Project Management View from Rail Transit Programs and Projects

February 26, 2020 was the 27th anniversary of the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, USA.   This anniversary marks the start of a new era for design and construction requirements on projects funded by the government in the United States.   Rightly so, the development of projects since then have considered and incorporated structural hardening, security measures, and monitoring and surveillance enhancements.   It also introduced, military warfare type analyses for certain situations, metrics for injuries and casualties, and the consequential and collateral impacts to persons and damage to property.     

On September 11, 2001, a second terrorist action had far greater impact.   It too expanded the realization of threats and vulnerabilities on infrastructure around the world.

As of August 1, 2007, Owners using US government funding for capital projects are required to certify that the design deliverables and construction products demonstrate that they mitigate job hazards for product use, and they mitigate exposure to potential threats and vulnerabilities from the environment and other atypical influences.  Additionally, public agencies aso adapted more comprehensive processes to protect infrastructure and persons.

Design, Construct and Operate to Mitigate Hazards, Threats and Vulnerabilities

For most projects, job hazards are associated the contractor’s and supplier’s means and methods of construction or product manufacturing processes.   But the scope of the Systems Certification is to identify job hazards associated with persons that will operate and use the product completed by the project.   For rail transit projects, the users include employees, customers and members of the public.    Some of the hazards may be similar in categories but the potential impacts and the mitigation may be different.   For job hazards that can not be addressed by the designer or contractor, there will be accepted mitigations by the Owner, including operator training, personnel licenses and education, standard procedure and practices, and personal protective equipment.

The government, industry experts, and statutory agencies and authorities overseeing the management and operation of infrastructure have initiated standard protocols and certifications for projects.   The purpose of the certification requirements is to assure that the Owner, designer and contractor verify that the systems and security requirement are fulfilled in each project within the regions infrastructure, including transportation systems, government facilities, ports and cargo transfer facilities, and multi-modal hubs/facilities.  

The Certifications are a systematic review and verification that the job hazards, threats and vulnerabilities are addressed in the project deliverables during the milestones for:  

Design:  Verification proves the construction or purchase contract specified the technical requirements and product features to mitigate the job hazards, threats and vulnerabilities.  

Construction:  Verification proves the constructed or manufactured product is tested, and it meets the quality for contract requirements, which mitigate the job hazards, threats and vulnerabilities.

Start Up and Operation (Final):  Verification proves the accepted product from the contractor demonstrates operation with features, controls and procedures that protect the users and mitigates the defined job hazards, threats and vulnerabilities. 

The Certification processes and documents consist of a Certifiable Items List, job hazards or TV topics, design specifications and drawings, construction inspection and tests, startup and commissioning procedures and signatures of verification experts.   These documents are supplemented with Expert analyses and judgment by certified safety and security professional affirming the product requirements or Owner operational assets, procedures and operator training to mitigate potential job hazards and TV topics.  

The Certifiable Items List, job hazards and TV topics are defined by the Owner/Buyer organization based on past experience with design, construction and operation of similar equipment or constructed products or as defined by design consultants from new and emerging products proposed for the project. 

Systems Certification

Job hazards are the potential for injuries or death from the normal operation, inspection and maintenance of the designed product.  The designers and constructors of the project products will document the job hazards are mitigated by specifying and constructing the project with industry suppliers of equipment and systems.  Some job hazards to may include:

• Caught in equipment
• Struck by equipment
• Cut/dismembered by equipment
• Burned by fluid or heated equipment
• Improper operation
• Bypassing safety features
• Electric shock, shorts, electrocution

The mitigations may include:

• Safety covers and appliances
• Electrical grounding and switches
• Personal protective equipment
• Operational procedures

The verifications involves demonstrating the construction/product specifications and drawings or operator procedures contain requirements that are proven to address hazards that might be encountered from use by qualified operators and from public persons using the product.  

