windows desktops, is the MSP accredited with Microsoft? What qualifications are held by their staff? Do they follow ITIL principles? Ask them for reviews by their customers. Unless you are looking for help with a specific technology, it is good for MSP to have broad-based technical skills, rather than skills focused on a single vendor. That way, they can better advise on procurement decisions and will be able to recommend solutions that are best for you, rather than those which fit their skill set. For example, if you host or are looking to host systems in the cloud, an MSP with experience of multicloud may be a better partner than one with experience of only one cloud provider.

Incident Management with Managed Services

Closely related to technical competence is organisational competence. A good MSP will minimise emergencies; well-maintained systems should only go wrong rarely, but if something does go wrong, how good is their incident management? What system do they use to track incidents? It should be based on a helpdesk system such as ServiceNow or Jira Service Management, but for mission-critical systems, it should include incident management such as xMatters or PagerDuty. How good is their monitoring and alerting? Important systems should be monitored, and any anomalies should be flagged as alerts. The best monitoring and alerting systems now have built-in machine learning to help interpret monitoring data from individual devices and determine whether particular readings give cause for concern and if so, provide diagnostic information.

Good technical and organisational skills in an MSP are reflected in the provider’s certification in industry standards such as ISO 27001 (information security) and ISO 27018 (cloud services security), as well as quality standards such as ISO 9001. Check which accreditations are held by your prospective MSP. ISO 27001 is particularly important if you are considering entrusting the MSP with your data. It ensures that the MSP’s own systems and processes adhere to minimum standards of security.

Organisational and technical competence must be complemented by the provider’s ability to meet your desired SLAs. If you need 24/7 support, they must be able to provide it and meet all your other requirements concerning response times, resolution times and dedicated support channels. For example, can you call them for a high-priority incident as opposed to logging a ticket?

Of course, IT moves fast, and competence with current technologies should be backed up by an ability to be aware of and adopt emerging standards and technologies. A good MSP will have a wide range of customers and partnerships and will be able to draw on its network and relationships to offer you the best of what is up and coming. At its best, this can give you a competitive edge in your business by allowing it to benefit from the latest technologies before your competitors do.

Finally, it is important that your MSP is sound financially and reputationally. Find out how long it has been in business and ask to see its recent financial information. Research any news appearance to check there is nothing untoward.

Improve your Business Strategy now

In summary, implementing managed services should be done primarily to allow your organisation to focus on what it does best. Managed services can also reduce your costs, improve security, and introduce the latest techniques to your organisation. Implement managed services on the parts of your IT which are not unique to your organisation and keep the scope of managed services under review. In choosing an MSP, evaluate several, and check their technical skills, organisation skills, standards compliance, ability to innovate and financial stability. If implemented well, managed services can improve your competitive edge and contribute to the overall success of your business. Looking for more information on Atlassian Managed Services? Read this essential guide here at Automation Consultants.

7 Best Practices of Resource Forecasting to Optimize Project Costs

Written by Mahendra Gupta on . Posted in Articles.

Resources play a crucial role in achieving successful project delivery. Whether human, equipment, facilities, or process, a project needs help to get the work done on time and within budget. Recent market fluctuations and economic uncertainties fueled by the ongoing COVID 19 pandemic have wreaked havoc on business sustainability.

As human resources are expensive, project managers cannot afford to rely on guesstimates to meet the deliverables within a dynamic business environment.

According to Deloitte’s Global Cost Survey 2020, “74% of organizations preferred cost reduction over other business initiatives in the post-pandemic era.”

So, to stay profitable amid the current volatilities, accurate estimation is a prerequisite. It is when resource forecasting comes into the picture.

Before delving deep, let’s get the basics right.

What is resource forecasting, and what is its significance in project management?

As the name suggests, forecasting defines the probability of future events and helps project managers implement corrective measures in advance. Resource forecasting is the process of predicting resource metrics used in projects such as demand, supply, cost, vacancy, etc., in advance. It usually occurs in the project initiation phase or can happen as early as the sales process stage.

Resource forecasting is a critical function of the project resource planning process. It ensures that projects are suitably staffed and equipped to address any sudden changes during the entire lifecycle. Using resource forecasting techniques, managers can predict future workload, skill requirements, project financials, resource utilization and apply corrective measures accordingly.

