ProjectsToday, the largest online database on new projects in India, organized a two-day Executive Masterclass on ‘Doing Projects Right Today’ on 29-30 November in New Delhi. The Masterclass brought together industry experts to discuss challenges in project execution and management. The event saw participation from Reliance Power Transmission, Sterling and Wilson, Aker Powergas, Quippo Energy, Tristar Global infrastructure, U B Engineering, Trident Group, Lafarge Aggregate and Concrete India, IOT Energy and Infrastructure, Punj LLoyd, Simplex Projects, Techpro Systems and Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. The knowledge partner of the workshop was Realization, pioneers in project execution and management.
The theme of the conference was how to avoid delays seen in project execution through the Critical Chain methodology. During the two day workshop, main causes of time and cost overruns in infrastructure and other projects; review of traditional project management and the reasons why they do not work anymore; Dr. Goldratt’s Critical Chain Project Management breakthrough; Critical Chain resource management; Managing execution through Critical Chain topics were discussed in detail.
The Masterclass was an interactive workshop which included a series of presentations and activities. Theories were explained with hands on exercises, case studies and group discussions. Dr. Alan Barnard, CEO Goldratt Research Labs and Keynote speaker for the workshop gave the inaugural presentation. During his presentation he mentioned that delay in decision making is one of the biggest problems that come in the way of timely execution of projects. The decision-makers take too long before they realize there is a crisis. The consequences of this are devastating.
He stated that the second most troubling factor is that the promoters do not realize the exponential growth of population. They do not predict the availability of scarce resource efficiently. Global government policy at present makes no sense. The focus is still on the coal and oil technologies, rather than exploiting renewable resources. Further, a lot of time is wasted in fixing problems that are unimportant. 50 to 60 per cent of the money is wasted in pacifying stakeholders.
He recommended that the project promoters should identify all cases where time is lost. Bad multitasking, starting work without full preparation, bad critical chain planning, managing execution, mitigating client disruption and sub contractor problems are some of the major categories under which time is lost. He further stated that by implementing Critical Chain, developers can reduce the project execution time by 35 per cent.
Other main speakers at the workshop were Sanjiv Gupta, CEO – Realization, Kapil Gupta, Head – India operations – Realization and Rakesh Jha from Trident Group. These speakers emphasized on Critical Chain planning trough case studies and interactive activities. |