Managing the Urgent and Unexpected: Twelve Project Cases and a Commentary

Citation

Derek Walker (2015), "Managing the Urgent and Unexpected: Twelve Project Cases and a Commentary", International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Vol. 8 No. 3, pp. 612-616. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMPB-03-2015-0029

This book is of interest to project management (PM) practitioners or scholars that are looking for insights into the delivery of projects in disaster recovery situations. It makes a contribution to our wider understanding of rapid response project delivery. Natural and manmade disasters abound in this world yet there is relatively little literature on how to project manage the necessary recovery project or programme of projects to restore situations that have suffered a sudden shock. The book also relates to urgent and unexpected projects that are triggered by an emergent opportunity. This aspect would be of great interest to those interested in innovation, entrepreneurship and even mergers and acquisitions. It is one of the series of books on Advances in Project Management edited by Professor Darren Dalcher. These books comprise a valuable set of small books that are often between 100 and 200 pages in content and have a particular PM focus. The series has been very successful in providing authors with an opportunity to write in specialised niche areas of PM that would otherwise be superficially dealt with as a brief chapter in a tomb on PM or would not be considered viable to be published due to being only around 100 pages or so.

The structure of the book provides an interesting departure from “the norm” in that it has a Part 1 narrative of five chapters that sets the scene from the perspective of how projects like this get started, what is considered urgent in these types of project, what is meant by unexpected, how these project actually get deployed and how they are managed at the project implementation stage. The second part of the book commences with two chapters that make an analysis of 12 carefully selected case studies ranging from 1971 to 2011. The first analysis chapter discusses what is different about these cases from “normal” projects and the other chapter captures lessons learned from their analysis. Part 3 has a chapter that poses the question “and now?” and makes some useful observations and critical analysis of what can be learned from these unusual projects in the realm of “normal” projects and what that bodes for the future. Approximately half the book is taken up with two appendices. Appendix 1 provides summaries of the case study situations, history and factual information about them that makes interesting reading to inform the case sty analysis part of the book. Appendix 2 provides references and links to other cases.

Chapter 1 introduces the book and the 12 cases in five tables that clusters and sets the cases into a typology with each case briefly explained to justify their being chosen:

1. The first table has two cases of urgent work in response to unexpected opportunity. One case is a new TV business model developed in the UK stemming from regulatory changes that opened up the TV entertainment market. The second was about the construction of a temporary new rail station and associated facilities after the collapse of a town’s road infrastructure.

2. The second table has a summary of three cases related to unexpected work to save assets under threat, in this instance relating to threats to urban infrastructure. One case was about raising and strengthening 38 miles of the Thames tidal embankment that was completed in just six months. The second case in this cluster also related to river flooding damage involving a river diversion. The third was also in response to flooding but this case was about replacement of precariously damaged river banks with sand bagging and steel sheet piling.

3. The third table was also about urgent and unexpected work to save assets under threat. This had two cases. The first case involved propping up a fire-damaged functioning motorway viaduct along the M1 in the UK. The second was stabilising a 1.8-kilometre stretch of rail track after being damaged after being submerged during a flood.

4. The fourth table has a summary of four cases to restore damaged assets. The first case related to a remote bridge in northern Australia, the second about a temporary power line in Auckland New Zealand, the third was about raising the banks of a section of the River Aire in the UK and the fourth was about repairs and restoration of assets after a catastrophic collision between a car and train and then a subsequent collision of the train with another train.

5. The fifth table contains one case only but it had tragic and extraordinary elements to it. The sifting of “the pile” of rubble left after the 7/11 destruction of the twin towers in New York.

Each of these cases warrants a book and indeed the references make use of many reports, technical papers and other relevant sources. Bringing these together in this way in this book provides the book’s value and novel contribution.

Chapter 2 discusses the concept of urgency and its impact from a PM perspective, particularly in the initiation of projects such as those illustrating the difference between “normal” projects and those triggered by highly abnormal events such as a plane being flown into a skyscraper in New York or the impact of severe storm surges and other weather events. Similar cases could be considered for example the aftermath of Cyclone Tracy in 1974, Hurricane Katrina in the USA in 2005, earthquakes damage in New Zealand, Chine, Iran, etc. and with global warming causing greater regularity of what were considered to be one-in-100-year events, we are likely to see more of these type of projects in the future. This is one aspect of the book that makes it so compelling and valuable. In table 2.1 (Wearne and White-Hunt, 2014, p. 23) they tabulate why each of the 12 cases were urgent. Wearne and White-Hunt also point out that these projects were impossible to accurately cost prior to work staring and that time was of the essence and so in these cases it had a dominant impact of the project procurement and delivery strategy.

Chapter 3 moves on to explore and discuss what unexpected might mean within this book’s context. The short chapter provides a table that highlights the triggering event that made these projects urgent.

