Expect the Unexpected

Georgeta Geambasu
EPFL, 2011
Thèse EPFL

Résumé

This study originates from the recognition that project management research is replete with normative theories on what need projects to be successful. However, it has performed worse with respect to assisting the understanding of how and why similar projects do not have similar performances during their life-cycles. It claims that the poor performance of major infrastructure projects, acknowledged by cost overruns and scheduling delays, is due to their lack of resilience when confronted with critical events that are inherent in their life-cycle. Therefore, it addresses the overarching question: How do projects cope with the critical events that occur at some point in their life-cycle? And why and how are some troubled projects able to maintain positive adjustments (cope successfully) while others cannot? By addressing these questions, the first goal of this study is to reveal the "resilience enablers". These are factors and conditions enabling the successful coping process (maintaining performance after the critical event) in projects confronted with unexpected events. The second goal is to translate the new knowledge of "resilience enablers" into recommendations for practitioners to enable them to actually make use of the insight into a troubled project's behavior. To study these questions, a qualitative research design was developed. It is articulated on the exploratory case study of one of the most important infrastructure project of this century. The result consists of two sets of findings, both relate to the critical events' managements and the factors and conditions that enabled the project's resilience. This thesis contributes to project management research with a middle range theory. The project performance can be seen and explained from a new and original perspective of project resilience. It also contributes to the project's management practice with recommendations aiming to help project actors to 1) identify and assess the resilience of their project organization, along with the identification and management of the risks. And to 2) maintain project system performance after the critical event through continuous adoption of risk-focused, and protection-focused strategies, which imply uncostly measures that enable project resilience.

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https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/147979?ln=fr

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Georgeta Geambasu
EPFL, 2011
Thèse EPFL

Résumé

Official source

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/147979?ln=fr

À propos de ce résultat

Concepts associés (20)

Concepts associés

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Publications associées (4)

Publications associées

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Optimalisation des formes d'organisation dans l'industrie de la construction

Philippe Pot

A piece of work carried out by the construction industry, whether a building or a civil engineering project, is not a mass-produced item. It is always a unique piece of work, by dint of its response to the specific needs of the owner and its potential users, its integration or otherwise into a built environment, and its construction on ground whose geo-technical properties are always specific. This unique piece of work, carried out outside on a site subject to numerous hazards, must nevertheless meet the programme's fixed objectives first time round. Unfortunately, unlike most industrial products, it is usually, even nowadays, the outcome of a fragmented approach: designers and builders of the shell of the building and those engaged in the finishings are in fact involved in a segmented and sequential process, without any real interaction between the various disciplines, to the detriment of overall quality and the cost of the end-product. The author of this thesis has had the opportunity, in his professional career in the management of major construction companies, of testing most organisational forms in the sector. He has observed that, depending on the model chosen, they exercise a more or less beneficial effect on quality, costs and time-frames for completing the works, as well as on the capacity for innovation of the participants themselves. The first objective of the thesis was to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the most common organisational models in the construction industry and to identify factors in the success of the construction process. The second objective was to suggest an original organisational model which would make optimum use of these factors, taking into account modern organisational theory and project management. The first section of the thesis is an historical study of organisational forms of construction from antiquity to the modern times, and examines in particular the relationships between those actively and directly involved (owner, designers and builders) and their relationships in turn with those involved indirectly (users, public administration, finance providers, environmental and heritage protection organisations, laws and standards, etc.). This historical perspective makes a useful contribution because, although much has been written on architecture and architects, especially the most famous among them, and sometimes on engineers, work looking systematically at the organisational forms used in the construction industry over the centuries is rare. This study demonstrates that the fragmented organisation of construction characteristic of the 20th century is merely an accident in the long history of construction; the twenty-five preceding centuries almost always favoured close collaboration between designers and builders and the wonderful works they left behind demonstrate the wisdom of this approach. Study of the history also provides us with a list of the main success factors and the demands to which the successful organisation of construction must respond. The second part endeavours to verify the relevance of the needs drawn, in the light of modern organisational theory, from project management and creativity, and to complete the list. It goes on to analyse on that basis the strengths and weaknesses of the organisational models most commonly used in the modern construction industry and demonstrates that organisation as a design and build, is in the best position at this stage in the research to meet the needs of owners. The third section verifies, through case studies of five pieces of work recently completed or under construction, whether this organisational model effectively satisfies the expectations of those involved in the construction project, simultaneously examining potential improvements. To that end, a series of interviews was conducted in each case study, with a view to eliciting the views of representative participants: owner, operator, user, project manager, architect, engineer and sub-contracting trades. The process was completed with an analysis of the attitude of some public sector owners to the design and build organisational model. Finally, the lessons drawn from these case studies were used to complete the list of success factors already identified. A final section sets out an original organisational model named Integrated Construction Management (ICM), which recommends an inter-disciplinary approach to construction and responds to the success factors identified in the first three sections. It involves a new division of the production process, which provides the owner with a broader and more cost-effective range of innovative architectural and construction options. It also delivers a series of practical recommendations to assist in the application of the proposed model. In conclusion, Integrated Construction Management places the owner at the centre of a transparent and progressive production process, simultaneously removing the majority of the risks involved in construction. Through its inter-disciplinary approach, it offers innovative solutions together with improvements to the overall quality of the piece of work itself on favourable economic terms. Finally, it enables the owner to take informed decisions and to use his or her financial resources as and when the feasibility of the project is confirmed. It is hoped that, as a result, these advantages will be demonstrated through pilot projects carried out using the ICM model, which will without doubt make possible further improvements in performance.

