Within any business, maintaining standardized processes and procedures across organizational groups takes robust governance, diligent communication, and consistent evaluation. An additional challenge for utility companies is that there are a variety of organizational groups with different types of projects and siloed priorities. This in turn leads to missed opportunities to integrate information and gather larger scale insights. By standardizing practices, data becomes cohesive, employees appreciate the transparency and consistency, and in turn develop trust in processes and procedures. As consistency grows and project outcomes become more predictable due to aligned data and early identified risk resolutions, trust grows between execution staff and senior leaders. The utility industry is currently going through one of its most significant inflections. The centralized model for electricity generation and transmission is not flexible enough to accommodate the growing percentage of renewable energy sources. To facilitate a low to zero carbon future, a decentralized grid is required. Furthermore, extreme weather across the US, from hurricanes in the South-East, wildfires in the West and floods in the Mid-West, utility assets need to be reinforced to ensure safe and reliable service can be provided to customers. And if this wasn’t sufficient reason, there is also emerging momentum behind proposals to reform the established cost-of-service regulation model that would tie utility revenues to performance in place of capital investment. Successfully addressing these issues will be a considerable challenge to the business, operations, and project teams within utilities. To mitigate these challenges, change begins at the project level because delivering more consistently at an improved maturity builds the above-mentioned trust in processes and procedures and between all employee levels. Further, the better at delivering projects, the better at maintaining predictable forecasts and deliverables. This reliability, transparency, and trust then supports an organization’s ability to effectively plan and implement change across multiple organizational groups without significant resistance. This article discusses strategies for growing the maturity of project delivery within utilities in order to improve the overall response to organizational changes of any scale. To improve project delivery maturity, the first step is to use maturity models to measure current performance against a standardized framework. Performance can then be ‘benchmarked’ against prior assessments, competitors, or standards in other industries. Having a detailed and quantifiable understanding of current capabilities is a foundational element to growing the maturity of an organization and achieving continuous improvement. Then, utilities can build off this foundation by establishing a realistic roadmap to achieve standardization goals and utilize change adoption practices to gain staff buy-in. Increasing standardization also increases the flexibility of staff within a project organization. Utilities are such complex organizations that staff will at times be rotated to diversify their experience and prepare them for increasingly senior leadership positions. While beneficial for the organization in the long term, this approach introduces short term challenges of a rotating cast of staff delivering critical projects. Standardizing project delivery processes and procedures will allow for quicker transition between roles for new staff and minimize the short-term impacts on projects. We also advocate for utilities to ensure there are clear career paths within project delivery groups, so that staff who find a passion for projects have the opportunity to build a rewarding career. By developing a path for someone to improve skillsets within their own group and discipline, you can maintain and improve talent and best practices. No matter the determined priorities of the business, throughout this entire standardization process be sure to avoid the common pitfall of improperly resourcing the improvement efforts. The value will outweigh the cost and time required if done correctly. Benefits of Improved Data for Forecasting Diving deeper, the benefits of standardization cross many aspects of a business and will positively impact project success. Standardizing the way projects are planned, measured, and delivered will improve cost and schedule certainty. Projects will create more consistent data that can be used across the portfolio to inform more realistic forecasts and permit more granular variance analysis. In turn, these variance analyses will continue to build a repository of data that can be used to continuously improve forecasts. Further, standardizing data and achieving reliable, consistent planning will provide schedule certainty and allow timely risk mitigations. This will reduce project schedule delays, which in turn will allow the business to capture more assets within the regulatory window and incorporate them into the rate base for the coming year. Improving the reliability of project forecasts, risk assessments, and schedules all flows up to improve the reliability of earnings and reporting communicated to investors and build trust with lenders. A further benefit relates to improved safety. Projects are undertaken by utilities to improve the safety and reliability of services provided to their customers. If a portfolio of projects is not executed in full, on time and on budget, customers suffer. While impacts may […]

Agile Project Controls This article will likely stir up incredulity and ire among the most deeply devoted practitioners of waterfall (predictive per PMI nomenclature) and Agile management methodologies, respectively. Agile enthusiasts will balk at waterfall phrases like “Controls,” and ardent supporters of the Critical Path Method will wonder at how an approach that emphasizes flexible scope and deferred decision-making can possibly be applied in a Capital Projects environment. However, each side has something to learn from the other and, if you read on, you will learn how Agile management can help Project Controls efforts. Let us examine why and how these two disciplines are compatible. Project Controls is Knowledge Work Project Controls Analysts do not lay bricks, dig trenches, or install equipment. They don’t even use power tools. Their tools are equations, scheduling practices, dashboards, queries, and ERP software. Rather than turning raw materials into a tangible object more useful than its constituent parts, Project Controllers turn data into information. Project Controls Produces a Product Reports, dashboards, and metrics are the solutions delivered by a Project Controls division or analyst. They synthesize data points into a pattern of information. Their worth is not measured by the hum of a Step-up Transformer, but by the business value of the questions they answer. The best Project Controllers build and tune systems and processes that facilitate and—dare we say—automate the distillation of project data into insights that help make decisions, reduce costs, and keep projects on track. Products Have Customers The systems and insights that Project Controllers deliver are used by The People Who Ask the Questions. Project Managers and Senior Management alike consume these insights: they are the customer. They are the ones buying what PCA’s are selling. Sometimes customers need some help figuring out what they want and need. Sometimes they need help figuring out what they do not want. Either way, the relationship between those who develop products—especially information products—and those who consume them is notoriously fraught with fuzzy requirements, critique, revision, and iteration. Agile is for Product Development and Knowledge Work Agile methods are suited to knowledge work because of the qualitative nature of that work’s product. It reduces waste by measuring against customer value rather than against a preordained plan and gives customers more than one opportunity to determine and express what they want. It also assumes that no one is going to “get it right” the first time: it has expectation management built right into its iterative, customer-engaging cycles. It is ideal for product development because it checks in with the customer frequently and adjusts the solution to changes and refinements in understanding of needs. Perhaps most importantly, it emphasizes the needs of the customer over formal, up-front requirements. If you work in project controls, you have probably created an amazing dashboard or a report that you thought was exactly what was needed and that no one ever looked at. If you are a consumer of dashboards and reports, you have probably asked for some metrics and report widgets that didn’t ultimately drive business value the way you thought they would. If you made that request from a position of power, somebody probably spent time and resources to build that thing for you. Agile methods aim at maximizing the value delivered for time spent. Iteration and Rapid Delivery “I don’t need it perfect, I just need it Wednesday.” Projects stakeholders need to understand what is going on with their projects, like, yesterday. Agile’s focus on rapid delivery is ideal for delivering something. It does this by emphasizing the Minimum Viable Product. What is the smallest, most valuable thing we can release with a high degree of quality? From that starting point, the team adds or refine functionality and deliver it at regular, rapid intervals. The key is that the developers (or in this case the project controls personnel) get valuable feedback at each iteration and their customers get a chance to learn more about what actually helps them instead of trying to solve the problem in their heads or rely on what worked in the past. Exciters and Delighters One tool commonly used in Agile and product development is the Kano model. Kano grouped product features into Basic Needs, Performance Needs, and Delighters (or Exciters). Delighters are the features that are better than anything the customer could have asked for. Think in terms of the touch screen on the first iPhone. I’ll repeat that for the Critical Path folks in the back. Better. Than. The. Customer. Could. Have. Asked. For. This is, by definition, something that up-front requirements vetting cannot provide and which is even less likely to be achieved through ad hoc reporting requests. The Agile User Story turns a functional requirement into a problem statement that leaves room for stakeholders to be pleasantly surprised by […]