Voices on Project Management

by Cyndee Miller

When I think bleeding-edge tech, water and sewage systems aren’t the first things that come to mind. But DC Water—the 2020 PMO of the Year Winner—snapped me out my narrow views. The utility is responsible for delivering clean water to residents and businesses in Washington, D.C., USA. And it saw an opportunity for technology to help it do that job more efficiently.

Led by its IT PMO, DC Water leaned into what is now a US$11.3 million project portfolio full of industry 4.0 tech—always intent on making sure the utility’s innovations deliver on its business purpose.

“We work at the luxury of the business itself. We’re not here to simply deliver technology. We’re here to deliver technology that solves a business problem,” says Tom Kuczynski, vice president of IT, DC Water.

So what does that look like in real life? Behold the first-of-its-kind tool called Pipe Sleuth, which analyzes video captured by autonomous robots to identify and classify anomalies, be they structural cracks or grease build-ups. The technology, which DC Water now sells to other utilities, eliminates the risk of human error—reducing the cost of scanning and coding flaws by roughly 75 percent.

The PMO has also changed the utility’s approach to cutting costs. In 2015, DC Water’s operational costs were increasing by 6 percent annually. When senior leaders asked how IT could help bring that number down, the PMO accelerated the utility’s digital transformation and moved its operations to the cloud, cutting operational costs by 6 percent, which translated to a savings of US$2 million per year.

It’s not all about slashing overhead. The PMO’s innovations also ensure a clean, safe water supply. For example, using internet of things tech, DC Water and industrial automation company GrayMatter developed a device that monitors the water quality in public drinking fountains—turning them off when readings hit a certain level. The utility deployed it in its hometown school system, but sells this tech to other utilities, too. With a grant from the Elon Musk Foundation, DC Water is working with its partners to install 115 fountains in Flint, Michigan, USA.

Positive social impact—with a positive bounce on the bottom line, giving DC Water another revenue stream.

That kind of innovation shows how PMOs fuel true business value. And while DC Water took the top spot among this year’s PMO of the Year finalists, it found itself in good company:

• Emaar Properties PJSC, Group Operations: Dubai is home to some of the most iconic buildings in the world: The Burj Khalifa, The Dubai Mall, The Dubai Fountain. It’s up to Emaar Properties to make sure visitors and residents get world-class service—and that includes increasing the eco-efficiency of its buildings. Decreasing water usage, energy consumption, carbon emissions and waste promised to increase customer satisfaction—and cut costs. So the PMO launched 26 projects in 2018 alone that contributed to a 11 percent drop in electricity use that year compared to 2016.
• Kern Health Systems: Kern Health Systems (KHS) provides access to medical coverage for 280,000 recipients of Medicaid, the U.S. government’s healthcare program for low-income individuals. To make the most of taxpayer dollars, the KHS enterprise PMO partners with the organization’s business intelligence team to prioritize projects that promise the most meaningful results. That focus on data transformed the organization. From 2017 to 2019, the portion of projects that delivered intended benefits jumped from 78 percent to 95 percent.

Dive into a more detailed recap of the three projects in the PM Network digital exclusive. Then head over to PMI’s YouTube channel to learn more about each finalist on the PMO playlist and explore full case studies in the January/February issue of PM Network.

by Cyndee Miller

I know it’s only November, but I’m done with 2020. Alas, I have not yet mastered time travel. So I headed to the latest PMI Virtual Experience Series: “A Deep Dive in Business Analysis: Drawing a Map to the Future.” Yup, sign me up. I am so ready to draw that map for me and my team. Now, admittedly I am not particularly sports-obsessed, but American football coach Katie Sowers and tennis analyst Craig O’Shannessy offered up some great stuff on resilience. Hint: It starts with purpose.

“No matter what it is that we do, if we don’t have a why, we’re not going to be the best version of ourselves,” said Sowers, the first woman and the first openly LGBT coach in the National Football League.

The trailblazing leader also recognized that although COVID has spurred insecurity, it’s also provided an unexpected push that may guide us along the right path. “As hard as these times have been, it’s led to more communication, better preparation, and an environment where we have to find that internal motivation, which is really more permanent than external motivation,” Sowers said.

For O’Shannessy, it’s about understanding yourself—and your opponents: “You’ve gotta conquer yourself. You’ve gotta conquer your demons and really bring it together.”

And O’Shannessy knows of what he speaks, having coached some of the best tennis players in the world, including Novak Djokovic and rising star Matteo Berrettini. Project leaders looking to keeping their own teams motivated should focus on positive reinforcement—backed by data. “I go to the analytics and look for red flags and green flags,” he said. “I always make short highlight videos of the player excelling in a specific area. I’m constantly delivering these videos showing them excelling. When they see themselves out there doing well, it really works.”

Pre-pandemic, resilience was all about looking at risk versus preparedness, but now it’s data  driving the action, said FTI Consulting’s Caroline Das-Monfrais. “You cannot have a resilient organization without data.”

Yet processes and data can only take you so far, she said. “At the end of the day you need people. People are the critical enabler of resilience.”

