By: Parmanand Samaroo; B.Sc (Eng) MBA (Manchester, UK), Dip.Tech EE, M.I.E.T (UK)

Efficiently delivering expected performance for projects remains a critical challenge for many project managers globally. Improving our understanding of how various factors influence project performance is therefore an important research objective. It is necessary to comprehend the processes and testing of temporal models to benchmark project performance (TMPP). Performance can be better understood by separating risk factors into earlier (a priori) risk factors and later (emergent) risk factors, and modeling the influence of the former on the latter. Project performance – the dependent variable – is measured by considering both processes (budget and schedule) and product (outcome) components.

The model includes interactions between risk factors, project management practices, and project performance components and can be tested by using partial least squares analysis with data from a survey of selected numbers of project managers. Results would indicate that the TMPP increases explanatory power when compared with models that link risk factors directly to project performance. The results will also show the importance for active risk management of recognizing, planning for, and managing a priori and emergent risk factors.

The finding of a strong relationship between structural risk factors and subsequent volatility shows the need for risk management practice to recognize the interaction of a priori and emergent risk factors. The results confirm the importance of knowledge resources, organizational support, and project management practices that demonstrate the ways in which they reinforce each other.

In my analysis, lack of clear links between the project and the organization’s key strategic priorities, including agreed measures of success and non-engagement of senior management ownership and leadership merged with ineffective engagement with stakeholders contribute to project outcomes evaporation and budget overruns with compromised project quality.

The case of skills depletion and proven approaches to project and risk management has defined too little attention to breaking development and implementation of projects into manageable steps. Evaluation of proposals driven by initial price rather than long-term value for money (especially securing delivery of business benefits) is the recurrent factor that often compromises project quality.

Ineffective project team integration between clients, the supplier team and the supply chain often incubate links between the project and the organization’s key strategic priorities, including agreed measures of success. I often relate with project officers to investigate if they know how the priority of projects compares and aligns with other delivery and operational activities.

This brings me to the concepts of the critical success factors (CSFs) for the project and the following questions:

• Have the CSFs been agreed with suppliers and key stakeholders?

• Do we have a clear project plan that covers the full period of the planned delivery and all business changes required, indicating the means of benefits realization?

• Is the project founded upon realistic timescales, taking account statutory lead times, and showing critical dependencies so that delays can be effectively handled?

• Are the lessons learnt from relevant projects being applied?

• Has an analysis been undertaken to track any slippage in time, cost, scope or quality?

• Does the project management team have a clear view of the interdependencies between projects, the benefits, and the criteria against which success will be judged?

• Do we understand how we will manage stakeholders (e.g. ensure buy-in, overcome resistance to change, allocate risk to the party best able to manage it)?

Lack of proven approaches to “project and risk management” is a known factor that is commonly eliminated from projects’ life cycles planning. The major risks identified, weighted and treated by the Project Manager and/or project team is always lacking details to identify the issues in the project.

Inadequate approaches for estimating, monitoring and controlling the total expenditure on projects results in project managers’ inability to measure and track the realization of benefits in the project cycle. The question of governance arrangements must be robust enough to ensure “bad news” is not filtered out of progress reports to key stakeholders.

Most project managers do not have an established evaluation approach that allows them to balance financial factors against quality and security of delivery of the project, and the evaluation approach quite often lacks criticality and value engineering analyses.

The elevated requirement for conducting a market evaluation to test market responsiveness to the requirements must be sought so as to establish the procurement routes to prevent the “Bull Whip Effect” in the supply chain that may impact the project negatively.

The Earned Value Management (EVM) technique for measuring project progress in an objective manner is a lost tool in today’s project management execution. EVM has the ability to combine measurements of scope, schedule, and cost in a single integrated system and with the use of the project Gantt chart effectively, the ratios of- Cost Variance percentage, Cost Performance Indicator (CPI), To Complete Cost Performance Indicator (TCPI), Schedule and Cost Performance Index (SCPI) etc can be used to report on project status and forecast future performance trends. It is therefore necessary to ensure that projects’ efficiencies and effectiveness are designed to converge tracking a controlled environment model, as, resource driven models are the recipe to delivering on time and within budget.

