Major Projects Association

Challenge of Major Projects: Experiential Learning

In this episode, Andy Murray, Executive Director of Major Projects Association, chats to Andy Taylor about the session he runs for the professional development programme Challenge of Major Projects. Andy Taylor is Managing Director of People Deliver Projects and he explains what the full-day experiential session called The Junction is all about and what participants will gain.

The Challenge of Major Projects is a unique programme offering a stimulating opportunity for senior leaders confronting the demands of larger or more complex projects to explore the factors affecting success. Special attention is given to studying the success and failure of projects from the different perspectives of owners, contractors and others. It particularly concentrates on pressures and tasks in the early phases of projects and studies policy and strategic issues for successful major project development. Find out more about Challenge of Major Projects here.

Andy Taylor

Connect with Andy on LinkedIn.

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Emerging Markets

Emerging markets for major projects can take many forms, including new geographies, new economic models, and new technologies.

In this podcast, drawing on the ideas from the recent Association Seminar, Emerging Markets - Opportunities and Threats for Major Projects, Andy Murray is in conversation with Stephen Beatty of KPMG, Dr. Zeynep Kurban of GHD, and Sam Mercer of Xlinks.

Through the lens of some of the latest developments in power generation, they explore the challenges and opportunities associated with emergence. One of Xlink’s HVDC transmission projects involves manufacturing and laying a 4000 km cable from a solar and wind energy facility in Morocco to the UK, where it can provide the power for seven million homes.

Dr. Zeynep Kurban brings us up to date with what’s going on with hydrogen power generation, an industry that is on the cusp of switching from hype to real delivery.

Both these industries ask fundamental questions of the major projects sector:

• What will be the demand and how do we assure the requisite infrastructure is in place with the requisite investment in such an uncertain and fast-changing technology marketplace?
• What are the different, alternative options for delivery?
• How do we develop the capability we need against a schedule which requires much of this is in place in less than seven years?
• What about the resources, in an environment where mega-projects are increasingly competing for people and raw materials?
• How do we sustain the sense of urgency?

The emerging market is exciting and fast-changing in equal measure and holds the potential for projects that can transform our nations and our planet. However, Major Projects will need a root and branch rethink in terms of process, human capital and finance, if the sector is to come close to realising what is needed.

Fit for Future Sponsorship

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this wide-ranging podcast episode ahead of the Association seminar of the same name, Andy Murray from the Major Projects Association is in conversation with Carol Deveney of the consultancy See Change International. 

Together, they discuss:

• the lack of practical guidance for aspiring new sponsors
• diversity and different personalities and approaches
• the transition from project manager to sponsor; learning to move from the detail of delivery to strategy
• the art of cancelling a project
• development pathways for sponsors how to get the sponsors you need
• the difference between professional, full-time sponsors and occasional sponsors (executive and delegated sponsors, in the jargon)
• the attributes of a great sponsor
• the sponsor's role in developing sustainable projects and increasing social value

Collaborative Leadership in Practice

Tony Slater is Managing Director of SMP Alliance, the collaborative organisation set up by National Highways, Jacobs, WSP, BMJV, Balfour Beatty, Costain and Fluor, to deliver the smart motorways programme.

In conversation with Al Simmonite from Advance Consultancy, Tony tells the story of the Alliance and the challenge of creating an integrated, single entity; one that included National Highways and its key design and construction partners.

He covers:

• the value of the Alliance - a delivery model within which every partner wins or they all lose
• the aspects of collaboration that enable the Alliance to deliver its outcomes and how they were agreed on
• the power of common purpose and the new ways of working associated with the Alliance
• how to make it easy for people to navigate across organisational boundaries and work together
• the significance of an outcomes-based approach in identifying and recognising achievements as key progress
• the reality of individual and collective accountability 
• the Alliance learning model for sharing lessons and good practice
• the nature and role of Alliance leadership

Change, Transformation and Working at Pace

In this podcast episode on the topic of change and delivery at pace, Andy Murray interviews project delivery experts from the pharmaceutical industry: Denise Moody of the Pharmaceutical Industry Project Management Group, Fraser MacFarlane from GSK, and Danie Du Plessis of Kyowa Kirin International.

During their conversation, we learn:

• the imperative and the challenge of focus and prioritization
• how a highly innovative industry uses a mix of waterfall and agile against the backdrop of a strict regime of regulation
• why organisations die of indigestion rather than starvation
• how to manage projects in an industry where multiple projects will die, very few projects will get to success and where spending on projects is in the billions
• the challenge of bringing new critical projects into the portfolio and the need to terminate other projects to provide the requisite space and resources
• the opportunity to things faster by doing them concurrently, rather than sequentially
• the five Cs of successful change

What’s Next in Project Data Analytics?

