| A research program headed by a Montreal professor has looked at large engineering projects around the world that involved the private sector, and searched for reasons why almost 40 per cent of them failed.
We assume that most of the mega-engineering projects being done around the world are in good managerial hands. These billion-dollar enterprises are so big and involve so many major banks, corporate backers and private sector experts, surely they cannot fail.
A professor from the University of Quebec at Montreal has written a book on managing large engineering projects that suggests otherwise, and which should raise eyebrows in the construction world. Authors Roger Miller, ing. and his co-author Donald R. Lessard document an international research project they launched in 1995 to find out what factors make a huge infrastructure project a success or a failure. Astonishingly they found that nearly 40 per cent of the projects performed badly.
The book, The Strategic Management of Large Engineering Projects: Shaping Institutions, Risks, and Governance, was published last year by MIT Press. Besides being Hydro-Qu¨¦bec/CAE Professor of Technology Management at UQAM, Miller is with SECOR, a management consulting firm he founded 30 years ago in Montreal. Donald R. Lessard is Deputy Dean at the Sloan School of Management at MIT. The research was conducted by IMEC (International Program in the Management of Engineering and Construction), an organization Miller initiated, and which enlists 10 academics and industry specialists from Canada, the U.S., United Kingdom and Norway. The researchers analyzed 60 large engineering works in both developing and developed countries done by the private sector. The projects are wide-ranging -- covering everything from the Boston Harbour clean-up, to a subway in Ankara, Turkey, a hydro dam on the Caroni River in Venezuela and the construction of offshore oil platforms off Norway. |