And those people need to be more fearless about getting their POV across, said PMI’s Sunil Prashara. “Get it on the table and talk openly and equally.” Today’s ultra-VUCA world demands true changemakers, and it’s no longer enough for organizations and their project leaders to be agile—they have to be gymnastic.

Building resilience means people growing comfortable with uncertainty and focusing on “the little things they actually can control,” said journalist-turned-poker champ Maria Konnikova. Naturally, this is terrifying for most of us. Who wants to lose control? But when you trust the process, you can push forward and accomplish more. “You need to act, you need to actually take the plunge, knowing that you will never have perfect information,” she said.

Project leaders should “be curious about what you’re doing,” she said. You can’t manage a project well if it bores you or you’re checked out. “Find something in it that will actually engage you.”

Want more? Get ready for the next Experience PMI event, “Going the Distance: Forging Our Path Forward,” slated for 9 December: http://ow.ly/VCES50ChQg5.

How are you keeping your team motivated?

By Cyndee Miller

A wee bit desperate for some positive news? Well, I’ve got just the thing: Most Influential Projects is back!

No big shocker here that MIP 2020 is stacked with COVID-fueled innovations. With the coronavirus racing across the U.K., a team from the National Health Service transformed a London exhibit hall into a massive emergency medical facility—in just nine days. UNICEF, Microsoft, the University of Cambridge and Dubai Cares teamed up to transform a pilot project originally aimed at refugee children into a virtual learning platform for underprivileged students from Ukraine to Zimbabwe who’d been shut out of classrooms. Virgin Orbit shifted course to design and deliver emergency ventilators, while the organizers of Shanghai Fashion Week teamed up with Alibaba to produce history’s first purely digital fashion week.

Then there’s the project that tops the list, epitomizing a major theme of 2020: progress over perfection. The COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator aims to identify, accelerate and scale seven of the most promising vaccine candidates by coordinating R&D efforts. Microsoft’s Bill Gates—a major financial backer of the initiative—acknowledged that the “few billion” U.S. dollars the project will waste will be more than worthwhile, considering the human lives it will save and the catastrophic effect the coronavirus has already had on the global economy.

The latest slate of Most Influential Projects goes way beyond COVID control, however. The Kangaroo Island Recovery project helped save one of Australia’s most iconic ecosystems from raging wildfires. Toyota is giving us its take on a fully autonomous world with Woven City, and Enel Green Power is helping Chile turn away from fossil fuels and bolster its unofficial role as Latin America’s clean energy leader with the Campos del Sol mega solar farm project.

And the excitement doesn’t stop there. This year’s adventures include 30 (!!) Top 10 lists broken out by sectors and geographic regions. (You can geek out over the data science list, gawk over the newly created wonders on the architecture list and smirk over Tiger King making the entertainment list.)

For me, one of the most interesting choices was Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons. For the record, I’ve never even played the game. What struck me was the backstory. Katsuya Eguchi has said his work on the original Animal Crossing was inspired by the heartache he felt after leaving family and friends to move from Chiba to Nintendo’s home city of Kyoto, Japan. Fast forward a couple decades and much of the world was experiencing that very same sense of isolation and loneliness. Then along came New Horizons, offering community and companionship—even during The Great Lockdown. The really weird part? The release date may have seemed like impeccable timing, but it was actually due in part to project delays. New Horizons was originally slated for a 2019 release, but when Nintendo execs realized hitting that target would require a grueling schedule for the team, they pushed the date back to March 2020. In a deliciously ironic plot twist, a decision to help employees maintain a healthy work-life balance ended up producing windfall profits.

Your turn: Take a deep dive and let me know your MIP vote in the comments.

by Cyndee Miller

We’ve pretty much seen it all in 2020: accelerated transformations, momentous pivots and, well, spectacular flameouts. But even before COVID came along, plenty of project teams have stared down adversity and delivered. One prime example: the PMI Project of the Year winner.

The Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) is on track to disrupt Europe’s natural gas sector. The US$6.5 billion pipeline stretches 1,835 kilometers (1,140 miles) across northern Turkey, traversing over mountains and under bodies of water, including 19 kilometers (12 miles) below the Dardanelles.

Led by TANAP Dogalgaz Iletim A.S., the pipeline is the longest stretch of the Southern Gas Corridor, a game-changing program of over 250 energy projects across seven countries that will transmit natural gas from the Caspian region to Europe for the first time.      

A massive impact? Check. A massive investment? Check. But things didn’t go off without a hitch. As the team built out the pipeline, project leaders had to work around sensitive archeological sites—uncovering roughly 1,000 artifacts during the project. Whenever the team faced potential delays stemming from cultural or environmental concerns, work didn’t stop. Instead, the team leap-frogged down the line and returned to work on the previous site when conditions allowed. Project leaders also provided incentives for contractors to safely reach key milestones early. 

Their efforts worked: The team closed the project on time and US$5 billion under budget “to the highest quantity and safety, social and environmental standards,” says Mustafa Ayan, former project CTO and now COO of TANAP Natural Gas Transmission Co., Ankara, Turkey. 