Gareth Parkes, Head of Data and Analytics at Sir Robert MacAlpine, interviews Ed Burns, CCO at Mafic, Luis Lattuf and Yixue Shen, both researchers at WMG, to help us understand where project data analytics is going and what are the practical applications, obstacles and opportunities presented by the fast moving technology.

During their conversation, we learn about Mafic's real world application of data and what they have learned about the problem of trust, the need for both organisation and users to derive value from the tech, and how the power of positive motivation is encouraging uptake along with fundamental changes in management assumptions and style. 

We also hear the evidence of the importance of the technology enablers: ease of use and usefulness and ways of overcoming the barriers to adoption; as well as discover the difference between artificial intelligence and machine learning, and how the latter can be used to predict project performance.

Leadership Through the Lens of Collaboration

Join Andy Murray, Executive Director of the Major Projects Association; Jenni MacKenzie, Commonwealth Games Senior Programme Manager; Mark Russell, Chief Executive of The Children's Society , Dr Simon Addyman, Associate Professor at UCL; and Deirdre Fox, Non-Executive Director at Advance Consultancy as they explore collaboration and leadership in major projects.

During their wide-ranging discussion, they cover:

• How the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games used collaborative leadership to deliver, despite the Covid pandemic, a curtailed schedule and the need to descope parts of the original plan
• Why collaboration is a strategic imperative for The Children's Society and how they deliver 80 different services to 50,000 children with and through others
• The importance of co-creation and co-design 
• The need for a North Star for what (collective) success looks like
• What time and means you have available for teams to come together across organisational boundaries
• The role of the generous and incomplete leader within all of this.

Masterclass on Coaching and Mentoring with David Clutterbuck

Professor David Clutterbuck recently celebrated his 75th birthday (and published his 75th book). In this wide-ranging Masterclass he shares his good humoured and razor sharp insights from nearly 50 years of coaching and mentoring.

• a range of models such as The Diversity Awareness Ladder, the five different levels of interaction we have with other people;
• how, as a coach or a mentor, you can help people have the conversations they need to have;
• the problem , in the context of complexity and collaboration, of organisational reward systems that remain focused on the individual rather than the team;
• the challenge of organisational leaders who are unable to think systematically;
• the ubiquity of HR bling, for example: succession plans (that aren’t worth the paper they are written on); performance reviews (that simply provide managers with a formal structure to hide behind rather than have the conversations they need to have);
• the five levels of coaching which rise to (the fifth level) coaching teams of teams in large projects; where coaching enables the formal and informal conversations between teams (and where the informal conversations are the more important);
• the concept of rapid teaming: enabling temporary teams, which may only be in place for six months, to hit the ground running and perform from Day One;
• ways in which coaches and mentors will need to adapt to respond to changing contexts and technology such as AI and Automation.

 

Tackling the Not Invented Here Syndrome

In the second part of our Annual Conference podcast, Andy Murray interviews Nick Smallwood, CEO of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, on how to change the way people think about delivery to make what you do 'nothing less than world class'.

In a wide-ranging interview, they discuss topics such as benchmarking, project and programme leadership, risk versus reward, and what project organisations look like when 'curious leaders enable communities of curiosity'; facilitating new thinking and the adoption of innovative tools, processes and approaches.

Escaping the Major Projects Echo Chamber

Every major project encourages an unwavering focus on successful delivery. Whilst this has the advantage of generating continual forward momentum and progress, it carries with it a real risk: the creation of an echo chamber.

In an echo chamber we remain fixed in our own limited bubble, unhearing or sceptical of any voices from 'outside our group' who may be advocating a different approach, questioning elements of our model or our delivery plan and playing the critical role of Devil's Advocate.

The Major Projects Association annual conference in January 2023 explored the phenomenon of the 'echo chamber':

• defining the concept and its impact on project delivery organisations
• exploring how the echo chamber manifests itself and the behaviours it engenders
• looking at the antidote to echo chambers - encouraging diversity and inclusion, making time for reflection, listening to sceptical voices, tackling confirmation bias and 'not invented here' syndrome
• discussing the skills and new behaviours needed by everyone from the lowliest member of the team to the leader
• reflecting on the case example of Sellafield and how a historically risk-averse organisation worked to build a new model and a new culture to embrace change and innovation.

The podcast episode, the first of two, features Andy Murray, Executive Director of the Association, interviewing Professor Harvey Maylor of Oxford Said Business School; Andrea Powell of EY; Lauralee Doughty of Sellafield; and Richard Corderoy of the Oakland Group.

In the second episode, Andy interviews our keynote speaker from the conference to pick up and explore the ideas of the echo chamber  in the context of the work of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority.