PM: Hindsight is a lesson learnt

Hi,
I attended a dinner function & was placed with a table of developers/owners.
One of them is from a family who have their own land & develop themselves.
The conversation came to contract reponsibilities and the lesson learnt from a reason development. The development was for 5 multistories office blocks and a 9 stories car park.
Apparently, initially, there is an Architect, PQS & Engineers. Then there is a group of consultant Project Managers.
The Project Managers started to run the project and 2 main contractors were on board. One for the bulk excavation(A) & the other for all the building work (B).
3 months into the building work, the (B)main contractor’s own project manager got fed up with the red tape and the lack of progress in dicision making.
He is an old hand with Havard’s experience so he invited all the consultants and the owner himself to attend a workshop.
He gave a simple management perables which started with Noah and the Ark & immediate son’s family.
Basically the question is "Who wear the trousers"?

By the end of the workshop the owner left with much to consider.
By the end of the following week, the Consultant Project Managers were dismissed from project and sent back home.
The owner employed inhouse Project Managers but left all other decision to the Architect so the design work can progress as per the contract. The OSHA responsibilities arestill with the Owner so under one leader and under one decision making, the project completed in 4 years
The contract is similar to JCT 68.

I think the moral is: "too many cooks spoil the dish. always have one decision maker only"

I think this is a good lesson learnt.
What do you all think?

Skan Bu, just three comments:

1. "He is an old hand with Havard’s experience..."

Maybe he was wonderfully competent, but the "Harvard experience" part, frankly, makes me skeptical. I live 15 miles from Harvard, I know people who studied and study there, work there and have managed projects there -- I also am very familiar with Harvard’s PeopleSoft implementation from a few years back, where (among many other problems) some employees didn’t get cut a paycheck for months. Put it this way, when it comes to PM, for me the word "Harvard" on a resume would be a negative.

2. "(T)he project completed in 4 years."

We really have no idea if this is good or bad. Maybe it represents miraculous management efficiency. But in my experience, at least equally likely is that the project COULD have been completed in 2.5 to 3.5 years. Without a detailed project postmortem, it is impossible to know whether a project that meets certain goals does so because of efficiency or because the goals were easy to meet -- and usually it’s the latter.

3. "I think the moral is: ’too many cooks spoil the dish. always have one decision maker only’ I think this is a good lesson learnt."

With this, I am in complete agreement. When more than one person is responsible for something, NO ONE is responsible for it. Literally, and by definition.

Hi Stephen,

Thank for the contribution.

As I said, I am relating what was discussed at the dinner table, whether it is true or not, I do not know.

I later check out this person & it is true that their family had developed a project of that description a few years back & apparently, teh Consultant Project Manger was terminated at some stage( I was told an Aussie team)

Whether the details he related are all accurate, I would not confirm.

What he said made sense and I think "The Moral" is a good advise for those who might be in a same situation or going to run a project.

In my short experience, I have come across in numerous situation where no one want to take responsibilities and make the crucial decision and end up trouble at the end.

Hope you got one to advise us too,

Hi Guys,

Stephen, I’m with you on this one. There should only ever be one project manager otherwise as you and Skan point out decisions don’t get made, or get changed, or multiple decisions get made and different parts of the organisation get told different things, it’s a real recipe for disaster. Yes, you’ve guessed it, I’ve seen it happen.

Sometimes it starts off innocently enough with people being contracted as consultants to the project manager, but if their terms of reference aren’t specified closely enough, they start taking over. The results can be horrendous and if it isn’t dealt with quickly can seriously damage the organisation.

Chris Oggham