EPFL2005

Chargement

The role of the network lead company in integrating new product development processes across strategic partners

Yuosre Badir

In today's network world, advancement in new product development (NPD) is being driven by different types of networks, joint ventures, alliances, outsourcing and mergers. These business trends have resulted in complex organisations and development projects that cross location, company, country and cultural boundaries. The key success is no longer integrating the company's units and activities, but integrating the NPD process across a network of strategic partners. Managing the integration of an NPD process in this increased organisational complexity requires a sophisticated organisation design to facilitate and support the coordination of activities and the flow of information across the network. The research investigates the impact of organisational design of the network lead company (the main company in the network) on the NPD project's integration process elements with external partners and the subsequent effects on performance. The "integration process elements" in this research are: "communication and coordination." I focus on the R&D organisation in the network lead company. Within the R&D organisation, I adopt the project level of analysis and answer the main research question: How can the network lead company design its R&D organisation to support the NPD project's communication and coordination activities with the project strategic partners and improve project performance? The research centres on the integration with strategic partners in whom the network lead company has equity investments (minority holdings). Using data collected from three in-depth case studies of high-tech NPD projects conducted by three network lead companies from different industries, I attempt to extend and merge the knowledge of NPD management and the organisation theory by proposing a contingency model and developing a condition of fit between contextual conditions that characterise the high-tech NPD project and the organisation design of the network lead company. The model suggests that the efficient performance of the development project (shortest, cheapest, and highest quality possible) is contingent on how well the actual intensity levels of communication and coordination fits the required intensity levels. The research also indicates that the required intensity of communication and coordination between the network lead company and the project strategic partners in uncertain and complex project is dominated by the development cycle time (DCT) of the project. Conversely, the actual intensity of communication and coordination between the NPD project team of the network lead company and its project strategic partners is enabled by differentiated combination of R&D organisational attributes: centralisation, formalisation, number of hierarchical levels, team empowerment, and power of the leadership.

EPFL2006

Chargement

The current business environment has become more risky and variable. In particular, the recent terrorist attacks against western economies have revealed the vulnerability of global supply chains. These events showed that companies that move cargo internationally are subjected to a broader spectrum of risks, for which they might not be yet prepared. The perception of a higher level of security risks has motivated a wide variety of efforts from the academic, public and private sectors to increase global supply chain security. First, governments, border agencies and international organizations are designing and promoting new security initiatives and regulations to force companies to take more responsibility for the security of their supply chains. Second, academics have started to apply traditional concepts of risk and security management to the supply chain context, leading to the theory of supply chain security management (SCSM). Third, companies are following the new mandatory security regulations. However, most of them are still waiting before implementing those initiatives which are not yet mandatory. At the moment, each of these parties is approaching this problem from different a perspective. However, they all face one main common challenge: Increasing security without affecting supply chain performance or creating new trade barriers. The management of security in a supply chain environment has been usually associated with the implementation of rules and activities that are obstacles for the efficient flow of goods, non-value adding operations or cost generators. It is therefore necessary for these parties, to develop security initiatives which enhance security without affecting supply chain performance or jeopardizing trade. This study builds on the theory of SCSM which is still in its infancy. The literature review shows that some of the most relevant gaps are: i) the disconnection between the governments and border agencies' security initiatives and the theory developed by academics, ii) the non-inclusion of a systematic, holistic and process perspective in the design of SCSM initiatives, and iii) the lack of adequate management tools for companies to implement and maintain the new SCSM initiatives. Based on these literature gaps and the challenges imposed by the new supply chain security risk context, the main research question of this study is: How companies and governments can develop effective (capable of reducing the probability of disruptions occurrence) and resilient ( preparing the supply chain to recover from disruptions) SCSM systems? The main goal of the study is to develop a SCSM model which can help companies and governments to make use of the most relevant lessons from the existing academic theories and the new security initiatives, by integrating them in one practical comprehensive management tool. The research study investigates the supply chain security management by companies with large experience in managing high-risk areas and products. Initially, a survey is conducted to study how some of these companies have increased their security level by implementing a voluntary security program. The analysis of this data enables the identification of some of the factors which can positively impact the success of these programs and confirms the systemic nature of supply chain security management programs. Following these results, supply chain security systems are studied from a more holistic perspective by carrying out two in-depth case studies. The analysis and comparison of these case studies allow the identification of the most relevant challenges that these companies face to manage their supply chain security. Furthermore, they show that the traditional methods of corporate security management present several obstacles to deal with these challenges. The lessons and insights obtained through the analysis of the empirical data, together with the SCSM best practices identified in the literature, are integrated into the proposed "Supply Chain Security Management Model". This model provides a concrete framework to help practitioners adding the process dimension to the management of security. The framework also allows a better understanding and managing of the interactions between the supply chain and the security systems. To complete this research study, the model is validated by applying it to the two case study companies. The results of this initial exercise show that the proposed SCSM model constitutes an innovative management tool for the evaluation of SCSM systems, which drives the attention to critical points that were neglected in the past. This practical application exemplifies how the model can be used to collect and represent in a comprehensive way the security related information that is usually spread amongst different company functions and business partners. The main advantage of such representation is that it allows for a quick identification of the areas with potential for improvement.

EPFL2007

Chargement

Optimalisation des formes d'organisation dans l'industrie de la construction

Philippe Pot

EPFL2005

EPFL2007

The role of the network lead company in integrating new product development processes across strategic partners

Yuosre Badir

EPFL2006