Chapter 4 is titled “Project Starts” and contrasts how each of the 12 cases’ project starts unfolded. It discusses who the project sponsor was and which stakeholders were involved and in which way they engaged with the project. Table 4.1 provides a useful reference summary of each case’s sponsor and their role and the relationship of the sponsor with the other engaged stakeholders. It discusses how project teams were formed with another table (4.2) that illustrates the formation of the project teams. Their brief discussion about how key stakeholders contributed resources and how these were deployed provide a brief but interesting set of insights and ways of viewing how resourcing of these projects occurred.

Chapter 5 moves into discussion of how the case projects were implemented. For many project manager academics and practitioners, this makes very interesting reading. The chapter subheadings and themes are presented briefly around project objectives, then how stakeholders and then how resources were managed. Table 5.1 provides a useful summary of key resources and contract structure for each of the 12 cases. In each case the project delivery team had to be highly committed be highly motivated and be flexible and resilient because much of the details of scope, design and other aspects of the work were unknown at the outset. Working to a best solution to meet the urgency of the rationale for the project outcome was a key feature. I found it interesting that the procurement forms seemed to me to be gravitating towards alliance or framework type agreements with elements of cost plus and an agreed understanding that reasonable returns should be made and that no party should take advantage of the urgency situation. There could have been more discussion I felt about trust and commitment in this chapter but I appreciate that a key aim was to make this book short and engaging and leave readers to follow up from the citations and references if they wanted to learn more about particular elements of the cases. Table 5.2 provides an informative summary of decisions that were critical to success for each of the 12 cases.

Part II is about analysis of data presented in Part I. Chapter 6 is entitled “What is Different?”. This chapter discusses the nature of the case studies in contrast to “normal” projects. It does this under the general topics of stakeholder engagement, project-front-end processes, project team composition and structure, PM approach in relationship to planning and initiation, the project manager role, resourcing and attitude to the management of project changes. The chapter final section talks about what is not different to “normal projects”. Citing Graham Winch (2002) on defining PM Wearne and White-Hunt refer to managing changes in projects in terms of reducing uncertainty through the evolution of scope rather than managing changes. This subtlety is important because with unexpected and emergency recovery events scope is not known so the mindset of managing the evolution of knowledge and information about the likely scope is an important consideration.

Chapter 7 contains a series of lessons learned from analysis of the case studies. The authors make the point that these are guides and not “rules” and that they need to be applied to any emergency situation within the context of that particular emergency or unexpected situation. Lessons are provided about policy about what “urgency” may mean in various circumstances, how to manage the situation as a project, monitoring action and guarding against optimism bias. Lessons provided about stakeholders provide a valuable checklist for readers on identifying stakeholders and their power to influence and provide resources as well as their limitations. Lessons on team formation are also useful including aspects related to commitment and sustaining effort. There are several pages of lessons on planning presented as well as a couple of pages on resourcing and managing direction. Lessons on knowledge and experience capture are not neglected in this chapter.

Chapter 8, entitled “And Now?”, presents a short chapter with advice on how to benefit from lessons learned through the case study analysis. They make the point that a standard approach or method for dealing with unexpected events does not emerge from the case study analysis. This is positive because it cautions us against plunging into a box-ticking standard approach that may result in adverse unintended consequences. The lessons learned and case study analysis reveal a set of patterns of approach that those faced with these sorts of problem may be able to refer to and use as a means to better understand the context and situation they face. It from that better understanding that action and plans can develop. The insights from the case studies and analysis are very valuable and thought provoking. The contrasts made between “normal” and these unanticipated results provide a welcomed change from prescriptive books that preach “best practice”. They provide five useful questions to contemplate about precipitating events that then cause the unexpected event’s impact:

1. Could and should condition reviewing predict any risk to an asset?

2. Should we be surprised when unexpected events damage an asset?

3. Who sees the warnings?

4. Who is listening for weak signals?

5. Does trying to anticipate everything blind everyone?

This made me reflect on issues associated with climate change. A number of the case studies were about floods and weather induced preconditions that led to the situation happening more frequently than predicted by decision makers, such as the 100-year flood that happens several times in one decade, for example or the impact of sea level rises. In the “For the future” section in this chapter the need to develop and foster resilience is highlighted as a positive attribute that project managers of these types of project critically need. Indeed critical thinking, ability to detect and react to early warning signs and heeding hunches about the need for vigilance and preparedness was for me an important take-away in this chapter. Citing Weick and Sutcliffe’s 2001 book they highlight the need to be mindful. For readers who would like an update to the 2001 book they could obtain the 2017 second edition (Weick and Sutcliffe, 2007) or refer to some of the many articles and papers written by those authors (Weick et al., 1999, 2005; Weick and Sutcliffe, 2006). The couple of pages in Chapter 7 of Wearne and White-Hunt (2014) is well worth reading as is the following section on “Institutional Lessons” and “Preparing for Opportunities” one of the case studies illustrated an opportunity in an unexpected event.

In summary, I would recommend this book to PM academics and practitioners. The Gower series that Professor Darren Dalcher is editor of produces a very useful series of shorter length specialist subject books and I felt that this one made a solid and valuable contributing addition in that series.