“USE OF DATA ON PROJECTS TO MAKE INFORMED DECISIONS IS THE WAY TO TREND PROJECTS”

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By: Parmanand Samaroo; B.Sc (Eng) MBA (Manchester, UK), Dip.Tech EE, M.I.E.T (UK)

– The Challenges  

 

The Government of Guyana’s long term vision for ICTs in Guyana has continuously maintained the grounds for promoting technology as a solution that will enhance development. It is true that technology can be used for active participation at the micro levels or at the macro-levels of governance, but with new developments in technology this will give birth on a recurring baseline to new challenges and issues as digital economies emerge.

The digital divide is one such issue that former President Jagdeo advocated and the current administration is working to close the gaps as this will ensure that citizens can access the ICT highway in an unlimited fashion.

The rapid formation and operationalization of tele-centres and computer laboratories with wireless and/ or broadband connectivity, and with the most precious intervention by President Jagdeo in the “one lap-top per family programme” are key indicators necessary to bridge the digital divide by providing access to knowledge about technologies.

Unfortunately, even where computer facilities are readily available, the digital divide persists. Even in the world’s most wealthy countries, access to the latest and most beneficial technologies is limited for those in rural areas and people with disabilities.

There are many other issues to consider when talking about ICTs and their roles in people’s lives, beyond the digital divide and universal accessibility. The internet has created new and innovative ways for people to shape and share their identity. Take a look at the explosion of facebook, chatting windows and Youtube, the well designed platforms for people from different parts of the world to express themselves, whether in text format, videos and pictorial, it’s their freedom of choice with easy access.

However, to some people, the internet can appear to be a modern day “wild west,” or something to fear. The rise of online social networking, online shopping, e-commerce, tele-banking, B2B marketing and other online interactions and transactions that ask people to share a large amount of personal information and data have led to a number of risks that every internet user needs to bear in mind. The internet may seem to be uncontrolled; however, telecommunication companies and governments around the world own the infrastructure behind the internet, and different governments and companies are asserting that ownership in various ways. No sole entity controls the internet, which is making the concept of internet governance or the uniform application of rules a very complicated issue.

These are not the only observations to be made. In Guyana many advances in mobile media and technology have been made, creating a whole new world of possibilities. Our challenge is to figure out how to use technology – both the existing and the emerging – for good, and how to assure its access and use in the most democratic way possible.

The issue of regulation and standards will have to be linked with two broad governance issues where the first deals with how the Internet itself, a technologically complex global communication network, can be managed so it can continue to grow. There are several organizations, many of which are gathered under the umbrella of the Internet Society, which oversee the complicated task of balancing competing interests in the evolution of new technical standards

The other major issue is how to legally govern activities conducted on the Internet. This task remains the responsibility of the government of each nation that is connected to the Internet. The regulatory agenda must cover a wide range of activities: some related to the regulation of business transactions and securities trading; consumer protection (including the protection of minors); fairness in advertising (no monopoly); the protection of intellectual property; to name a few. These are just some of the areas in which governments globally will have to put high on their ICT agenda in the area of internet governance standards.

The global nature of the web greatly complicates effective governance. Transactions on the Internet can crisscross state and national borders without easy detection. Any legal regime that may be desired to govern web activity must deal with issues of compliance and enforcement in order to be implemented effectively.

It is hoped that governments will develop an Internet Governance Project (IGP) where selected group of academics induce expertise into practical action in the fields of global digital governance, Internet policy, and information and communication technology protocol so that high levels of regulatory dispensations can format the way the internet is being used for development and good causes.

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By: Parmanand Samaroo; B.Sc (Eng) MBA (Manchester, UK), Dip.Tech EE, M.I.E.T (UK)

Research has shown the importance and impacts of Condition Based Risk Management and the results achieved underline the spicy question most CEOs and maintenance managers will have to digest.

