Project Management Bad Practice: Stop using engineers as jack of all trades

Projects are failing worldwide because most organisations use engineers as jack of all trades. In high performing organisations, projects are implemented by a team of experts with the right expertise and experience in project management areas.

This team should consist of project management specialist, a contract specialist, a risk specialist, a quality specialist, a cost estimator, an engineer ( civil, mechanical, electrical), a planner, an architect, and a quantity surveyor.

The response from a mini survey from 10 employees of different organisations in Botswana indicate that engineers perform all the above professional roles and more often the people included in the project teams are not adding required value because most of them are not chosen to manage the process of their above professions.

This is one of the main root causes of project failures in many organisations, and if it continues many strategic plans of organisations will keep on failing. It is time to evolve and start adopting best practices and standards of project management as prescribed in Project Management Institute and International Standards Organisation. Projects management is the scientific process of managing the performance of project group processes using project management body of knowledge to ensure smooth execution of project lifecycle processes to deliver quality final project. These groups processes are grouped into initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and evaluation and closure and each group requires special technical skills and competence from some of the professions mentioned above for them to be implemented effectively. For instance, the scope management and project management implementation plan can be best done by project management specialist, project planner and an engineer collaboratively. Equally so, the contract management plan that forms integral part of project monitoring and evaluation management area requires a contract management specialist.

Furthermore, projects risk plan should be managed by a risk specialist, likewise the project quality assurance plan can be best implemented by a quality specialist. Similarly, the project execution processes that requires mechanical or civil technical competence can be best managed by an engineer in these areas.

However, this is not happening in many organisations, an engineer is made to perform all these duties even when he or she is limited in technical competence of certain project process groups. This is why many projects fail because many of the project processes are not managed properly, and they end up delivering defects deliverables that are transferred to the final project.

The standards of managing project teams are clear and project management Institute offers professional certification in the above professions. Therefore, there is no excuse for organisations to be still managing projects in a traditional way.

Resources are limited, investors and the public expect value for money such as having modern aesthetic, magnificent, durable and reliable projects with high standards of quality. Organisations are recommended to use project capability maturity level model to assess the current project technical competence of its staff and identify areas of professional development.

This will improve these organisations’ project maturity levels and it will help the organisation to intelligently use the project skills of its workforce. Partnership is also one of the project management strategies that can be used to improve the organisation’s project implementation. For instance, rather than employing all of the specialists above, who might be used on a periodical basis, it is better to outsource their work.

The Author is a member of African Excellence Forum, Holds Master of Science Degree in Strategic Management and is a Certified Manager of Quality and Organisational Excellence from America Society for Quality. He also holds, Six Sigma Greenbelt, ISO 9001: 2015 Certified, project management and contract management certificate. Contact: 72211182, Website: www. iqm. co. bw Email: veronmosalakatane@ gmail. com LinkedIn: Veron Mosalakatane