In the absence of appropriate forecasting tools, projects might get delayed or result in budget overruns. It has a cumulative impact on the deliverables and leads to project failure and low client satisfaction. Therefore, businesses must invest in a robust resource forecasting solution to stay profitable and ahead of the curve.

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Best practices of resource forecasting and how it helps optimize project costs

Cost management is one of the crucial responsibilities of a project manager. Let’s understand how resource forecasting contributes to cost optimization:

1.Maximize profitable utilization and reduce resource cost

Keeping your team members busy doesn’t necessarily translate to productivity. They could be either occupied on non-billable or mundane BAU activities. So how can you ensure the productivity of your project team for a high ROI? Billable utilization is an essential KPI of project management that directly contributes to revenue generation and project effectiveness.

Using resource forecasting solutions, project managers can gain insight into billable, non-billable or strategic work ahead of the curve. Accordingly, managers can mobilize resources from non-billable to billable/strategic work and improve project profitability. Forecasting analytics helps avoid over or underutilization and facilitates optimum utilization of resources against their capacity.

2.Minimize last-minute hiring/firing costs

Often, projects are unable to kick off at the right time due to insufficient resources. As pointed by PwC Project Management insights, “lack of resources contributes to 30% of project failures.”  Resource forecasting helps predict the resource demand for future and pipeline projects. Using capacity planning, managers can identify the excesses or shortfalls ahead of time and apply appropriate resourcing treatments to bridge the gap. If the requirement is more than capacity, there is a shortage of resources, which means you cannot start the project. On the contrary, if the demand is less than resource supply, there is an excess, which hits your bottom line.

In either case, time and budget overruns are inevitable.  Corrective measures such as training programs, adjusting project timelines, hiring permanent or contingent resources, or selling excess capacity helps. These proactive measures eliminate unnecessary hiring and firing costs and help create a future-ready skilled workforce. Thus, resource forecasting facilitates informed hiring decisions and allows sufficient lead time to reduce unwanted cost escalations.

3.Eliminate employee burnout and deliver within time and budget

Often, managers constantly overload few high-performing resources with work as they have proved to deliver efficiently in the past. This practice can result in employee burnout, increased absenteeism, compromised quality, or worse, unplanned attrition. Consequently, the project profitability is at stake, and cost escalations become unavoidable. Using a modern resource forecasting solution, managers can gain foresight into workforce utilization and take preventive measures to avoid overallocation in the first place.

Forecasting analytics enables managers to consider resource availability and capacity before assigning them to projects. It ensures that employees are not overburdened. Furthermore, resource forecasting helps managers to avoid under/over skilled resources to projects. Underqualified resources delay projects and cause subsequent budget overruns. Overqualified resources may feel disengaged, unproductive, and overshoot the project costs. Enterprise-wide visibility helps allocate the right resources to projects at the right time and cost.

4. Reduce bench-related costs and manage your bottom line

A study by HBR points that bad hiring decisions can lead to 80% of employee turnover. It can cause a large bench of mismatched skillsets that adversely impacts the bottom line. Resource forecasting solutions have inbuilt people on the bench reports that show which resources will end up on the bench after a specific date. Using this report, managers can minimize bench-time and improve project profitability by proactively looking for appropriate tasks for resources before getting rolled off.

Furthermore, project vacancy reports provide visibility of resource demand across the enterprise. Using these reports, project managers can deploy appropriate benched resources to tasks. Resource forecasting also improves the billability of benched resources by providing training or shadowing opportunities. Project managers can address other resource shortfalls by making informed hiring decisions.

5.Improve employee productivity with competent resource allocation

When managers consider employees’ skills and interests before assigning them to tasks, it enhances their engagement and productivity. It helps managers deliver projects within the stipulated budget and timeline. As already mentioned, resource forecasting predicts the resource requirements for future projects in advance. Using these analytics, managers can start planning for fulfillment.

Studies have shown that empowering employees to select projects of interest increases task ownership and motivation. Accordingly, managers can publish the resource requirements within an enterprise on an appropriate resource management tool. Relevant resources are notified and can show their interest in joining the project. Managers can allocate suitable candidates from the potential applicants to ensure higher engagement, productivity, and eventually project profitability.

