Article written by Krista Lambert (Director, Engineering & Construction Strategy, Oracle Primavera) and appeared on the Oracle EPPM Blog.

Tales of the Unexpected

Expect the unexpected. That’s a mantra every construction manager could do with heeding. But it’s easier said than done. The one thing we don’t want is the unexpected.

The bigger the project the harder it seems to keep it on track. In the US, the Big Dig, which involved rerouting and tunnelling Boston’s Central Artery to the heart of the city centre, was set to be finished by 1998. In December 2007 the project was finally finished, with a cost overrun of 190 percent at $14.6 billion, much of which was attributed to unexpected changes.

Such is the complexity of these mega-projects it’s tempting to think that overruns and cost inflation are inevitable. Certainly change is unavoidable in a project of this scale and length. But how you manage change, can make a big difference.

Article written by Guy Barlow (Director, Industry Strategy, Oracle) and appeared on the Oracle EPPM Blog.

The impact of maintenance on the bottom line has never been greater. By skimping on maintenance, you run the risk of increased downtime and decreased revenue generation.

Millions of dollars and the success or failure of critical projects are on the line every time a skilled craftsman lays a wrench on an important piece of machinery.

Similarly, maintenance is tasked with keeping equipment running longer and more efficiently as the combination of an aging infrastructure and many new plants coming online challenge a diminishing maintenance work force.

As a result, maintenance and reliability teams are being asked to do more with less.

Labor represents most maintenance expenses and is naturally a target for efficiency improvements.

In an emergency or reactive type of maintenance organization, craft workers are usually only 20 to 40 percent productive, according to "Physical Asset Management for the Executive," a study by Howard Penrose.

Article originally appeared on the Oracle EPPM Blog.

In September 2015, the US government pledged US$160 million in new funding as part of a sprawling smart cities initiative. It came on the heels of new commitments for new infrastructure projects throughout the world, including China’s announcement that it will spend US$1.1 trillion dollars for roads, bridges, and other resources in the years ahead. In the following interview, Oracle Director, Industry Strategy and Business Development for Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management Guy Barlow explains how public sector agencies throughout the world can derive the most value from large-scale infrastructure investments while mitigating risk.

Q: What’s behind the ongoing interest in smart cities initiatives?

Article written by Krista Lambert (Director, Engineering & Construction Strategy, Oracle Primavera) and appeared on the Oracle EPPM Blog.

The average engineering and construction firm only wins one in every four bids for capital asset projects. For a $1 billion company, that’s around $75 million wasted on failed bids every year.

The industry has always worked this way, and some executives will justify the waste as a cost of doing business. But there is another way of looking at it.

Given the costs, it’s no surprise that engineering and construction businesses are picky about the jobs they bid for. The question is, whether they can target more profitable work, improve their chances of winning each bid, or launch more bids with fewer resources? The answer is they can do all three.

Successful Strategy Execution requires disciplined Project Portfolio Management

If you don’t know where you are, you don’t have much hope of arriving at your planned destination. C-suite executives and senior management understand this only too well when they tackle their number one problem: executing on strategy.

Assuming you have a strategy, then you have located your destination for now, but how will you know if you are getting there? How will you know when you’re being blown off course and when you’re making steady progress?

The answer lies in being able to measure company performance against strategic objectives. As financial services firms create programs, projects or initiatives to accomplish a strategic goal, they must be able to monitor and measure those activities as well as their influence over a selection of general business metrics to figure out if they need to adjust the course of action.

Article written by Christine Corelli and appeared in a recent "Monday Morning Motivation" email.

I wrote this article ten years ago.

By understanding what most people experience when you are introducing new ways of doing business, going through a merger, or making any major changes in your company, it will help you to manage the transition process.

1. Resistance. Comes from fear. Most people are basically creatures of habit. They may resist change because it can mean coming out of their comfort zone and perhaps risking failure. You can recognize resistance easily as people will criticize, complain, withdraw, or become unsupportive of others. There may be loud vocal protests, or, they will appear to "do what they have to do" to keep their job, but they will not do more than is required. This type of behavior is likely to be displayed by employees who are unadaptable. Talk to them, or they will pull down the entire team.

For an E&C contractor managing tight margins or an owner with limited funding resources, today's economic climate demands a careful and diligent selection process for evaluating which projects to build or rehab in any given year.

Success depends on leveraging contextually relevant project controls information.

The ongoing challenge for E&C contractors going after new business is to win the right work with the right customers at the right profit margins. Yet, in the typical engineering and construction organization, rarely do the teams that prepare the estimates for project bids and the teams that deliver those projects work together and share information. Historical data includes information about which clients are a good fit - and which are not. To achieve contextual relevance, contractors must leverage client and historical data to prepare successful bids, control the approval process when deciding which projects to onboard, and better predict which projects they will win.

Design, Build, and Operate the World's Infrastructure

"Good communication between contractors and owners is the biggest factor for project success. If you're not communicating about change, risk and your vision for the project, you'll run into problems down the line," says Joe Johnson, PMO manager for construction projects at Texas Health Resources.

Even the best-laid plans can run awry during project execution. An owner and contractor's ability to understand and manage change can make or break a project's success. Errors in change management and cost capture reduce project profitability. Inaccurate reports provide misleading information about a project's progress. A lack of transparency and visibility minimizes an organization's ability to plan ahead and re-allocate resources.

Article written by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP, and appeared on the Oracle EPPM Blog.

Governance: Ensure alignment of strategy, execution and results.

Resource Management: Support top-down and bottom-up resource requests and staffing processes and make it easy for project and resource managers to communicate their requirements and decisions throughout a project’s lifecycle. Provide a graphical analysis of resource and role utilization in order to help project teams manage resources in a dynamic environment and allow managers to see where resources are being used across all programs and projects, as well as their forecasted future use.

Communication and Collaboration: Quickly record, access, and review elements often to determine the successful outcome of a project. Adopting the ‘one single view of the truth' approach enables you to store everything about your project in a single, secure place enabling visibility into any potential issues or delays via workflows and alerts.

Reporting and Analytics: Deliver timely information for accurate decision making.