Level: Advanced
Venue: 2019 AACE International Conference & Expo, June 16-19, 2019, New Orleans, LA, USA
Abstract: It has been well documented in the public domain that capex and schedule success rates on large, complex offshore projects have been low, with over half of projects spending more than sanctioned budget and completing late. There are many credible reasons put forward to explain this, however, what is little understood is the connection between the owner’s project management team (PMT) size and the performance of the project. Analysis undertaken for this paper has examined the industry trend and range of PMT headcount versus project size, using field data from a joint industry project which has been benchmarking completed offshore projects for twenty-five years. Further analysis has determined which of these projects measured well at close-out against standard benchmarks of project performance for similar projects. Initial results have shown that the projects with the lowest number of PMT were noticeably outliers in terms of capex performance, often having final costs well above the upper range of acceptable cost. This paper will provide a rule of thumb for owners to estimate the optimal size of the PMT for their projects and warns that reducing headcount too much can negatively impact a project’s final cost and schedule performance.
Venue: 2019 AACE International Conference & Expo, June 16-19, 2019, New Orleans, LA, USA
Abstract: It has been well documented in the public domain that capex and schedule success rates on large, complex offshore projects have been low, with over half of projects spending more than sanctioned budget and completing late. There are many credible reasons put forward to explain this, however, what is little understood is the connection between the owner’s project management team (PMT) size and the performance of the project. Analysis undertaken for this paper has examined the industry trend and range of PMT headcount versus project size, using field data from a joint industry project which has been benchmarking completed offshore projects for twenty-five years. Further analysis has determined which of these projects measured well at close-out against standard benchmarks of project performance for similar projects. Initial results have shown that the projects with the lowest number of PMT were noticeably outliers in terms of capex performance, often having final costs well above the upper range of acceptable cost. This paper will provide a rule of thumb for owners to estimate the optimal size of the PMT for their projects and warns that reducing headcount too much can negatively impact a project’s final cost and schedule performance.