Public-private joint venture was close to litigation. Problems were unearthed, solved and project delivered.

The joint venture was a major scientific facility. It involved one of the most ambitious automated built environments in Europe.

I was asked to participate when the project was running nine months late and the parties were close to legal claims and counter-claims.

The facility was operated by a struture with almost two-hundred communications networks. There were good reasons for this scale but the system was not working. Operator functions took half-an-hour to take affect, and several critical functions did not work at all.

I was asked to make the system work and fix the critical systems.

After two days it became apparent what the main problems were. I had elicited:

• Out of 100 engineers on-site, no-one had systems knowledge or experience.
• Only one person had familiarity with the mangement system technology.
• No-one on-site knew or understood how wires work. (This is a common problem. Most people – including electricians – assume they know but these common misunderstandings are the root cause of very many problems.)
• A particular manager in the construction company had a considerable ‘person problem’. His style was overbearing, abusive, intrusive and disrespectful. He treated the contractor staff as imbeciles, demanding they do ‘something’ which might take a day to do, then returning perhaps twenty minutes later swearing profanities as to why the task was not yet completed. He was not interested in explanations. In particular, he persistently disrupted the sole individual with knowledge of the management system.
• The project planning tools did not take account of the systems implementation requirements.

Taken together, there was a lack of technical, architectural and systems knowledge, coupled with out-of-control management at one level, and ineffective management at another.

I advised the customers to implement the following measures:

• Implement additional project management tools suitable for the proper delivery of the control systems.
• Bring some sort of order to the dysfunctional management practices.
• Demonstrate the technical causes of the system malfunctions, and advise the purchase of the necessary tools to undertake the repairs.
• Train the engineers in the use of the new tools.

In the instance of the critical defects in the facility, this involved two actions:

• Bring in a EMC (electromagnetic compatibility) consultant to disgnose the sources of some specific cases of conducted emissions.
• Investigate the electronic components used in certain critical plant.

These two actions resulted in new earth bonding recommendations and a different approach to the use of particular numerical results and how they were to be interpretted in the management system. As I had extensive familiarity of the management system technology, I was able to work with the engineer to implement his solution.

Along the way, the new tools that had been purchased reveal additional defects such as poorly- and incorrectly-installed cables and astonishingly, evidence of intentional sabotage.

Future benefits

A significant contribution to the difficulties was the manner in which the engineers had designed the communications networks. They had adopted practices espoused by the equipment vendor but had been unable to appreciate where these practices were appropriate, and where not.

The actions taken:

• Improved engineers’ critical appreciation of the vendor recommendations.
• Informed management and supervisors, building their confidence and understanding of apparent progress and real progress.
• Improved managers use of appropriate planning tools and how ‘not to panic’.

I left the project after six months.

The benefits to delivery included:

• Project delays had shrink from nine months to one month.
• System latency was reduced from half-an-hour to 10 miliseconds
• Litigation avoided

Future benefits

• Appreciate the need for a ‘steady hand on the tiller’, avoiding constant re-prioritisation.
• Develop implementation strategies that build on what wes learned.
• Appreciate the need for competent systems design capability rather than adopting ad-hoc, ill-infomed practices.

• business and it operational processes
• change management

• Accelerated Solution Delivery
• Process Effectiveness & Automation
• Purpose to Portfolio

• Capital Projects and Infrastructure
• Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences
• Engineering and Construction