The Five Fundamentals of Project 13

In my first ‘intro’ article, we looked at the premise of Project 13 – what it is, how it came about and the purpose behind its creation. To fully understand it, however, we must appreciate the 5 core pillars that compose Project 13’s genetic make-up and are crucial to enabling the enterprise approach. Here’s a short explainer of the key pillars, and snippets from conversations with just some of my expert colleagues from across Mott MacDonald.

1-?????Capable Owner – the owner sits at the heart of the enterprise. Not just as the owner of the assets, but of the customer outcomes.

2-?????Governance – a shift in focus from price to value. Commercial arrangements and incentives aligned with customer outcomes and whole-life cost.

3-?????Integration – an effective end-to-end integrator will pull together the partner ecosystem to deliver the required outcomes.

4-?????Organisation – enterprises will increasingly be coalitions of partners and suppliers working with aligned commercial interests within defined frameworks.

5-?????Digital Transformation – effective information management across the enterprise and throughout the delivery process will be a key success enabler. More about people than tech.

1-?????Capable owner

The ‘owner’ of infrastructure typically also operates, maintains, upgrades, and enhances it. The Project 13 enterprise structure requires a ‘capable owner’ to lead the enterprise and define what long-term value it must achieve for the enterprise. A capable owner must be much more than a transactional client, requiring some key competencies that are not always present in infrastructure companies:

·??????Ownership – The capable owner understands existing demands, capabilities and constraints through data capture and performance metrics.

·??????Leadership – This means managing internal and external stakeholders, sponsoring the requirements, delivery strategy, development of the enterprise and promoting collaborative working.

·??????Value for money – They define the outcomes (rather than short-term outputs) based on long-term value. The owner should also develop, and own functional specifications geared to achieving target outcomes – but in collaboration with the enterprise members.

?2-?????Governance

The cornerstone of the new approach to governance lies in aligning commercial arrangements and incentives with customer and end-user outcomes, and then defining value in terms of the outcomes and whole-life cost. An effective system of governance would provide a consistent approach to delivering value throughout the life of an infrastructure asset. This requires owners to have the capabilities to define value in the initial planning of an investment and then track its delivery through the life of the asset.

The new approach establishes long-term relationships between the owner, the integrator and their key advisors and suppliers. The relationships are based on a shared commitment to deliver continuous improvements in Core principles performance over periods of several years and are enabled by purpose-designed systems of governance. This requires much greater transparency between the parties and commercial relationships that lead to significant consequences for poor performance – and reward for good.

3 – Integration

Project 13 has identified seven key features that drive integration which is at the centre of improved decision making and better outcomes. The role of the integrator is fundamental to the success of the new delivery approach. It is a leadership role focused on creating an effective team to achieve common goals and requires deep knowledge of the companies involved in the programme and their capabilities, methods, business models and objectives. The integrator also needs to bring capability in:

·??????Programme management – The integrator owns the key planning and management processes that develop and implement the planning and scheduling systems, co-ordinate design, manufacture of components and production across the end-to-end delivery process, and ensures they are aligned with achieving the required outcomes. They must be expert in these functions, from owning the integrated engineering model to managing logistics and providing production systems to assemble the project on site

·??????Production management – Project 13 can enable a highly streamlined circular process whereby the designer produces a repeatable product which can be assembled efficiently and meets the needs of the end client. The value in production management is through the repeatability and optimisation of all stages of the product lifecycle.

·??????Information management – Good information management supports the identification of new opportunities, reducing risk and improving adaptability, driving better business performance. It delivers increased effectiveness and productivity, better quality, and overall improved whole-life asset value. There is no single way of providing integration, and no single company brings all this capability yet, so collaboration is needed to provide it.

?4 – Organisation

Effective teams are networks of collaborative relationships that encourage an exchange of knowledge and capabilities to drive improvement and innovation. Owners should take the lead in designing coalitions of suppliers to deliver their programmes and must not allow their supply chains to be the consequence of a series of traditional procurement decisions. The new approach relies on aligning the activities, behaviours and interests of owners and suppliers as they work together to achieve required outcomes. All parties must commit to and maintain these relationships, and the commercial arrangements between them must reflect this aspiration.

This requires owners to clearly define the outcomes to be delivered by suppliers. They must be able to describe what good infrastructure is, how it must perform and what it should cost. Moreover, they must be able to set realistic speed of delivery, efficiency, and carbon reduction targets. Depending on the size and depth of the owner’s organisation, one would expect the property/asset management, HR and IT departments being engaged as early as possible in setting up the team.

5 – Digital Transformation

Project 13 embraces opportunities offered by digital technologies to transform how we design, develop, plan, manage, deliver, and maintain our assets (digital delivery) and how we operate and integrate those assets with existing systems (smart infrastructure).?Digital transformation requires us to rethink the connection between value and information.

If we redefine value in terms of outcomes per whole-life pound for the ultimate customers – billpayers, farepayers, and taxpayers, then integrated physical-digital solutions are the most cost-effective way of providing value. Better information enabling better and faster decisions will, in turn, lead to better outcomes.

This approach to delivering new and maintaining existing infrastructure must facilitate the adoption of digital technologies within the processes of designing, building, and maintaining it. This is part of creating an ‘information value chain’ that connects outcomes and data, with decisions being the key value-adding step in between. Information must not only be recognised as an asset; but valued and managed as such.

6 – Insights

Expert insight - Integrator requires a combination of skills “The integrator required by Project 13 is a delivery leadership role (i.e., programme manager). But as we know from our involvement in other major programmes these constructs are characterised by high levels of complexity and therefore the governance, management, behavioural and technical competency required to manage the endeavour is rarely found in a single organisation, certainly not in a single individual or team.

We are seeing that these forms of integrator as a delivery vehicle consist of a number of specialists. The integrator requires a combination of development, planning, engineering, management, and construction delivery skills. The culture, behaviours, and approach to risk of organisations currently carrying out these requirements, largely contracted separately, are very different.

Development of an integrator contract model, which recognises these different commercial and risk approaches, is greatly improving the market’s ability to construct these delivery vehicles. Where effective joint venture organisations are formed, and the role of the integrator understood by all parties, the ability for improving outcomes will be a step change in moving forward complex projects and programmes”.?Dan Phillips, Global Practice Lead Programme Project and Commercial Management, Mott MacDonald [email protected].

Expert insight – Sharing data will improve asset performance – “The Project 13 approach requires understanding of how to make better use of information to deliver value. Infrastructure owners recognise there is a huge opportunity to make better use of their data to drive better decisions, delivering efficiencies and unlocking value for all stakeholders, including the ultimate customers.

Benchmarking against best-in-class performance will help infrastructure owners to identify priority actions that will deliver value – through better understanding their customers, risks, and asset performance, and developing new ways of working built on effective information management.

Measuring culture, skills and behaviours will enable the capable owner to shape their enterprises for success. Additionally, benchmarking data also provides the basis to evaluate performance and allocate rewards within a new, outcome-driven commercial model.

There is huge value in sharing information across the industry, worth an estimated ￡7bn a year to UK infrastructure, enabling increasing connectivity and common benefit between different asset owners. Breaking down data silos will help us to understand the true whole-life performance of assets, and to identify more efficient ways to deliver the desired outcomes”. ?Jamie Radford, Digital Ventures Head of Growth, Digital Ventures Management Executive, Mott MacDonald, [email protected]

For more information on Project 13, contact our APD Transportation and Strategic Advisory representatives: -

Clare Woodcock; Nicholas Hives-Condon; Duncan Wilkes