Getting to know the World of Megaprojects: Communications and Teams - Part 3 of 3

In this podcast, Ricardo concludes the series on megaprojects, talking about communication, teams and some success factors. He comments especially the importance of forming the core team of the project as soon as possible and to be careful on planning the outsourcing of some roles.

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Episode transcript

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Hello everybody welcome to the five minutes PM. Podcast Today. I like to conclude the series to resolve Megaprojects. So this is the third Podcast I'm recording about this, and I want Today to cover the Communications and the team. If you remember, two weeks ago, I discuss it a lot about how change and you are the Megaprojects last week I discover and I discuss about the foul process. The front ended loading how people think and plan about this project, right? And now we need just one understand that most of these projects are in very remote places.

Very hard to get people to work in, in a very hard to make Communications work. We have a huge dispersal. Most of the time, very heterogeneous functions that must work in parallel. So it's pretty much a science of planning with the art of reacting, because you can not control everything. So in, we need to understand the key role that people haven't, this kind of project, of course, that all the time we say people are the central piece, that people are the central peeps, but in this kind of process, if you don't have the best ones, you will be in the trouble.

Why? Why? Because need a practice are hard, is there to complete. its' not just go out to do some exams and study a little bit and you be ready to run nuclear power, plant that, to be built in a very far away place. So it's nothing like that. We need to have people with practice to do that. Projects are remote and far from home. You will not find it in a very complex, huge project in an abundance in places like London or like New York move stuff, this projects they have already done.

So we meet now to think about places where you don't have CDs close. So it's very hard. So people are far more expensive and it's very hard to get people with experience. So in all the communication challenges, so it's more people to track. It's more functions to integrate. Great, more concurrent activities, geographic separation, difficult to generate a new unified vision. Imagine this people think in a unified way, high degree of interdependence.

So you usually understaffed. I need more people, but I could not find them cultural difference. So it's very, very important that I formed the core team as early as possible to allow the project director to be appointed then to create this core team. And it's very tough because each point that a week, a large number of members are added. It's an opportunity to fail. So if you have a lot of people, the communication channels would dramatic.

And now, so you need to understand all the changes in the Teams imagine a 10 years, how many people we will arrive and leave. So how hard is to do that and this core team, this owner team, it cannot be outsourced and that cannot hide a company to be my core team. You need to do that as a client of your project, because this is the heart of the overall project team. So it's very, very important that larger owner teams deliver better results.

And it's very, very important. And I need to make sure that all key functions are represented. I can not choose. Okay. I have people with this background, but not with that. And all this owner team needs to participate actively in the fowl process. It's not something okay, we need to do the foul. So let's hire someone to do that and just deliver the results for us. This doesn't work because the team must have decision making authority.

You need to have full time people. We are talking about a huge amount of money and a huge amount of effort. So you need to understand that this integration reduce operability, the problems. So maybe you built the airport. Then you face a huge challenge when we start to operate the airport. So you need to understand that all this early warning sinals are extremely valuable when you are developing the project. So also all the sponsorship, they may never belongs to the contractor.

You need to understand as a client that you aren't the owner of the project, you recognize the problems early and you can intervene when problems develop. So it's very important that you need to understand this, that we have more Megaprojects than the past in. We are having the, a huge challenge to have new people, high turnover. So it's really, really a big challenge that we are facing right now, everywhere we are facing huge Megaprojects.

So we need to understand that this leadership must be developed, and it's not something that we can do in one year to another. So it's a very, very critical that I keep the team and it's not only money that makes people happy. It's not pay them more. Most of this people, we have very well paid, but they want the challenge. The one to understand the work, to create then to develop something interesting, something that excites them.

It's not just money, of course money. If you pay them badly at, and you are in a big problem, a big trouble, but if you pay then a reasonably well means you're not in trouble, but you are not in your comfort zone. It's a big challenge. So to understand all this leadership continuity, to make sure that you have some memory around this project so long, man, but Megaprojects, they contribute to more to Nervar. So you need to understand all of these aspects.

So my intent of recording this three Podcast is that between 15 to 20 minutes is just to give you an extremely quick and superficial understanding of what is this Megaprojects because when we open the map, because in, and we read her and say, Oh, this is our just incompetent people. This is not necessarily a hundred percent true statement. Of course we have problems relate to competence, but we have a big problem right now, because as a product by itself, like a salad in the first podcast, its a giant as an extremely fragile.

So you need to have good, great people to do that. And this is the challenge. This is the biggest challenge is to have the right and qualified people to do the project. This is the most scarce resource we have right now, its to fight the talented people to do the work. It's not money, money. We have plenty of money to do everything. The problems that we don't have, people we trust and people Abel to transform this money into benefit to the society, to the organizations.

But this is the big challenge that we are facing right now. It's to find this people. So I hope that you with district Podcast can have a better understanding of what is a mega project and see you next week with a, not a topic in the, not for five minutes PM. Podcast.

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Getting to know the World of Megaprojects: Communications and Teams - Part 3 of 3

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