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Business profile


Clifford Marker Associates offers guidance and support, including technical authoring and verifying, which guarantees assurance throughout the lifecycle of a project


These are some of the questions that need to be asked.’ At the early stage of the project, according to Marker, ‘verification and validation need to be realised and agreed’. ‘During the tender stage, when work is being issued, there needs to be a clear guidance of what is required from a contractor, and on what they will produce in evidence to validate their work.’


I


Risk, its management, and lessons learned


n this day and age, with all the knowledge from qualifications available, guidance from associations and lessons learned from past project failure, why do projects still get delivered late, over budget and, the worst-case scenario, do not meet expectations? Most projects start with the best intentions but are not resourced correctly from the beginning and just one day of delay at the start can add on a number of weeks at the end.


Director Clifford Marker describes the start of a project as the ‘honeymoon period’. This is the period when the fundamentals need to be identified. What are the requirements? How will these requirements be met? How will we prove the requirements have been met? Are the benefits being realised?


‘Also in this honeymoon period the programme should be aligned and the resources loaded within the programme with the peaks and troughs. Questions of how this will be managed require answers, as do questions such as whether we will be using Non-Permanent Labour (NPL) staff to fill the peaks with permanent labour running a constant resource level through the project life cycle?’


Taking stock


Marker believes it is key to a project’s successful realisation that the initial period, and the benefits realised within that phase, are closely scrutinised. ‘What evidence is required to demonstrate that what we have set out to achieve is being achieved? How do we prove it? And, how are the contractors proving that they have indeed met the requirements expected?


Clifford continued: ‘How often, at the ‘lessons learned’ stage, has a contractor stated they didn’t know they had to produce X, or that Y was not in the contract? The project team should know what they require. They should know the risks and they should produce a risk register. When those risks are realised, they should then manage them through an ‘issues register’. Are the ‘issues registers’ up-to-date and are they being managed through progress meetings? If not, why not?’


Once the honeymoon period is over and the work begins, the design moves to what Marker calls the ‘detailed design’ phase.


As if contemplating a project’s progress, he said: ‘Is ‘document control’ in place and is there a document register, a drawing register and are these registers up-to-date? Can a project team be reviewed and supply this information without notice at any time in the project cycle?’


The matters Marker raises, he believes, are vital if the project is to withstand even quite typical obstacles. With the advantages of modern data storage, assuming the correct controls are in place, Marker is confident that ‘a project team can be replaced with a fresh team capable of taking over without interruption to service.’


‘How often is it that a new project manager blames the last! If control measures are in place this should not happen,’ he added.


Proven systems and processes Marker is adamant that ‘correct


documentation should reduce costs’. He said: ‘If all drawings are produced to the same format you should be able to overlay them. Therefore, if a new build has a full suite of drawings, you should be able to sit in a room and overlay the drawings and isolate cable routes, and locations for new equipment without requiring a survey. If those plans have been completed correctly, it’s possible to produce a 3D model, but how many people can say they could produce this?’


Construction phase


Once a project has moved to the construction phase, more checks are required. For example, is the information required to validate the work on-site being sent to the project team and being validated?


Clifford asked: ‘What’s the point of having an Inspection Test Plan (ITP) if the test sheets are not being validated by the project team until the end of the installation? The site manager may have been checking it, but has the information been gathered and stored correctly so it can be collated as the project progresses?’ They are vital questions said Marker and failure to process correctly has potentially dire consequences. ‘How many times has a project finished and the project team dispersed, with the result that there is a run-around to try and find the evidence to close a project?’


Completion phase With an installation completed comes scrutiny. ‘Is all the documentation in place? Will the end user accept the product? Have the benefits been realised?’ asked Marker.


‘If the process is followed correctly it should be all wrapped up within weeks of the completion of works but how much money is wasted closing out a project? ‘It’s true that the completion phase of a project can go on for years. Companies complain about the cost of producing a tender with no financial benefit if they are not successful but how many of those companies look into the cost of closing out a project and the resources required for this?


September 2013 Page 161


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