Security Certification

Threats and vulnerabilities (TV) are the potential for property damage and injuries or death to persons due to accidental or intentional acts of distracted persons, criminals or terrorists upon the project product.  The mitigation of the threats and vulnerabilities are incorporated into product features such as bollards, barrier gates, high security fencing, crash walls, blast walls/shutters, planters, and surveillance cameras.   Some TV may include:

• Rammed by vehicles
• Impacted by explosive devices
• Exposed to biological, chemical and radioactive materials
• Hacker penetrated computers, network and corporate assets
• Breached by intruder and active shooter

The mitigations may include:

• Perimeter security lighting, fencing. bollards and gates
• Surveillance camera monitoring critical entrances, exits and secluded areas
• Access and intrusion detection devices
• Air, chemical, biological and radiological monitoring devices
• Computer and communication equipment firewalls
• Employee and Customer help stations
• Crowd control gates and barriers

The verification involves demonstrating the construction/product specifications and drawings contain requirements that are proven to address TV situations that might be encountered from outside influences. 

For more information, see Circular FTA C 5800.1, Safety and Security Management Guidance for Major Capital Projects.   https://www.transit.dot.gov/regulations-and-guidance/fta-circulars/safety-and-security-management-guidance-major-capital

TIP:    For projects where the Owner has comprehensive technical requirements that are routinely used to replace in-kind or construct identical facilities/equipment, it is likely the Owner already has a System Safety Management Plan that includes a standardized list of hazards, threat and vulnerabilities associated with the technical requirements.

In short, stop voluntarily creating the potential for risk events on projects that may not have adequate management resources to ensure opportunities are realized and threats are mitigated! 

Projects are exposed to risks throughout the project lifecycle and they present threats and opportunities for altering the original project plan for scope, schedule, budget and quality expectations as well as for adjusting the project business case for purpose, deliverable requirements and functionality, and the cost benefit analysis for project completion. 

Guides for project management and practice standards for project risk management are available from government funding agencies and from industry advocates and professional development organizations such as the Federal Transit Administration (www.transit.dot.gov) and the Project Management Institute (www.pmi.org).    Managing risks also requires experienced project professionals with demonstrated expertise in the industry domain of the project and with adequate allocation of hours and budget to perform risk management activities.  

Hard risks can be addressed with engineering solutions and added funds to retain schedule goals.  But soft risks require managerial solutions that must be addressed with funds, changes in project management processes and other innovations that mitigate impacts to extending schedule duration and forecasting new milestone dates.    

Organizational processes and internal struggles between managerial silos create risks on projects.  Many of the risks in this category can be managed and controlled by diligently monitoring events and consequences to assure operational initiatives do not place new burdens on established project objectives, management processes, performance metrics and progress to goals.

Here are some examples soft risks:

1. Mitigate project level changes to the project plan/charter.   While continuous change is a common mantra, it is not a license for project governance, and program and project managers to propose and implement unbridled changes in the project scope and requirements.   Decisions for changes must be vetted with rigor tested to assess facts, substantiate benefits, identify the consequences, and the expected benefits.   Mitigation can be supplemented by developing a Plan B for recovery if the outcomes of the change are not achieved.   

2. Mitigate changes to roles and personnel assignments.   Turnover of personnel during a project life cycle can occur due to actions outside the control of the project manager.   While a certain amount of events can be anticipated by monitoring years of service and performance records of assigned personnel, most changes are driven by the work environment created by the organization, project governance, program and project management and the priorities in the company’s providing management, design and construction services.   Mitigation can be supplemented by enhancing project management activities to incorporate cross-training and a succession plan to reduce impacts for transitioning staff in and out of the team.      

3. Mitigate changes in organizational processes and procedures.   Most projects rely upon the organization’s existing processes and procedures as the foundation for project processes and procedures.   As a result, changes in project processes and procedures should be carefully implemented by ensuring the intended benefits of the change outweigh any increase in complexity, management oversight and the duration for completing the transaction.   Mitigation can be supplemented by ensuring project governance is flexible to allow the project to vary from organizational work flows while maintaining the intended accountability for managerial diligence and accountability for compliance with professional standards in the industry and licensing/educational oversight.