And project leaders are also ensuring their lessons learned don’t just stay in their heads. Team members are pooling their experiential insights to create a book that will not only help TANAP sponsors and stakeholders, but will be shared with the industry.

TANAP was in good company for this year’s Project of the Year award. Consider the other two finalists:

• The Montréal Tower Revitalization Project: The iconic leaning structure sat empty for 30 years—until a five-year, US$113 million initiative transformed it into a thriving commercial space.
• Fort McMurray West 500 kV Transmission Project: The five-year, CA$1.57 billion effort marked Canada’s first PPP for a transmission line. The result? A more efficient grid and more affordable transmission.

Check out a recap of the three projects in the PM Network digital exclusive. And then dig into full case studies in the December issue of PM Network. If you can’t wait until then, grab some popcorn and head to the 2020 Project of the Year playlist on PMI’s YouTube channel.

By Cyndee Miller

Like many of you, this year has pushed me into some serious darkness at times—and it’s not like I’m a sunshine-unicorns-and-fluffy-kittens kind of person to begin with. So as I logged into the latest PMI Virtual Experience Series—at 6 a.m. nonetheless—I wasn’t exactly exuding optimism and hope, even with the promise of a day devoted to discussions around “A New World View: Our Global Impact.”

But it was hard not to be moved by Malala Yousafzai. As a teen, she began advocating for girls’ education around the world, which made her a prime target in her homeland of Pakistan, and in 2012, she was shot in the head on the way home from school. Undeterred, she founded the Malala Fund from her new home in the U.K. The group’s first project, which sent 40 girls ages 5 to 12 back to school in Pakistan’s Swat Valley region, earned a slot on PMI’s list of the Most Influential Projects of the past 50 years. Now 23, she’s an icon—a global activist, a best-selling author, the subject of an award-winning documentary and a Nobel Laureate (the youngest ever, might I add). And even with all the problems facing the world, her message to project leaders was clear: Stay committed to your mission—you can make a difference and reimagine a new reality. “What favors the oppressors is when we give up on our activism,” she said.

The pandemic is no doubt a crisis, but it also allows us to pinpoint flaws in the system—and take action. “I want us to reset the world that we are living in,” Yousafzai said. And how do we do that? “Work together with ambition and optimism.”

She sees it already happening through next-gen activists, whether they’re working on the Black Lives Matter movement or climate change. “The voices of young people are echoing around the world,” she said. “We are inheriting this world, and we don’t want it the way it is. We want it to be cleaner, more peaceful and fairer for everyone.”

What many emerging young people lack in experience, they make up for in energy, enthusiasm and an eagerness to learn. Their work and roles on teams is not to be discounted, she said: “It’s important for our elders to listen to us, to listen to the younger generation. The people on the ground doing the actual work need to be on the stage.”

Throughout her quest to ensure access to free and safe education for girls, Yousafzai has realized the benefits extend far beyond the classroom. “We want more peace, we want to fight terrorism and reduce wars. We can’t solve these issues just by sending in weapons,” she said. “We have to invest in local communities and allow them to have opportunities.”

From this vantage point, hope is a byproduct of opportunity. Without opportunity and access, little can be achieved.

Author Sangu Delle sees a similar parallel while advocating for entrepreneurship in Africa. Creating a business-friendly environment and, in turn, opportunity on the world’s youngest continent—via infrastructure investment, sound policies and good governance—will reap exponential rewards, he said. “We need to empower entrepreneurs to go out there and create the businesses of the future that will create jobs."

He also encouraged people to look beyond some of the stereotypes that surround Africa.

“The Africa I know is one of extraordinary creativity, incredible innovation,” Delle said. “Yes, there are some struggles in certain places with poverty and with development and with infrastructure, but there are also lots of incredible opportunities going on.”

Like Yousafzai and Delle, PMI President and CEO Sunil Prashara sees an opportunity for self-assessment and change in this time of uncertainty. If organizations can maintain control and transparency, they can increase innovation and productivity, he said. One prime way of making that happen: citizen development. By introducing non-IT professionals to low- or no-code development platforms, more people can turn innovative ideas into reality. And given the global shortage of coders and developers, “the citizen development movement is going to be a major gamechanger,” said Prashara.

Opportunity opens doors—but it doesn’t replace hard work and perseverance. And it doesn’t eliminate the possibility of failure. Part of moving forward involves shaking off inevitable professional stumbles and believing in yourself. Failure is a necessary part of activism, said Yousafzai, but true defeat lies in giving up.

“Do not give up on your dream, as big as it is,” she said. “When your goals are big, the effort you put into it is also big. And the outcome is far bigger.”

Keep moving forward and get ready for the next Experience PMI event, “A Deep Dive in Business Analysis: Drawing a Map to the Future,” slated for 12 November: http://ow.ly/kydf50B8Vik

In the meantime, weigh in below on what people and projects are giving you hope—and helping you stay on mission.