 6.Track and improve project financials ahead of the curve

Cost management is one of the essential functions of project management. Besides estimating, allocating, and controlling the project budget, cost management also helps businesses predict future expenses to minimize budget overrun. Using resource forecasting solutions, project managers can monitor critical financial indicators such as costs, revenue, profit margins, and overheads.

Tracking and comparing the actual spending against the estimated budget helps control budget overruns. If there is a variance, necessary corrective measures can mitigate project risks ahead of time. Comparing the forecasted vs. actual spending helps improve future estimations and align them to reality. Forecasting analytics allows monitoring of shared resources working on multiple activities. Accordingly, managers can adjust the resource mix and control project costs in advance.

 7. Timely availability of resources helps avoid cost escalations

Bottlenecks are a nightmare for project managers, especially when they happen close to the deadline leaving no scope to prevent delays or cost overruns. One of the causes of bottleneck could be when a critical resource’s unavailability in completing one task delays other dependent tasks. Subsequently, the project fails to deliver on time and within budget.

Resource forecasting can help make the right resource available for the right project at the right time. Project managers can use resource optimization techniques to avoid resource bottlenecks. They can apply resource leveling, i.e., extending project timeline to accommodate available resources or resource smoothing, wherein additional resources help in timely delivery.

The Takeaway

To sum up, resource forecasting is a crucial element in project planning. Ideally, managers must control project costs from the beginning and not leave them to the end. Cost management primarily helps eliminate unnecessary project costs without compromising the quality of the deliverables. It is a continuous endeavor that requires constant monitoring to stay within the budget. Resource forecasting identifies discrepancies and helps you to take timely actions and avoid budget overruns. Some project managers reserve a small fraction of the budget as a buffer for unforeseen circumstances.  They formulate the project plan with the remaining funds to avoid last-minute hiccups.

How to Increase Efficiency of Your Current and Future IT Operations

Written by Robert Konishi on . Posted in Articles. 4 Comments on How to Increase Efficiency of Your Current and Future IT Operations

With COVID-19 and other changes in today’s landscape, there has been an unparalleled shift.

that provides a once in a lifetime opportunity to implement a more evolved IT operational management and service provisioning model.

Optimizing your IT service model not only brings cost reduction and efficiency, but the process also helps identify under-looked areas that can be cut or strategically leveraged elsewhere to gain productivity and speed. With budget constraints, IT teams now have the opportunity to reduce non-strategic IT services and resources that will enable the organization to thrive and just not survive during these challenging times. When reviewing how to optimize your IT operations, it’s best to breakdown your outcomes into steps, as well as understand that processes, methods, metrics and hardware can all take different forms.

Remote workforces and other new operational requirements are key drivers to changes in how IT can provision new services and streamline IT operational models. Wondering where your company should start to begin the process of increasing efficiencies in IT operations? Here are three important considerations to keep in mind:

Reinvent Your IT Operational Model

  • Eliminate high cost, legacy IT services: Overall, this will reduce the costs of your operational model. The legacy items will include both IT and customer-facing services that were previously ‘untouchable’ and provide questionable value for the organization and your customers now. By starting with IT in this process, you will be seen as an organizational leader and lend more credibility to your proposals to reduce or eliminate customer-facing programs and services.
  • Focus on retention and development of strategic IT assets: In an IT operational model, a focus on these assets and staff resources will help architect and lead the effort in transitioning your current IT functional silos into a more integrated, IT services provisioning model. In addition to this, you must re-evaluate your IT service providers and select those that will champion and support the effort to effectively collaborate with other partners. Lastly, elevate existing resources and find new IT staff assets that will effectively partner with your customers to create an enabling IT services foundation that can be leveraged across organizational units. Architecting and building this common foundation will improve time to market, reduce implementation efforts and reduce ongoing maintenance costs.
  • Transparency is key: A critical success factor for optimization is transparency. Create an efficient, clear communications process that utilizes measurable deliverables and metrics for operational performance, project management and alignment with financial objectives. Start with a simple, well thought out core of basic measurements to get started, gain momentum and refine your model as appropriate.
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Design The Roadmap

  • Engage executive leadership: As we all know, an executive steering committee is essential in establishing and managing IT priorities. This must be an organizational focused, transparent process that includes communications that are actionable, quantified and focused only on items that impact project scope, cost and timeline.
  • Ensure visibility: Data and metrics that measure the operational and strategic impact of a proposed IT initiative must be developed upfront. Data must be presented that establishes the baseline and measures progress against the expected outcome. In concept, this metrics-based process will be the same that you built for your IT organization. In this case, the metrics will measure growth, financial performance and quality metrics that are easily understandable across the executive team.

