HI, I'm with MnDOT HR and am doing some research as our agency relies on PMI org principals for our engineering projects. We are wondering if there are project costs associated with minor projects; major projects and mega projects? Saving Changes...
could you clarify the question - what specifically do you wish to know about the costs involved with these three project types? Also, there is no standard definition for a minor vs a major project as that varies company to company. Mega projects are generally understood to be those with budgets over $1B.
Kiron
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1 reply by Steph Olson
Dec 05, 2024 11:34 AM
Steph Olson
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Thank you! You somewhat answered my question. By indicating that "Mega projects are generally understood to be those with budgets over $1B", helps me a lot.
Overall, there is some sort of idea floating around our agency that specific budget dollars are associated with "minor projects; major projects and mega projects."
If I understand your comment and Keith Novak's reply, the PMI certificate program doesn't outline the dollar value of minor projects, major projects or mega projects. Example: Minor projects usually cost 50K and under? Major projects usually cost 50K-200K? and Mega projects usually cost 1 billion and above?
If the PMI cert program defines what those are values are per (minor, major and mega), that would be what I'm looking for.
In general, as the cost of the project increases, so does the overhead from the governance requirements due to the increased risk. Thresholds may be set for different levels of organizational oversight and the governance rules. A department head may have full authority over the small projects, but the board of directors will approve and periodically review the mega projects.
As an example, at the federal level at least, the US government tends to prioritize preventing corruption over the cost of preventing it such as extremely detailed and expensive accounting requirements to ensure nobody is skimming cash. It can be so expensive in fact that many private companies will not even consider government projects, or spin off a separate company exclusively for those projects to avoid the massive regulatory burden on their commercial projects. Saving Changes...
could you clarify the question - what specifically do you wish to know about the costs involved with these three project types? Also, there is no standard definition for a minor vs a major project as that varies company to company. Mega projects are generally understood to be those with budgets over $1B.
Kiron
Thank you! You somewhat answered my question. By indicating that "Mega projects are generally understood to be those with budgets over $1B", helps me a lot.
Overall, there is some sort of idea floating around our agency that specific budget dollars are associated with "minor projects; major projects and mega projects."
If I understand your comment and Keith Novak's reply, the PMI certificate program doesn't outline the dollar value of minor projects, major projects or mega projects. Example: Minor projects usually cost 50K and under? Major projects usually cost 50K-200K? and Mega projects usually cost 1 billion and above?
If the PMI cert program defines what those are values are per (minor, major and mega), that would be what I'm looking for.
I misinterpreted your question as how costs differ with respect to size rather than what size determines different classifications.
PMI does not assign any such cost threshold values and they would be meaningless, particularly in the small to medium categories. My employer's medium category is in the 10's of millions and larger than the operating budget of many companies.
Classifications are made to drive different behaviors. The need for different behaviors at different risk levels is driven by risk tolerance of the executive leadership and that differs widely. Saving Changes...
Agreed Steph - there is no standard categorization defined for different cost classes of projects. That is strictly a company-to-company standard and some companies don't even bother to distinguish between minor & major whereas others have multiple levels. For example, the Canadian bank I used to work for had five tiers of projects based on their estimated costs.
There isn't a standard definition for cost for minor projects, major projects, and mega projects, since the cost of projects is affected by several factors like the nature of the project, government regulations, environmental circumstances, the local currency, and various others. Each company can establish its own project classification, according to defined parameters. Saving Changes...
