Effective project planning is an absolute necessity for assured and safe delivery of any project.
In this feature Octavius Managing Director Highways, Gavin Pritchard discusses, the great care, attention to detail, and the importance of proven processes that he believes are essential in building end user confidence in infrastructure project delivery.
Gavin highlights that ‘assured and safe delivery’ is one of the four pillars in the Octavius value proposition, and this can only be achieved through ensuring we obtain accurate information in support of delivering programme certainty.
The submission of a challenging but realistic contract-compliant programme must start with the adoption of very structured and proven processes and procedures, in Octavius these are managed and maintained within our Framework Management System. Our processes are continually refined based on lessons learned and historic data, our planners whilst highly experienced, are regularly updated with ongoing contract training to ensure the information they consider, and present will continue to fully address customer expectations.
Ensuring successful project outcomes requires a comprehensive commitment to Lean Project Management. Lean methodology is intricately woven throughout our project lifecycle. From the outset, we immerse ourselves in collaborative planning and production control, involving the customer, preconstruction team, site delivery team, and supply chain. This approach focuses our planning on evaluating potential options, methodologies, risks, and mitigation measures. Sequences are analysed and re-analysed for effectiveness and efficiency. This method enables us to unite all stakeholders to achieve a common goal. Only then is the final program formally adjudicated before approval and submission to the customer.
Gavin adds that our business has invested £1 million in Project Spine, a programme designed to underpin Octavius’ commitment to ‘assured and safe delivery’. Project Spine has been designed to transform project management processes by streamlining workflows, reducing inefficiencies, and integrating advanced technology through the Procore platform. The benefits include improved visibility and accuracy in project planning, better governance, and the elimination of data errors, contributing to more predictable and profitable outcomes. This investment ensures improved project delivery for customers, offering greater reliability, efficiency, and value.
Our key delivery team members will have already participated in the crucial pre-delivery milestones including bid reviews, risk assessments, adjudications, validation and feasibility of the proposed solutions. However, having the right programme at the outset is only the start, the project delivery team thereafter continually undertake the further detailed reviews, risk assessments and careful planning for every programme activity. Not for one moment can they take their eyes off the changing site conditions, proactively flagging up and managing new emerging risks, reviewing revised work scopes and unexpected ground conditions or obstructions that has the potential to impact project completion milestones.
As the programme progresses our project team embed themselves in a positive risk-based culture using ISO 31000 best practice risk management principles. On an ongoing basis the team undertake further collaborative risk and opportunity workshops, manage live risk registers, and tap into supply chain knowledge to identify and manage any new risks associated with potential price increases and the availability of specialist resources.
Risk management software enables the delivery team to improve mitigation effectiveness and programme predictability, adopting early warnings register within the Contract Event Management & Reporting (CEMAR) software.
The finally crucial ingredient is ensuring an open and inclusive “no surprises” communication and engagement approach exists right across the team and is aligned with customer communication protocols and feedback mechanisms. Our planners and commercial managers submit regular progress updates, early warnings and time risks. Project risks and cost substantiation for compensation events are updated and shared and any variations and compensation events are clearly visible via CEMAR and collaboration meetings. The risk and early warning registers are openly shared and updated and where necessary dedicated meetings and/or workshops are held to discuss high-risk items and identify potential mitigations. Lean visual management tools such as project dashboards, Power BI apps, and infographics are used to clearly articulate progress and highlight any key concerns.
The effective project planning approach that Gavin outlined of course sets out to ensure Octavius provides the assured and safe framework project delivery that was promised at the outset. However, Gavin adds the really exciting part in all this is that the very same effort, attention to detail and effective planning necessary to guarantee project certainty is equally as powerful in creating cost and time saving opportunities for a framework end user customer.
By way of example, prioritising assured and safe delivery of the A500 Etruria Widening the effective planning approach resulted in 23 weeks being removed from the piling programme, reduced scheme costs by £758,000, took 600 lorry movements off the public highway and saved 330 tonnes of Co2.
For more information hello@octavius.co.uk