Execute Strategically

  • Implement a project management methodology: Both technical and operational inputs are required to build your project plan. This will enable the necessary alignment with reimagined operational workflow processes and deliverables. An iterative project management process should track project progress and provide early visibility to project deliverables and any required scope changes in this rapidly changing business environment.
  • Align your technical and operational deliverables: Project and IT operational resource management need to be managed and tracked as a single integrated process so that operations are not sacrificed for projects. Knowing the time and cost going into the process can ensure better outcomes through strategically gathered datasets.
  • Focus on IT program management: Projects should be grouped into programs with related objectives, technical/operational resources and stakeholders. This helps avoid silos and enable the proper timeline, deliverable and resource allocation management to implement these projects in coordination with one another.

With the remote workforce ever-changing, IT operations are at an exciting turning point. There has been an unparalleled shift and opportunity to implement the more evolved IT operational management and service provisioning models to eliminate risks and bring cost reduction and efficiency. With many companies experiencing chaos by not having the right tools or modifications in place for a remote workforce, now is the perfect time to optimize IT operations. Of course, any effort to simplify and streamline your IT operations and project execution model is challenging. It requires one to step back with their teams and colleagues to rethink their existing models and processes, and then engage with clear communications, planning and execution. The most important factor is to get started and learn to be agile from there.  

How can you enhance your workforce capacity planning

Written by Mahendra Gupta on . Posted in Articles. 3 Comments on How can you enhance your workforce capacity planning

Reports suggest that employee costs can comprise up to 70% of operating expenses in a highly skilled workforce.

Thus, optimal utilization of your resources is critical for delivering successful projects. However, is just a ‘gut-feel’ approach or conventional offline practices are suitable to manage your workforce efficiently?

Definitely not! Because these offline practices lack accuracy and cannot forecast valuable insights, which can result in the wrongful hiring/firing cycle, thereby incurring extra costs to the company. This is the reason why leading companies find it imperative to take a data-driven approach to plan for the needs of the organization proactively. It will minimize the extra costs of misaligned talent deployment.

An advanced capacity planning solution is designed to provide leaders with foresight into the workforce capacity. It provides enterprise-wide visibility into the available skills that lets them decrease the bench strength. Using these insights, leaders can tap into the right potential and allocate the right resources to the right job.

Moreover, this unmatched visibility into critical skill gaps and foresight into capacity and demand for future projects helps leaders to enhance productivity and deliver the best results. Although capacity planning can facilitate you to scale up your resource management game, one question persists,

How to leverage the tool to the best of its benefits and enhance capacity planning?

Here is the answer, followed by some useful tips:

1. Begin with assigning the key resources

The first step towards enhancing capacity planning is using critical resources with a highly specialized skillset for the high priority projects. The reason is that their talent and expertise can impact billable and strategic work in the future. This allocation will help you hit the ground running, and you can start booking more resources as needed.

By setting up a systematic and organized resource profile, you can be in the know of your resource’s abilities and competencies, and if they have taken training in any particular course. Now, how can you use these skills at your advantage? Recognize opportunities that align with your resource’s capabilities and assign them these tasks. You are not only helping your business grow but also enabling your employees to grow professionally and enhance performance. It’s a win-win for both.

2. Strategize with what-if scenarios

As a manager, you don’t want to be caught off-guard with unforeseen scenarios. A robust capacity planning tool caters to this as well. At the nascent planning stages of a project, you can modify the situations and predict the likely outcomes with accuracy. While doing so, you can plan with what suits best to your project and is profitable for the future.
What-if analysis is quite simply, a plan before the plan. The data-driven actionable insights will let you make strategic decisions and empower performance levels down the line. Moreover, you will be spared from unnecessary budget overruns, project bottlenecks when you have unmatched visibility of all the situations well in advance. It will also help you optimize resource utilization and work assignments for future projects.

