3. Execute the PLAN (Final step in seeing your project come to fruition)
The massive hangar has long been one of the most recognizable landmarks of California’s Silicon Valley. An early example of mid-century modern architecture, it was built in the 1930s as a naval airship hangar for the USS Macon. Designed by German air ship and structural engineer Dr. Karl Arnstein, Vice President and Director of Engineering for the Goodyear Zeppelin Corporation of Akron, Ohio, in collaboration with Wilbur Watson Associates Architects and Engineers of Cleveland, Ohio, Hangar One is constructed on a network of steel girders sheathed with galvanized steel. It rests firmly upon a reinforced pad anchored to concrete pilings. The floor covers 8 acres and can accommodate six (6) (360 feet x 160 feet) American football fields. The airship hangar measures 1,133 feet (345 m) long and 308 feet (94 m) wide. The building has an aerodynamic architecture. Its walls curve inward to form an elongated approximate catenary form 198 feet (60 m) high.
Clearly building a hanger with these dimensions in 2016 will not be as grand of a project as it was back in 1933; however, the scope of this project still remains to be extremely complex and large scale when compared to other infrastructures built during the 1930’s and beyond. Not knowing the exact issues and risks that this group of engineers underwent in order to design and then build this one of a kind hanger at that time, one could only imagine the list of challenges they were faced while undergoing the execution of this project.
Having worked on multiple transformational major programs globally, we have gathered a series of proven practices to utilize when executing your project plan.
No. 1: Highlight all major deliverables and milestones in the PLAN.
No. 2: Conduct a “pre-mortem” meeting to call out all potential risks that could derail the project. document those risks with their respective strategy i.e. accept, mitigate or defer.
No. 3: Ensure that you have the right team to assist you with not only executing the plan but to manage the change across the organization. Remember that people are the most integral part of any change!
No. 4: Ensure that all of your partners and integrators, contractors, consultants and project teams attend all risk meetings.
No. 5: Create a (Risks, Actions, Issues, Decision)RAID log and keep it up to date throughout the project. Schedule weekly meetings to review and action RAID items.
No. 6: Create a communication plan for the project team
No. 7: Create a project charter and a governance plan so everyone in the project is aware of the responsibility matrix and how to escalate issues and risks within the project.
No. 8: Create recurring meetings to review the status of the project with different stakeholders. Meetings should always have a purpose, agenda, and minutes for those meeting along with action items need to be documented and followed up.
No. 9: Constantly stay in communication with all project team members and keep this priority in mind: Poeple > Process > Technology
No. 10: Create a document repository and collaboration portal for the project where people can access and collaborate on the project artifacts, status reports and all other project related communications and updates.
WORDS OF WISDOM
Be Present: When managing a project try to stay in the present and deal with issues and risks as they come up and in a timely fashion. Create a simple structure for escalations and set realistic thresholds for those escalations. Ensure you communicate in a timely manner and inform all parties of the nature of the change that the project brings, and the impact it will have on all parties based on your execution plan.
Be a Team Player: Ensure you have a great team supporting you. Make everyone an integral part of the team. Not everyone needs to be experts in project management but every person needs to be an expert in the area they are assigned responsiblity. Lead by example, demonstrate how to deal with adversity by being calm and collective during the hard times. Deal with change in a more proactive manner, meaning have a plan of action in place that is well communicated that highlights the impact of the change clearly and what the “world” looks like after the project is implemented.
Stay on course and ask for help whenever you feel you feel you have hit a solid wall.
This concludes our series of blogs on successfully planning and managing a project. @TriBeCa will provide more content based on our lessons leanred managing large programs for our customers around the globe. Our next topic will be around “Change Management” so stay tuned…