How to Manage a Project...When You Aren't the Project Manager

Stephen currently works in commissioning projects in the oil and gas industry.

  Construction   New Practitioners   Requirements Management   Scope Management   Stakeholder Management  

It's often said that a project manager’s responsibility often exceeds their authority. I want to take that a bit further to include people who find themselves managing a project and do not even have the “project manager” title.

In my present job, I often go to a project that is under construction or refurbishment. I am the technical representative for some of equipment used in the project. These are typically oil and gas plant construction projects. The customer—or rather “our customer,” who is usually a subcontractor—has bought some of our equipment and has installed (or is going to install) it as part of a major industrial process. My responsibility is nominally to get our product up and running to secure payment, but to do this I have to ensure that the equipment works in the plant.

I got started in this a few years ago when I was asked to do an assignment in Korea for an equipment manufacturer. I got to a shipyard and was directed to a Portakabin on the dock side where there were about 12 people sitting around a table. Someone said, “Here's the vendor now.” I sat down, and the chairman of the meeting said, “What are you going to do?” I said, “I've no idea. What are you expecting the outcome to be?”

PMI defines a project as “a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a …

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