Title: Avoiding the management trap in complex public engineering projects: the Case of RandstadRail
Abstract: Complex public engineering projects are vulnerable for ‘the management trap’: changes in requirements or scope not being balanced with other crucial project benchmarks like time and budget. This vulnerability stems from a combination of factors that is characteristic for these types of projects. The ‘management trap’ can best be avoided by specifying terms of reference and designing clear contracts between the public client and the contractor. The complex nature of these projects however, makes it hard to do so at the start of the project. As a result these projects are subject to change during the design and construction phase, requiring careful balancing of the project benchmarks. This is far from simple, given differences in views and interests between public clients, project managers and engineers involved in project management. Public clients, like politicians and administrators, often come up with additional demands while simultaneously wanting to stick to pre-established benchmarks. Engineers and project managers have an interest in relaxing benchmarks in order to simplify project realization. If these two contradictory sets of interests are not recalibrated, either some benchmarks will not met, or unbalanced trade-offs will be made. In either case suboptimal outcomes, cost and time overruns, or even complete project failure may be the result. Using the Dutch RandstadRail project as an example, this paper examines how the contradictory positions of public clients and engineers affect the occurrence of the management trap, which factors influence this relationship, and what can be learned from this in order to more adequately balance projects benchmarks in complex public engineering projects.
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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