In order to achieve success in the industry, CEOs and maintenance managers must discuss at the functional and operational levels the question that forms the baseline for delivering high asset reliability and availability indices through complete analysis of the following question: “CAN CONDITION-BASED RISK MANAGEMENT (CBRM) DELIVER THE DREAM TICKET TO RELIABLE ASSET OPERATION?” “Robert Davis” IEE Power Engineer Issue April/May 2005.

Modern asset management technologies and processes touch almost every aspect of corporate functions which include; operations, maintenance, and finance. Historically, assets managed referred to physical machines only but this culture and strategy have changed and pro-active and predictive asset management strategies are now being addressed at almost every level in the operational and functional context of organisations.

Asset as a broaden category is rolled up into buildings, plant, equipment, grounds, systems (IT, Finance) etc. The important drive is that selective initiation and development (when the first two phases of the systems development life cycle approach is examined) of an effective model into managing asset life cycle will have to be decomposed into a structured format with benefits that can be translated into millions of dollars in savings annually.

The first step into consideration for condition monitoring for asset management is “organisations’ rapid engagement” into the execution of a formal reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) study of existing assets linked with an extensive maintenance audit for deriving organisations’ maintenance functional indicators for existing assets within their operations.

Once the RCM study is completed, the next step is that management will engage in is the selection of a condition monitoring software solution that provides some necessary capabilities. Not only is fixed asset data capture important, but the condition monitoring software must gather and integrate data from the plant’s control systems and process cycles, perform analysis, and communicate vital information to other systems automatically.

The system will also offer an intuitive interface, such as a hierarchy tree (asset schema), that provides simple access to further levels of detailed asset information. Asset information may include a link to a physical location or piece of external system equipment, allowing the condition monitoring software and other external systems to share component information.

It is also important to note that the condition monitoring software is being able to support management and analysis of different types of data in order for the system to use plant wide data sources. The software chosen should accept numerous data types and allow user-defined units, further enabling system integration.

Many companies looking to maximize Return on Net Asset (RONA) are turning to integrated condition monitoring. As part of a comprehensive asset management program, condition monitoring helps gather the data needed by operators and maintenance personnel to keep critical equipment up and running efficiently.

It is too often taken for granted by CEOs and maintenance managers that running systems to failure will benefit organisations by presenting in their financial plan of their annual operating expenditure (OPEX) estimates, declining financial requirements to procure resources (materials & labour) for operations and maintenance. The impacts of incubating such “High Risks” will evidently induce gaps into the organisation’s operations strategy with compromised operations integrity so resulting in equipment and processes life cycle evaporation as the output reality.

Given that Risk = f (Probability of Failure X Consequence of Failure), it is vital to provide a realistic assessment of ‘consequence of failure’ for each asset. An extreme example is the Auckland incident of 1998, where the failure of a single 110 kv cable precipitated weeks of outages and economic losses of billions of dollars.

It is important to note that the development of “health indices” will allow corporations and utilities etc to effectively define their asset with acceptable calibrated results from existing data that they may have compiled. The concept strategy of sampling and effective analysis of data will give indications of asset condition and the health index will provide clear ranking of asset with respect to condition and proximity to asset end of life that can be translated into probability of failures.

The estimation with high accuracy of future failure rates can be determined with ongoing evident changes to the asset health index and with the probability of failures of asset; possibility of intervention by the maintenance organisation will truly position the organisation in line with the approach of understanding and managing risk. I do believe that CBRM will rapidly emerge as the next big thing in utilities and corporate management.

Those who adopt it early will reap the benefits and those who wait for it to be imposed upon them by regulation could find themselves embarking on a high risk strategy indeed. Also full acceptance of CBRM with effective implementation will change the method of data collection for analysis but it must however be noted that efficient qualification of asset condition during maintenance activities as well as inspection programmes will help utilities and corporations optimize their operational activities.

Effective CBRM will effectively define expenditures (capital and operating or recurrent) on asset as weighed against replacement and operations – the birth of “An Effective Capital Cost Deferral Strategy” will evolve as a result of increasing operations efficiency and effectiveness indices.

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