01 / How integrated teams can optimise programme delivery

The UK faces formidable challenges in delivering new infrastructure in response to levelling up, energy transition and climate change resilience. While these programmes might not have much in common in terms of scope or objectives, they all share characteristics of scale, complexity, duration and risk. With extra requirements to cut carbon emissions, deliver more social outcomes and improve productivity, programmes are more complex than ever. Sadly, they are also still more likely to fail than simpler investment projects, joining a long list of ambitious schemes like the Jubilee line extension and the Channel tunnel which significantly overran on cost and time.

Programme failures have many causes. The sheer complexity and duration of such schemes mean it is unrealistic and potentially even misleading to believe that their scope, cost and schedule can be defined and fixed at an early stage of development. Early solution development risks “technology lock-in” too. Unfortunately, the way in which programmes are set up to protect the client from risk often gets in the way of delivering optimal outcomes.

Another shortcoming is that projects and programmes are rarely set up to be resilient, even though they usually exist over long periods in exceptionally complex and uncertain environments where circumstances often change. Leadership may change, and often clients will not fully use the capabilities of the supply chain or the data they have to actively influence the outcomes they pursue.

Read more…