How to deliver an award-winning project

RPC is once again Headline Sponsor for the annual APM Project Management Awards, and each year at the Awards ceremony in November we celebrate the very best of the projects community and an array of impressive achievements. But are there any rules to making your project a winner?

Fail to plan and you plan to fail. It’s one of the mantras of project controls and for good reason. The best project controls ensure efficiencies in time, cost and performance, and help to maximise return on investment for all stakeholders on a project.

Going into a project without a robust framework of project controls is like going to the supermarket without a list: you’ll forget some of the key things you needed; you’ll get distracted by the special deals or the end-of-the-aisle attention-grabbers; you’ll end up with a lot of great food but when you put it all together, it won’t make a week of coherent meals; and you’ll have spent so long in the shop, you’ve got a parking ticket when you get out.

So why are project controls so important in projects?

Without them, you’ll be in trouble   

Good project controls won’t be able to prevent unexpected delays or budget overspend, and without them these issues can go unresolved, even undetected for a while, and spiral into far greater problems that affect the wider project or other areas of the business. With great project controls processes in place, issues come to light in a timely manner and they can be addressed, likely consequences assessed, risks and mitigations considered, and appropriate course corrections put in place so the issues and their resulting effects are minimised and managed confidently.

Ensure full visibility over your projects    

Formalising the concept of project controls ensures that nothing gets forgotten, that budgets and schedules are maintained, and that all stakeholders on a project have access to accurate data for evidence-based forecasting and reporting. At any one time, anyone involved should be able to see: 

• Where we are 
• How much we have spent 
• What’s next
• Whether we are on track 
• How to get back on course 

Making sure that everyone has the right information at the right time to make the right, informed decisions is vital. At RPC, we call this ‘the single source of the truth’ and it’s why project controls must be at the heart of any successful project team. At-a-glance dashboard reporting helps keep everyone on top of project performance, supporting confident forecasting and agile planning. We use Oracle’s Primavera Unifier, integrated with P6 planning data, but whichever system is used, the holy grail for the project controls professional is an integrated solution.  

Cost, schedule, contracts, resources, earned value, risk and reporting all draw from a centralised data set that is continuously updated. Everyone has visibility, rather than each department working in independent silos and manually transferring data to and fro, with all the time lags and potential for human error that entails.

Manage the full life cycle and all associated projects 

When you’re working with new technology or ground-breaking, untested processes and equipment, being able to change course when required is critical, because the one thing you can expect is the unexpected. It was an agile project controls process that underpinned the successful Project Orpheus programme that won Rolls-Royce the Transformation Project of the Year Award in 2022. This was a transformational collaborative way of working for Rolls-Royce, incorporating more than 30 UK-based businesses in the development of the Orpheus demonstrator engine.

The project utilised rapid supply, manufacture and deployment methods, agile working practices, and innovative engineering techniques, creating lots of balls in the air to juggle with! But from start to finish, the first demonstrator engine was built and tested in only 18 months from design kick-off. That’s around half the time required using traditional methods with significant cost savings as a result.

Taking a fresh look at the bigger picture from the point of conception in a project demonstrates how changes early on can lead to new practices and savings throughout the life cycle of a project, giving lessons to be learned that can be rolled out throughout an organisation for future projects and programmes.

• At the initiation stage of a project, project controls are critical to align deliverables and to underpin the planning, which is so essential before any work can begin.  
• During the execution of a project, project controls enable effective reporting to allow everyone involved to see the big picture of how the project is progressing, and not just their own small part in it.  
• And at project completion, your project controls data enables you to: conduct a fully-informed handover; feed into ongoing asset management requirements or staff training and development; support information gathering in the event of any contract disputes or compliance notifications; and – crucially – allow for a project review and lessons to be learned that will inform future projects and help your business to grow and improve in efficiency and process.   

Cultivate an award-winning team  

On challenging time-restricted projects, like the Heathrow Airport Ltd Firemain Replacement – winner of the Engineering, Construction and Infrastructure Project of the Year and also the Overall Project of the Year Award, 2022 – project controls are essential for success. Engineering in crowded and business-critical environments is fraught with potential for the unexpected and the confidence that such ‘curve balls’ could be dealt with promptly and effectively with robust contingency plans in place was instrumental in the Firemain Replacement Project’s success and award win. Works were taking place in close proximity to the London Underground’s live Piccadilly Line tunnels, beneath a major arterial road and feeding the world’s busiest airport, all over a tight, eight-week isolation period. A sense of teamwork, and all pulling together was fundamental in uniting not just the project team, but also the 30 or more associated internal and external teams to coordinate suppliers, contractors, sponsors and stakeholders.

Companies that encourage a culture of strong project controls and collaboration conduct successful projects, support successful project controls professionals and perform great things,and they deserve recognition within the project management community.

With a good project controls system in place, there shouldn’t ever be any surprises – until you hear your project name read out at the Awards ceremony, that is. RPC is delighted to be Headline Sponsor of the APM Awards again this year and we congratulate all the awards entrants for their inspiring and innovative work, particularly the successful finalists. We’re looking forward to celebrating with the very best of the profession and the ultimate award winners.