3. Predict capacity v/s demand

One of the major benefits you can avail from a capacity planning solution is its ability to generate accurate forecast reports. These reports will forewarn you of the future project resource demand and the actual capacity. By leveraging these reports, you can bridge the capacity vs. demand gap (that can result in project bottlenecks) using appropriate resourcing treatment.

What’s more? These predictions will also give you a comprehensive view of excess and shortage of resources (resources gap) you might face down the line. To cater to this, you can implement adequate remedial measures and ensure uniform utilization of resources. Here is a list of potential solutions you can use:

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When there is a shortage of resources: 

  • Adjust project timelines to align with available capacity.
  • Retrain and skill up available employees to fill the gaps.
  • Hire contingent workforce before time to avoid further roadblocks.
  • Optimize Bench Management to minimize bench time.

When resources are in excess:

  • Bring forward project timelines to allocate tasks to the idle resources.
  • Fast-track projects by marketing the capacity available.
  • Bring forward initiatives to meet strategic goals and allow resources to brainstorm and contribute.
  • Allow movement of resources across departments to maximize utilization and reduce bench time.

4. Track the planned v/s actual hours 

Allocating resources is not the end of capacity planning. One major responsibility a manager has is to keep the project costs under control, maximize billability, and reduce resourcing costs. In order to do so, managers must keep a check on the project’s progress, resources’ progress, and the number of hours they log to a task. Why is this information so vital?
The reason behind its significance is, when you have a report of the actual hours utilized by resources, you can compare the same with the planned hours for each task. If your resources exceed the planned hours, you can brainstorm and identify the potential reasons behind it and take corrective measures ahead of the curve. This will keep the project costs in check and keep your firm from incurring any unnecessary costs.

5. Plan, represent and assign

Different types of projects demand different courses of planning. A mature resource manager goes for a hybrid approach to plan these projects. To streamline your staffing, you can follow a 3-step approach of planning, representing, and assigning resources. Here is the detailed explanation of each step:

  • Plan – the most important step to a successful project is a well-channelized plan. You can opt for the best approach that suits your project. For example, you can use work breakdown structures to detail the stages and allocate resources. In other cases when you are not sure of the resources who will work on the tasks, you will require high-level planning and approvals from senior managers to proceed further.
  • Represent – A capacity planning solution is flexible enough to let you represent the resource demand in different units. You can directly represent the demand in headcounts, or FTE (Full-time equivalent- standard working hours of a firm per week), or a number of hours at your convenience. For instance, if you require 4 FTE, that means you need four employees to work for 4 weeks or 4 employees to work for a week and complete the task.
  • Assign – After creating a meticulous plan and listing the resource demand, the last step is to use the advanced filters of the tool, enter your requirements based on role, department, competencies, location, availability, and a number of hours/FTE/headcount and assign the right resources to the right task.

The takeaway

A powerful, advanced, and comprehensive capacity planning tool is pivotal to utilize the talent pool to their best extent. When a resource manager has 360-degree visibility of the resources and their skills, has a provision to toggle and compare scenarios before planning for a project, he/she can build the highest value project and eliminate potential pitfalls.

The above-mentioned tips to scale up your capacity planning process will enable you to empower your decision making, enhance productivity, and help your resources add a more valuable contribution to the firm. Now that the potential benefits of a structured process are clear, have you thought of revitalizing your planning process?

How to extract more value from your infrastructure CAPEX projects post-crisis?

Written by Jon Wiley on . Posted in Articles. 3 Comments on How to extract more value from your infrastructure CAPEX projects post-crisis?

Leaders have always dealt with the critical challenge of delivering CAPEX projects on time and to budget.

