Program management: Risk, relationships and megaproject success

In today’s fast-paced project delivery environment, there’s a lot of talk about processes, workflows and technologies that enable successful capital infrastructure programs, particularly large, high-profile, multi-year efforts with many moving pieces, and many more millions—and sometimes billions—of dollars.

In reality, the success of a public (or private) program comes down to a few key factors, and two, in particular, are consistent across every large program: relationships and risk. While any program manager will tell you technology is great, the underlying success depends on the ability to manage the multiple stakeholders, large budgets and the risks that come along with them and an overall focus on delivery by all parties involved.

We develop useful toolsets designed to manage relationships, minimize risks and deliver complex capital programs. But, at the end of the day, the toolsets are only useful if the people implementing them have the right approach, collaborative spirit, experience and can facilitate the necessary cooperation to assure progress.

An effective program management team combines experience, global expertise and collaboration to successfully move projects forward, despite the bumps occurring along the way. The most successful programs have individuals who communicate well with all parties, working with the right individuals to get problems resolved before they significantly impact project schedule or cost. Ideally, those individuals have the expertise and tools to proactively diagnose issues before they occur and act to prevent them. In many ways, managing a multi-year program is more human resources and relationship management than engineering or construction oversight. These program specialists essentially bring people together for greater clarity and understanding. On long-term projects, those who can adapt and be flexible while still driving towards the end goal have the best chance of enabling successful projects.

Colorado connections – managing schedule risk

The $937 million Elevate Denver Bond Program crosses seven portfolios (facilitating some 500 projects) to replace, repair and improve the city’s infrastructure with an emphasis on transportation and mobility. The City and County of Denver (CCD) brought us on board in 2018 to monitor and manage program performance across many factors including cost, budget, sustainability, resourcing and diversity.

We were selected for this contract largely because of our people-focused, risk-management approach that emphasizes efficiency, clarity of reporting and predictability. Successfully managing a program such as this begins with institutionalizing the foundational elements of program management: processes, procedures, document management, governance and decision-making protocols and adequate redundancies.

To build that foundation, the team spent considerable energy in year one on governance. That included program management through chartering, planning and implementation. Examples of early deliverables that helped streamline decision making through the life of the program included swim lane diagrams and RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted, informed) matrices. Once adopted by the Bond Executive Committee (BEC), these charter documents provided the consistency and predictability for program and project-level decision making.

By the end of the first year, the program management office, under direction of the BEC, had established a disciplined “cadence of accountability” that proved invaluable for the client on multiple projects, but perhaps nowhere more so than the 47th and York bike and pedestrian bridge.

47th and York

In the early years of the Elevate Denver Bond Program, one critical community infrastructure project came to light. The Union Pacific Railroad cuts right through the Elyria and Swansea neighborhoods of Denver, creating both transit delays to motorists and significant safety concerns for parents and children who must cross to the other side to get to school. The plan was to build a pedestrian bridge over the rail tracks. However, this project was right in the footprint of the Colorado Department of Transportation’s (CDOT) ongoing $1.2 billion Central 70 Project. Working around CDOT’s project schedule required CCD to get the bridge built in 18 months or wait four years for the completion of Central 70. Further complicating this schedule, the project included a complex land acquisition process, railroad and public utility negotiations, relocation of a utility corridor, and removal and rebuilding of a large gas regulator station. City staff navigated these schedule constraints with support from our subject matter experts, providing a true blended team approach. While the city’s Department of Transportation & Infrastructure (DOTI) managed project delivery as it does for all projects within the bond program, the client realized they needed help to manage risk and accelerate delivery by more than a year. We were able to support the city’s project team with our advanced risk management tools and techniques, creative problem solving and leveraging relationships with CDOT and other stakeholders.

Because of time constraints, the city could not go through the traditional design-bid-build procurement methods, so we used our risk assessment tools to evaluate the construction methods. Using our risk management process, we determined it would take less time to negotiate the on-call services than to go through city procurement practices. Through our analysis, we also determined we could use accelerated bridge construction techniques to save cost and improve safety during construction. DOTI utilized its existing on-call contract for construction and owner’s representation to deliver the project. Timing was everything. Due to the federal funding component to the project, our team helped facilitate negotiation with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to gain approval for this on-call as a form of a recognized alternative delivery method. We also coordinated with city staff, CDOT, the railroad representatives, community planning and development and utilities representatives to help move this project forward. As but one example of project acceleration, the bridge deck was built offsite and assembled as part of the larger structure in a very short period with little disruption to traffic or railroads.

In the end, DOTI, Kiewit as the on-call owner’s rep and the Elevate program management office brought together on a near-weekly basis a broad range of stakeholders to form a common mission and commitment to achieve tasks and meet the accelerated schedule. In this case, the client leaned on us to facilitate key conversations that led to the acceptance of the delivery approach and the final project.

Experience, expertise and a risk-based approach

An underlying concern for nearly every public infrastructure endeavor is that program scope will be reduced, the project will get delayed and will ultimately exceed budget. That’s the value of a risk-based approach to program management embedded in a firm’s people and practices.

These same characteristics can be seen in capital infrastructure programs across the country. Back in Colorado, we use the same risk-based toolsets to support CDOT’s $1.2 billion Central 70 Project. For this effort, our team continues an over a decade long relationship with CDOT by providing owner’s representation and program management services on this complex public-private partnership, with a risk-based foundation. Tasks include NEPA/environmental clearance support, preliminary design, design oversight, construction management and administration, stakeholder management and railroad coordination. The project has fostered unprecedented levels of community outreach and agency involvement to meet the needs of a culturally diverse area in Denver, including more than 100 unprecedented mitigation commitments to environmental justice communities, such as workforce development programs, affordable housing grants, local school improvements, providing fresh food access and local housing improvements to minimize dust and noise during construction. The program received an Environmental Excellence Award from FHWA.

As the prime consultant for an ongoing $20 million, five-year Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract for the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), we are providing corridor planning and development services. With our performance-based planning and programming risk-based approach, we support the analysis of existing transportation systems such as roadway, transit, freight, bicycle and pedestrian, corridor feasibility studies, multimodal analyses of current and future transportation needs, freight analyses and various strategy development for state-, region- and district-wide projects.

Leveraging our global expertise across the pond, we’re supporting the High Speed 2 (HS2) project, a 250-mile, zero carbon, high speed rail system. As Engineering Delivery Partner and part of a joint venture (JV), the company helped identify the key decisions needed to inform the development of the rolling stock and depots strategy and defined the evidence-based approach to ensure these decisions could be supported. The use of multi-criteria analysis has allowed a full list of possible options for fleet composition to be turned into a shortlist by combining our rolling stock expertise with our partner’s deep understanding of transport economics and demand modeling to evaluate multiple options of fleet composition. Working with HS2’s own experts and our JV partners, we developed a framework for a high-speed train technical specification (TTS) identifying and prioritizing the detailed issues to be considered. Further, the firm’s industrial design and human factors teams are helping to ensure inclusivity and passenger experience remain central during the development of the requirements.

These are just a few of the capital infrastructure programs that we support. Furthermore, many of these programs rely on risk workshops to identify potential probabilities and consequences, such as schedule-related cost increases, weather, federal funding or leadership changes to help a city better understand risk.

We use risk management tools across all our programs always underpinned by having the right people to implement those tools—the ones with the knowledge from having gone through similar situations on some of the more tumultuous projects of the past. That insight proves to be invaluable for us and for our customers.