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Vol. XII Issue V - May 2010
Project Management eJournal
MONTHLY COLUMN:
ADVANCES IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT
The application of the ‘New Sciences’ to Risk and Project Management
By Dr David Hancock
Head of Project Risk, London Underground, Transport for London
Visiting Fellow, Cranfield University, UK
Author of Tame, Messy and Wicked Risk Leadership
Editor’s note: The series on Advances in Project Management was launched with a Guest Editorial by Professor Darren Dalcher and first article in the December 2009 edition of PM World Today. Please read that introductory editorial here, where Professor Dalcher explains and sets the stage for articles in this exciting series by leading authors in the field of project management. Please read previous articles in the series by visiting the archives, beginning with the December 2009 edition. Each month’s article is introduced by Professor Darren Dalcher, editor of the Series on Advances in Project Management. To read Professor Dalcher’s introduction to this month’s article, visit www.pmworldtoday.net.
We're better at predicting events at the edge of the galaxy or inside the nucleus of an atom than whether it'll rain on auntie's garden party three Sundays from now. Because the problem turns out to be different. We can't even predict the next drip from a dripping tap when it gets irregular. It's the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.
- Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Introduction
There is a feeling amongst some risk practitioners, myself included, that theoretical risk management has strayed from our intuition of the world of project management. Historically, project risk management has developed from the numerical disciplines dominated by a preoccupation with statistics (Insurance, accountancy, engineering etc.) This has led to a bias towards the numerical in the world of project management.
In the 1950’s a new type of scientific management was emerging, that of project management. This consisted of the development of formal tools and techniques to help manage large complex projects that were considered uncertain or risky. It was dominated by the construction and engineering industries with companies such as Du Pont developing Critical Path Analysis (CPA) and RAND Corp developing Programme Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) techniques. Following on the heels of these early project management techniques, institutions began to be formed in the 1970’s as repositories for these developing methodologies. In 1969 the American Project Management Institute (PMI) was founded; in 2009 the organization has more than 420,000 members, with 250 chapters in more than 171 countries. It was followed in 1975 by the UK Association of Project Managers (changed to Association for Project Management in 1999) with its own set of methodologies. In order to explicitly capture and codify the processes by which they believed projects should be managed, they developed qualifications and guidelines to support them. However, whilst the worlds of physics, mathematics, economics and science have moved on beyond Newtonian methods to a more behavioural understanding, the so called new sciences, led by eminent scholars in the field such as Einstein, Lorenz and Feynman, Project and risk management appears largely to have remained stuck to the principles of the 1950’s…
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 About the Author Author Dr David Hancock, MBA CEng BEng Chartered FCIPD FIMMM FRSA RRP, is Head of Project Risk for London Underground part of Transport for London. He has run his own consultancy, and was Director of Risk and Assurance for the London Development Agency (LDA) under both Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson’s leadership with responsibilities for risk management activities including health & safety, business continuity and audit for all of the Agency's and its partner's programmes. Prior to this role, for 6 years he was Executive Resources Director with the Halcrow Group, responsible for the establishing and expanding the business consultancy group. He has a wide breadth of knowledge in project management and complex projects and extensive experience in opportunity & risk management, with special regard to the people & behavioural aspects Trained in the use of psychometrics he has use this to produce high performing teams and bring innovation and creativity into projects. He champions the case for rethinking project management as a social interaction rather than delivery through the application of process and developed the concept of Risk Leadership. From 1998-2001 he was responsible for creating and delivering the Opportunity-Risk management system for the successful £4.2bn Terminal 5 Project at Heathrow, working with British Airways (BA), British Airports Authority (BAA) and their suppliers which is considered industry leading in project and opportunity/risk management. Leading Tony Douglass (Managing Director T5) to write in the Economist in August 2005, "The most important difference between Terminal 5 and other large building projects has been the approach to project management and especially to risk". From 1996-1997 he was the Risk Manager for the £500M Copenhagen Metro project integrating Companies from 5 different national backgrounds into a single risk management process. He developed his risk management skills and techniques on the complex and politically sensitive Nirex underground nuclear waste repository. Before that he spent 10 years in REME with the Army and the Royal Marines on duty around the globe in support of helicopter operations. His Clients have included; Ministry Of Defence, Highways Agency, Qatar Petroleum, BAE Systems and a variety of Engineering contracting and consulting organisations and he has been involved with many Public Sector projects including PFI and PPP contracts on water, roads and rail projects. He has spoken and lectured across Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America. Educated at the University of Nottingham where he obtained a degree and PhD in engineering and later added an MBA from the University of Bath and a political and social science qualification from the University of Oxford. He is a Chartered Engineer and a Chartered Fellow of the Institute of Personnel and Development and was the Public sector risk manager of the year in 2008. He is presently a board director with ALARM (The National Forum for Risk Management in the Public Sector), a co-director of the managing partners’ forum risk panel, member of the programme committee for the Major Projects Association and a visiting Fellow at Cranfield University in their School of Management. Dr. David Hancock’s book - Tame, Messy and Wicked Risk Leadership – is due to be published by Gower in the Advances in Project Management Series in 2010. For information visit http://www.ashgatepublishing.com/pdf/tis/9780566092428_ROW.pdf |
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