However, the COVID-19 crisis has radically changed the landscape and presented several new challenges for the future, demanding new strategies, investments and tools. Before the Coronavirus pandemic, the average budget of a capital project typically overran by 65 per cent. A further 50 per cent of projects reported completion delays . Budget blowouts and schedule overruns can negatively impact the overall financial performance of a company and ultimately affect the share price. This was before a global pandemic – imagine how high the stakes are now. Leaders have always dealt with the critical challenge of delivering CAPEX projects on time and to budget. However, the COVID-19 crisis has radically changed the landscape and presented several new challenges for the future, demanding new strategies, investments and tools. Before the Coronavirus pandemic, the average budget of a capital project typically overran by 65 per cent. A further 50 per cent of projects reported completion delays . Budget blowouts and schedule overruns can negatively impact the overall financial performance of a company and ultimately affect the share price. This was before a global pandemic – imagine how high the stakes are now.  

The infrastructure industry hasn’t been immune from the disruption caused by the crisis.  The construction industry faces lengthy suspensions, with many organizations halting thousands of projects across the globe. Even the telecommunications industry has taken a hit, with fibre construction being paused, effectively curtailing the progress of the sector amidst a ramp-up of digital acceleration and data traffic across the globe.  

As governments continue to roll out lockdowns and restrictions, more and more projects face uncertainties in both completion of ongoing work and new project financing. An example of this is in India, which is currently undergoing a level of pressure the industry hasn’t faced, not even during the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. Analysts expect the government’s ability to fund projects to be impacted for the next couple of years and are already warning investors to refrain from exploring opportunities within infrastructure CAPEX. 

On the other hand, other governments, like the United Kingdom, have declared their plan to recover the economy will focus on infrastructure development.  For global leaders hedging their economy bets on CAPEX, nothing would be more devastating than spending unnecessary funds on projects that run over budget.   The organizations that will be responsible for these projects must focus on keeping all stakeholders engaged in finishing their project to the timelines agreed with local governments and to the allocated budgets promised for each, regardless of new COVID-19 regulations or newly implemented procedures to ensure the health and safety of everyone involved. 

However, not it is not the crisis alone that has caused problems for delivery of capital projects.  Delivery of capital projects is a complex undertaking at the best of times. A PwC study  showed that construction projects able to come in under budget were a golden exception in an industry that otherwise sees 95 percent of projects going over schedules and costs. The report highlighted a need for large-scale transformation across the board, to simplify infrastructure programs and afford more efficient and higher-value project delivery for all involved. 

So, the question for infrastructure leaders is, where to next?

Five areas to prioritize in managing your capital projects 

Infrastructure leaders will need to resolve some critical issues in the post-COVID world to ensure a more sustainable future. It’s time to improve the management of capital projects and strive to create a new industry standard where project blowouts and overruns are not so frequent. From choosing the right projects to adapting operational management process, and then guaranteeing the return on the investment, here are five areas that will help accelerate transformation in infrastructure CAPEX projects: 

1. Portfolio management – choosing the right projects 

Companies of all sizes have a limited supply. Deciding where to invest your money and resources begins with centralized scrutiny to determine what is best for the business. Infrastructure leaders must have a regular review of the project portfolio using scenario reviews, highlighting assumptions and constraints. Every project in the portfolio should have a proper realistic assessment, an analysis of risks and design assumptions that include additional experts, and each project investments must align with short-and-medium term goals. 

By applying these lean and agile project management concepts, we can effectively compress project schedules by as much as 30 percent. To ensure accurate visibility on the critical areas of the project, leaders should invest in developing a ‘ResultsHub’. A ‘ResultsHub’ includes a Project Management Office (PMO), procurement, supply chain, logistics, risk tracking and stakeholder / ESG outcomes to allow adequate focus, resourcing and standardized reporting on progress that enables insights for quick and effective decision-making.

2. Planning and execution – the devil is in the details.

To drive more value from your infrastructure CAPEX projects, detailed planning, and reliable performance are essential. Leaders must start with a comprehensive project plan that includes several critical elements including:

  • A list of crucial outputs and an extensive schedule, with detailed construction packages, for vendor specifications on long-lead items; 
  • A sequenced site readiness plan, including all services and personnel logistics, that recognizes current COVID-19 requirements; 
  • A schedule of purchase order issue and delivery dates to the site;
  • An optimized construction schedule where performance assumptions are validated;
  • An all-inclusive and sequenced site mobilization and commissioning plan, coordinated across stakeholders; 
  • A hand over plan and staged ramp-up schedule based on OEM recommendations. 
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As part of your planning process, you must also prioritize alignment. Misalignment of priorities wastes efforts and will affect the schedule as the project progresses. As the first step in project design, establish early alignment on clearly defined goals, identifying all stakeholders, budget, spending schedule and post-project cashflow expectations. By developing a formal plan with a detailed internal review, you can determine what project outcomes must be achieved and which risks must be avoided. An excellent example of this is in Infrastructure NSW, the independent industry entity that advises the New South Wales government on infrastructure CAPEX projects.  They are uniquely positioned to help streamline the management of CAPEX work through the government for the benefit of leaders and the state, supporting by proposing detailed plans, increasing accountability and conducting expert reviews of ongoing work to help projects stay on track. 