4. Mitigate changes created by political influences outside of project governance.   Ideally, political will can provide added urgency, funding, and streamlined regulations/processes to help progress project work.   However, sometimes there are arbitrary project metrics that are committed to that may fall outside the realm of reality.   Mitigation can be supplemented with a robust project communication plan that builds and maintains channels for aligning tactics and strategies between project governance, political officials, news and television media and community influencers.     

In the rail transit domain, the value and duration of projects, including planning and defining requirements, can span 5 years to 10 years.   For megaprojects in this domain, the operating organizations are usually highly bureaucratic.   As a result, the project durations can be longer due to factors that add time and complexity for processes associated with government contracting requirements, securing bonds and insurance carrier support, managing available manpower and labor agreements, coordinating a large quantity of contracts and project participants, monitoring vast interdependencies and interfaces, directing the logistics for work within fixed boundaries, and for managing materials provided by the project to contractors. 

1. Government contracting requirements:  In exchange for funding, government processes and reporting add significant hard and soft costs to contracts.   In the US, these include requirements for union level rates of pay, overall diversity of employees in the company, compliance with safety regulations, use of quality process, security checks on employees and subcontractors, specific percentages of work by designated subcontractors, and US made steel and US headquarter locations.   Risk mitigation includes processes and strategies for interpreting the requirements and the standard for demonstrating compliance.

2. Insurance:   The magnitude of cost on construction contracts affects the expense to contractors for obtaining specified insurance types and liability levels.   The high cost of insurance premiums can limit the number and proposed price for bids on contracts.   In some cases, it may prohibit insurance carriers from offering policies within the contractors bid price framework.   As a result, Owners can be forced to re-bid the contract with a reduced scope by creating several different contracts, which will allow bidders to obtain required insurance policies for the work.   Risk mitigation includes periodic peer reviews with contractors and insurance companies to align procurement plans with the current industry environment.     

3. Manpower and labor agreements:    New construction and job creation create an economic benefit.  However, they may outpace the availability of manpower in the region were the work is located.   As a result, Owners may require contractors to enter into non-binding labor agreements with trade unions to increase confidence that qualified manpower will be available for the work without creating a hardship to existing contracts from contractors competing for qualified workers.  Risk mitigation includes periodic peer reviews with contractors and local labor officials to assess overall labor availability and the projected public and private contract acquisitions.      

4. Quantity of contracts:  The quantity of contracts within a project proportionally affects the level of manpower for direct work and for management and oversight of the work to meet the project’s overall objectives and quality expectations within the established scope schedule and budget.   In addition to increasing the complexity of execution, it also requires more resources for managing interdependencies and interfaces between the contracts.   Risk mitigation includes a well defined and maintained procurement plan that describes the each contract scope, interfaces and interdependencies with other contracts, and the sequence of execution in the project.      

5. Quantity of project participants:   The quantity of project participants proportionally affects the complexity of the projects’ communications management plan, and other essential project management plan actions.    The other actions include establishing baseline requirements, making decisions and resolving conflicts throughout the project lifecycle, and for identifying the acceptance criteria for deliverables.    Risk mitigation includes a well defined and maintained system of current names and contact information for distributing project documents, scheduling and requesting attendance at meetings, and for organizing and managing project records.   

6. Interdependencies and interfaces:    The quantity of interdependencies and interfaces affects the project team’s ability to make schedule adjustments to work around problems and implement schedule recovery to achieve the project milestones dates on the path to project completion.   The higher the quantity, the lower the ability to maintain project progress and dates.   Consequently, the higher the risk threat for missing dates and extending the project duration and for adding soft cost for management staff that is proportional to the longer project duration.   Risk mitigation includes regular discussion of risks at monthly management coordination meetings, project meetings and contractor progress meetings.       

7. Logistics:    The work boundaries of the project and the amount of resources scheduled to work creates and inverse ratio that affects the environment for efficient execution and optimum progress to original scheduled project milestone dates and goals.  At some point, the amount of area required for personnel, equipment, material staging and means and method processes will not achieve planned productivity within the defined work boundaries.    Risk mitigation includes a detailed master construction schedule and integration plan, and a fully staffed and comprehensive construction management and monitoring plan.

