Engineering PMO Success

Janis is an award-winning journalist and editor who has covered many industries beyond project management, including health care, financial services, higher education and retail sales.

  ProjectsAtWork  

How is a project management office helping one of the nation's largest wastewater treatment agencies clean up its act? It all started with the recognition that engineering and project management skills are fundamentally different.

Imagine the scale and impact of projects at the Orange County Sanitation District in Fountain Valley, Calif. As the sixth-largest wastewater treatment agency in the United States, the district serves 2.4 million residents. It collects, treats and disposes about 250 million gallons of wastewater every day. Its system includes 200 miles of local sewers, 22 pump stations, two large treatment plants and a 10-foot-diameter ocean outfall pipe. And with the safety of the community and environment at stake in most projects, there's no room for problems.

That's why David Ludwin sought to tighten up the project management process when he joined the agency as director of engineering in 1995. "I wanted to focus the engineering department more on project management fundamentals," he says. "The only reason we exist is to do projects, so I wanted to make sure we were doing them appropriately and efficiently."

But the system he encountered initially wasn't set up to do either. Engineers were doing double duty, controlling technical designs as well as overseeing project work, including managing schedules and budgets.

"There was a mixture of results, some good …

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