3. Procurement processes that deliver clarity. 

Having an established procurement practice, supported by a robust logistics chain, reduces risks and adds significant value to your project by protecting and safeguarding the overall schedule. Well-designed procurement processes must account for several things from the specifics of the supply market to the capability of the organization and project. These must be valued across three primary areas of focus for procurement in infrastructure CAPEX projects. Firstly, ensure that everyone understands the project goals and priorities. Secondly, ensure that there is a universal contract language that everyone understands to avoid room for ambiguity. Finally, validate delivery dates on a short interval control basis and track them through the logistics chain. Use a scorecard to forecast and monitor vendor performance and show supply risks – this is particularly important in the post-COVID world. 

4. Active supervision and going #HeadsUp. 

Part of driving more value from your infrastructure CAPEX projects is to build a strong foundation for the operating phase by ensuring your team set out to achieve productivity goals during the construction phase of an investment project. Taking proactive steps in detailed planning, alignment, and execution will help to create streamlined processes during this phase. However, to keep projects on schedule, we need to ensure that supervision, communication, and connection between leaders and their staff are adequate. 

Frontline management and supervision capability is the highlight of Proudfoot’s #HeadsUP leadership movement (headsup.global), a guiding framework projects to keep teams focused on the overall schedule, especially if they are working remotely. #HeadsUP calls for managers and supervisors to check-in regularly with their teams through a 1.5.30 Connect culture. Check-in once a day to review plans, current status, discuss and resolve potential issues. Follow this with a weekly review of accomplishments versus the program, KPI trends and status of deliverables.

Lastly, perform monthly analysis of performance and objectives versus the overall schedule. The communication provided by 1.5.30 is then supported by Active Behaviors, both from management and from the team.  TheActive Management Behaviors (AMB) ensure employee engagement and talent development. The Active Team Behaviors (ATB) support the team’s alignment with leadership as well as provide empowerment, accountability and ownership of the activities at hand.  The #HeadsUp leadership program delivers engaged, enabled, and energized teams with successful projects. 

5. Ongoing operational excellence for stability and high performance. 

There are high expectations for return on the investment for every infrastructure project. However, newly commissioned and completed projects can experience some new performance barriers during the start-up phase due to a combination of unresolved or undetected issues from the design or construction phases. Furthermore, operating errors may occur when new teams attempt to perform new installations initially. 

We can speed up your road to stability and operational excellence by anticipating issues from actively managing the project schedule through the ResultsHub. The ResultsHub will utilize #HeadsUp thinking and AMBs or ATBs to support productivity, ensure stakeholder alignment and support an integrated MOS; to help you design the operational framework and promote active supervision among managers to reduce errors and improve performance. 

As part of your ongoing operational excellence strategy, developing new modes of operation, focusing on improvement versus capital injection solutions, accelerating the development of internal project management skills, and building the right partnerships will create the operational capacity to support future project management requirements.

A new future

In summary, managing infrastructure CAPEX projects is a complex process that has only become that much more challenging because of the recent COVID-19 pandemic that has paused  activities for prolonged periods or indefinitely. As countries start to emerge from various lockdowns, the restarting and ramping-up of projects is now in sight. To move projects along, infrastructure leaders have much to consider in avoiding further budget blowouts and schedule overruns. 

There is always a silver lining. In the new post-COVID world, it is not a matter of returning to what was before. This is the time to turn previous challenges into opportunity and to adopt a new standard as part of a reboot to transform and do things differently. This is time for change and as a result, better, value-adding capital projects. 

Following the above five steps will better position you to manage your project portfolio with operational excellence and results in mind.