8. Materials Management:   While most typical contracts transfer project risks to the contractor, so it is unusual for projects to plan to provide materials to contractors for installation.   When it occurs, the most common execution involves using in-house personnel from the rail transit agency to install, test and commission the constructed product.  As a result, the project creates a material procurement and inventory management plan, which is overseen by the construction manager and executed by in-house personnel.    This arrangement of responsibilities introduces risks that would normally be managed exclusively by a prime/general contractor.   Risk mitigation includes creating a material management plan with detailed processes and procedures  for managing requirements, purchase cycles and lead times, receipt inspection, inventory control, and for warehouse and distribution operations        

TIP:  Conduct a time study of recurring risk management activities and deliverables to estimate the manhours required from supporting staff. 

TIP:  Ensure Agendas for monthly project meetings, monthly contract progress meetings and periodic management oversight meetings include risk topics.

TIP:  Project program budgets should identify separate budget line items and schedule duration reserves that can be drawn down for mitigating and responding to risks.

Sharing experiences, solutions to problems, tips for effective management, and templates for project documents are all part of a healthy and successful project management environment.    Some of the tools include review of added value documents created by project managers on other projects.   The documents that are most useful between projects include risk registers/logs, Submittal Registers/Logs, Project/Contract Change Logs, Project Management Plan Change Log, and Lessons Learned.

This article presents good practices for Lessons Learned, which is defined by Project Management Institute (PMI) in the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK) as “The knowledge gained during a project which shows how project events were addressed or should have been addressed in the future with the purpose of improving future performance.”   The importance of this knowledge in integrated into the Project Management Book Of Knowledge areas for Quality Management, Communications Management, Procurement Management and Stakeholder Management.    However, Lessons Learned can cover all areas and apply to the operation of the Organization executing the project.

Lessons Learned are part of PMI processes and they are essential for continuous quality improvements under Organizational Quality Management Systems.    Lessons Learned help project managers, program managers, portfolio managers, leaders in Project Management Offices and leaders in the Organization by reinforcing established requirements and processes or showing resolutions to specific experiences while providing input for future applications.   The project/program/portfolio (Project) lessons may lead to changing standard form requirements in contracts and purchase orders, improving management techniques and tools, and modifying project and organization processes and procedures. 

Lessons Learned can occur at any level in the management hierarchy and it can involve micro and macro topics that are encountered throughout the Project lifecycle.    The topics should be monitored to ensure that substantive Lessons are highlighted and shared throughout the project management domain as well as other Organizational silos that support projects.   These silos may realize corporate benefits from implementing corresponding changes that are escalated for consideration throughout the Organization. 

Projects rarely have processes, procedures or standards that are not integrated with an Organization’s existing operation processes, procedures, and transactions for executing day-to-day activities for delivery of business services and products.   Many organizations already have business units that support projects, including Human Resources, Material Procurement/Warehousing, Contracts, Engineering, Fiscal Control and Strategic Planning.    Each of these units have well established processes and procedures that will be adapted for project work.   As a result, Lesson Learned on a project scale may be applicable to making the Organization more effective and efficient in meeting business goals and objectives.  

A Lessons Learned document should be a summary level Matrix where the reader can quickly assess if it is applicable to their project.   If needed, White Papers/Discussion Narratives can supplement the summary and be part of the project records as well as a shared records and knowledge site.  The PMO, Program Manager or the manager of Project Managers, should establish the format, content and frequency for projects to propose Lessons Learned for sharing with other project manager and project teams in the PMO or the Organization.   

