Management of large-scale projects and megaprojects. Automation paths

Global projects always involve a large number of processes. And, as a rule, few people think about how they are debugged.

A developer is building a residential complex here. And there, a manufacturing company is building a new plant. The average person often sees only the end result. Meanwhile, work is in full swing. Hundreds and even thousands of processes, like the mechanism of a Swiss watch, must function without room for error.

"Project" or "megaproject" - what is it?

Projects may be different. Some people implement technology or new software within one company, others build global facilities. Their management, accordingly, also differs, because it is impossible to manage processes in the same way that involve a team of 5 people and a team of 100.

Coordinating small projects is an equally responsible process, but it requires fewer resources than large-scale projects. If we are talking about large and megaprojects, then we always deal with only one project team, which includes more than 100 people. At the same time, we should not forget that in addition to the design work, thousands of other performers are involved in the work at different sites.

How to bring everything together and not miss anything? How to prevent missed deadlines when the cost of one day of delay reaches tens of millions of rubles?

Budget of large and megaprojects starts from 50 billion rubles and is, in principle, unlimited. Such projects are designed for a period of 3 years or more.

In such matters, integration, smooth running of all processes, as well as synchronization of results and deadlines at each stage are critically important. To ensure this, it is developed and maintained up to date schedule network model. In large-scale projects and megaprojects it contains several thousand operations.

How to avoid mistakes?

Automate everything as much as possible, make it transparent and eliminate the influence of the human factor. After all, each stage consists of many actions. At each of them, inconsistencies in information may begin. The best thing you can do to avoid this is to avoid manual mode.

In its work, PM Excellence regularly resorts to digitization and automation of processes. And, although we often hear objections from clients that they are more accustomed to working in Excel, the results we get are completely different.

Judge for yourself. You can easily summarize a huge number of processes into tables... in the first 5 minutes. And then the extravaganza begins. One line is shifted, followed by another, and another... And while on small projects this can still be adjusted manually, on large-scale projects and megaprojects it is very labor-intensive and there is a high probability of making mistakes.

As automation tools are used, most tasks are solved automatically or semi-automatically. The labor intensity of processes is significantly reduced. Data is compiled without human intervention, this allows you to quickly make forecasts, generate the necessary analytics, reports and make decisions.

And of course, process automation when managing large-scale projects allows you to work correctly and accurately with deadlines. And this is important, since a huge number of projects lose their planned profit solely due to missed deadlines. When it comes to applying digital solutions, we always know that we will have several scenarios in front of us, from best to worst, and we will be able to accurately calculate which jobs are likely to become problematic.

PM Excellence Experience

We have been cooperating with the Digital Technology Partner Center for a long time Periscope.

Today, our desktop modules (Fig. 1) when working with large-scale projects are:

• examination of the quality of schedule network models;
• project health;
• management of design and survey work and logistics;
• integration with GRAND-Smeta software;
• management of construction, installation and commissioning works;
• risk management.

By the way, the use of digital solutions allows you to create your own knowledge base on risk management and lessons learned over time. Follow the publications in the section Articles - in the following I will talk about each of the modules and their capabilities.

Fig.1 Periscope modules