Short
Courses
Preparing the next generation of project leaders
Why short courses?
The knowledge to successfully delivery an ultra large project is a university degree and some, as the complexity and risks, grow exponentially with scale.
There are many facets simultaneously in play where the rich required knowledge to prevail over the deadly project sins that bring a project down are traditionally acquired through experiencing failure and then applying and testing better ways to consistently mitigate the root cause of failure.
The issue is it takes a life time to acquire such knowledge and internalise it as a belief.
The performance gap is widening as people are arriving early to the senior leadership roles and many companies transitioning to these larger projects without the organisational knowledge. Thus, the world of large project delivery needs to find ways to acquire the knowledge and imbed the proven way without the pain of failure.
Transforming Leadership & Performance
My career saw me dealing with this issue early. How I’ve seen it works best, to raise the level of performance across the complete project site is at program level at the project site, there is a set of short contract imperative leadership courses that deliver a consistent message from the boardroom to front line supervisors. The aspects on leadership deal with the required personal qualities, skills, mindsets and practices that all leaders are required to know and display on this project.
Further, these requirements are layered in place as the next day, they witness the project applying the way they have just been informed. These requirements have been built into high-performance routines and practices. What enhances knowledge transfer and sustains the required proven way is when the knowledge is visually displayed across the project site.
With that proven way in my mind and the challenge of more broadly preparing organisations with the required project delivery knowledge where there is no project site to transition into the next day, I created a virtual project site in the office and visually displayed it on the walls.
My work over the past 6 years has been to create the entire project delivery knowledge on some 150 visual intelligence maps and further running through supporting the principles and methodologies is a US $8 billion ultra large virtual project with some 31 characters that present it and provide a vertical slice of the organisation structure that takes you from the boardroom to the coalface.
These visual intelligence maps (VIMs) that codify and present tacit knowledge in explicit form provide a platform for the short courses and two VIM examples are shown below.
Visual Intelligence Mapping
From this knowledge comes these short courses
Each of the short courses are tailored with the sponsor to form clear objectives and outcomes. The courses are designed to build and create formal credentials that enable robust careers.
Owner short courses
- Preparing the Operation for the ultra large project
- Preparing the steering committee for their role in delivering the project
Owner’s Rep. short courses
- The principles and methodologies to deal with project overrun
- Creating the overarching project implementation plan
- Delivering a project with no harm
- Project wide project control system
- Project Leadership
- Project Supervisor
- Project Reporting
Principal Contractor short courses
- The principles and methodologies to deal with project overrun
- Creating the project execution plan
- Delivering a project with no harm
- Contract Management
- Project package control system
University – Engineering Graduate short courses
- Introduction to project leadership
- The art and science of project delivery
- Developing the overarching project program plan
- Developing the major package project execution plan