Capital Project Owner Decisionmaking is a Shared Responsibility

A common complaint on capital projects is that owners cannot quickly make decisions, and this delays progress on work. This is particularly true on projects where the ownership group includes multiple stakeholders that must align on key parts of the project design.

Like many other aspects of project work, the responsibility for delayed decisions does not belong to a single player – in this case the project owner. Responsibility for timely decisions is shared across all project team members. Decisionmaking in a collaborative context is a process that requires time. The expectation that a design or construction logistics recommendation can be placed in front of an owner for immediate consideration and decision is unrealistic. Few projects have an owner who has sole responsibility for important decisions and possesses an immediate personal decisionmaking process.

For most capital projects the owner’s decisionmaking process needs to be designed by the project team, with consideration of owner stakeholder needs. The key elements of that process should include the following.

The information the owner needs for decisionmaking. This may appear basic, yet many project teams ask for decisions without providing all the information an owner wants to make an informed decision. This delays the decision, or worse, results in a suboptimal decision that needs to be revisited later in the project. The owner’s decisionmaking needs should be known weeks before the decision is sought and include the needs of all owner stakeholders involved in the decision.

The number of alternatives the owner wants to consider. Most owners want to know that a certain number of alternatives were considered, and what the team’s recommendation among those options is. They are trusting the team to bring them the best options while still providing the owner ultimate decisionmaking authority based on their understanding of how the project serves their customers.

A sound recommendation process that is most useful for an owner. Many projects have success using the Choosing By Advantages decisionmaking methodology because used correctly it makes the value considerations used for a recommendation visible. This allows an owner to either agree with those considerations or easily adjust the factors and attributes they see as most important to their organization and customers.

A process map and timeline for making decisions. Many schedules and project plans treat decisions as milestones and single point in time when owner decisionmaking is a process. The steps in the decisionmaking process should be understood and the time required for the steps in that process should be part of the plan. There may be multiple process maps based on different types of decisions.

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Owner decisionmaking is an important part of capital project delivery. It is a project team responsibility to develop alignment on decisionmaking processes and to include key decision activities in strategic and mid-term plans.

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