Good Practices for Lesson Learned Documents

Lessons Learned should follow the format and content set by the Organization and its Project Management Office.   The topics may include:

• Project/Contract Description
• Project/Contract Status at time of Lessons Learned
• Existing Requirements
• Specific Project Experience
• Resolution of Negative Experience
• Reinforcement of Positive Experience
• Application on Future Projects

Good Practices for Lessons Learned Process

The true benefit of Lessons Learned is the ability to collect data and to make it available to project teams for research throughout a project life cycle.   Lessons Learned may most commonly  be created at the completion of predecessor projects and reviewed at the start of planning for successor projects.      However, it is equally important to review Lessons Learned at critical project milestones or at the time of risk events.     Organization or PMO processes should include:

• Establish Lessons Learned requirements
• Access to Shared LAN Drive for viewing Lessons Learned
• Categorize Lessons Learned scope in a file tree and Index
• Require project manager reviews as part of PMP/Project Charter Development
• Discuss Lesson Learned at Management Review Meetings for Quality Management System

TIP:    Project management oversight and program managers should monitor project progress and suggest topics and experiences based on events that provide teachable moments for documenting and sharing Lesson Learned.

TIP:    Project management plans and program management plans should integrate Lessons Learned requirements.

TIP:     Program managers should champion changes from Lessons Learned for improving project outputs applicable to processes in various PMBOK knowledge areas. 

In the rail transit domain, detailed operating plans and standard operating procedures are well-used, exercised and updated to achieve business goals  -  safety, on-time performance and customer comfort.  While decisions in an operating capacity are routine, their frequency dictates a comprehensive procedure, extensive training, and prescriptive actions on  “what if then scenarios” for all potential events. 

Decisions on projects, particularly at critical milestones, should follow an objective process that assures the best data is available and synthesized to arrive at a responsible and timely determination for action.   Project Managers are responsible and accountable for decisions during a project life cycle.   The decisions can cover the full spectrum of situations including:

• Determining division of work, scope of work packages, and procurement acquisition plans
• Selecting responsive and responsible contractors from bids and request for proposals
• Implementing value engineering changes
• Executing project changes requested by Owners
• Assessing changes in work sequencing for proposed schedule recovery
• Updating construction design for alternate means and methods

Critical decisions are most often required to resolve problems encountered during project execution.    Under these circumstances, it is essential that the Project Manager follow a process that is thoughtful,  thorough and that provides a record documenting the rationale for selecting solutions for implementation.      It also serves to create knowledge for use in resolving similar problems on other active projects and for creating Lessons Learned that can be accessed for review to avoid  the problem during development on future project.

In general, the Project Management Plan (PMP) should provide the framework and criteria for evaluating and making changes to the project scope, schedule, budget and quality requirements.   A typical PMP may indicate that the cost of the solution should be outweighed by the value of the anticipated benefit to the project, the lifecycle costs and the long term operating and maintenance costs for the business.    

Problem solving is a skill required by all project managers and staff, and it includes consideration of several solutions and a systematic and rationale process, tools and techniques for identifying, evaluating, selecting and implementing the solution that provides the best value to the project and any interdependent project affected from implementing the solution.

The framework for making decisions typically includes statement of problem, description of solutions, cost for implementation, schedule for execution, advantages/disadvantages relative to the project, risks with implementation plan, impacts on interdependencies with other projects, and influence on other projects or organizational assets.  

Measuring the quality of decisions – bad or good, can only be determined after execution.     Analyzing the outcome of the decision to the anticipated benefits should also be part of periodic management reviews for the Quality Management System.    The reviews should assure that bad decisions are not repeated and good decisions are repeated. 

Good Practices for Decision Making

• Specify the project conditions at the time the solution is selected
• Identify the problem that the solution will solve
• Describe the criteria for selecting the solution
• List the expected benefit/outcome from implementing the solution
• Establish realistic dates the decision and the realization of benefit
• Determines/specify the inputs needed for the decision process
• Record the Decision in a document that covers all proposed solutions and the conclusion
• Assure that subject matter experts within the project and from the organization are providing input

TIP:    Perform the process by balancing urgency and diligence

TIP:   Always ask if something is missing from the criteria for selecting the solution.

TIP:   Avoid decisions that can not be reversed if it turns out wrong.

TIP:   Establish the order of selection criteria.