Megaprojects

1. Megaprojects Stewart Clegg & Tyrone Pitsis UTS ICAN Research Sydney Australia

2. Overview of our research projects • NSTP (North Side Storage Tunnel) Alliance – Olympics project 1997-2000 • A project on designing alliance culture • PSP (Priority Sewerage Program) Alliance – improvements and upgrade of storm water and sewerage treatment in regional Sydney. (2003 – current) • A project on inter-organizational learning • Both had/have 5 partners (1 public utility and 4 private) • Both valued at almost ½ billion dollars. • Both complex alliance design bounded by KPIs • NSTP had 5 KPIs • PSP started with 12 but continues to rationalize these. • Both projects typified by complexity and uncertainty

3. Why is the management of large scale projects complex? What are the sources of complexity? • Both projects eschewed conventional project and contract methodologies: • In large part, the assumption was that these were responsible for much of the poor performance and escalation of cost often associated with megaprojects • Both projects used an alliance approach • NSTP had no time for scoping due to tight time constraints • PSP had an uncertain future due to political game playing within government – it was operating a large scale program of works but its future funding was uncertain. • Most importantly for both were the complex inter- and intra-personal relationships between 5 disparate organizations, and the inclusion of indirect stakeholders in decision making (such as ‘the community’) • KPIs added large scale complexity in the PSP as people had no clear sense about the KPIs meaning and relevance

4. Why do traditional project management methods fail appropriately to capture the dynamics, uncertainty, and ambiguity characterizing the development and implementation of large engineering projects? • Traditional project management are based on PMBok and a contingencies approach to the manageability of risk – more a triumph of faith over realpolitik • PSP and NSTP were not open to certainty and risk management in a traditional sense • Where traditional projects are based on transactions (such as black letter contracts), PSP and NSTP were based on narrative capital (the co-creation, sharing and enacting of stories creating norms for governmentality)

5. What framings and methods, involving both stakeholder and technological complexity, are most suited to the management of large engineering projects? • Megaprojects need to be framed as narratives of organizational and individual transformations in which all stakeholders are actors. • As such, megaprojects could be framed as complex fields of storytelling created through intersubjectively experienced and created life worlds. • The time is ripe for a phenomenologically grounded model of alliance megaproject management in which capabilities for the creation of narrative capital are an integral part of the managing of projects. • We need to be able to capture the everyday life and experience of the projects as a dynamic elapsement across space and time.