Fit-for-purpose project management

Fit-for-purpose project management: An exploratory research into the practice of project management for infrastructure at three Dutch waterboards

de Jong, Catharina (TU Delft Civil Engineering and Geosciences; TU Delft Materials- Mechanics- Management & Design)

Bakker, Hans (mentor)
Bosch-Rekveldt, Marian (mentor)
Lousberg, Louis (mentor)

Delft University of Technology

2018-07-13

The construction of infrastructure in the Netherlands is initiated by the Dutch government and performed in the form of projects. Yearly about €8 billion is spent on infrastructure and in the construction sector 50% of the projects are initiated by public clients. Project management methodologies are the working methods of these public clients. Literature until now only focussed on whether or not adjustments to PM methodologies (customization of methodologies to a single project) are needed or not.
This research aims to explore the fit-for-purpose use of these PM methodologies, to investigate on the level of projects what adjustment occur, what the underlying reasons are and what the contribution to project success is. The main research question is: “How do the fit-for-purpose adjustments to the project management methodologies used by the public clients in the Netherlands contribute to project success of infrastructure projects?”
The research methodology is qualitative, with 13 interviews in a practical orientation (national-, regional-, local governments and waterboards), followed by 6 case studies (13 interviews with project managers and internal clients) at 3 different waterboards (PMC, PRINCE2 and an in-house PM methodology) and the findings were evaluated by 7 experts in the expert panel interviews.
Adjustments to PM methodologies occur in two ways: organisation-specific adjustments (between official theory and the organisation) and project-specific adjustments (between the organisation and the project). Organisation-specific adjustments were made for all waterboards in this research and in total 16 project-specific adjustments were found. These adjustments range from e.g. additional financial mandate to shared risk registers and skipping phases or documentation. Adjustments can be specified to be deviations or additions, roughly occurring fifty-fifty.
The overall majority of these adjustments was said to contribute to project success positively. Project success is in general perceived by the interviewed project managers as mostly a focus on time and budget and from the underlying reasons time was the most prominent aspect.
Recommendations for future research include a closer look at the relation between the adjustments and project success, a framework for the measurement of the impact of adjustments and quantitative research into which methodologies need more adjustments.

Keywords: Fit-for-purpose, project management, PM methodologies, adjustments, project success, infrastructure, Dutch public clients.

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:93bf03d7-8566-4e8e-bf8e-558ba46eacf8

Student theses

master thesis

© 2018 Catharina de Jong