Page 255 - Global Project Management Handbook

12-16 COMPETENCY FACTORS IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT

● Contractors. As mentioned, the actual work was subcontracted by the government to
6 private-sector engineering firms, 13 DB firms, and 2 IT contracting firms. Generally,
the pay package for these employees provided for a substantial bonus after the
employee had worked one year on the project. Thus most contractors would stay on at
least a year. To make staying on the job a year more tolerable, most contractor bene-
fits package allowed for two to three weeks of R&R every two to three months.

Construction Management
There were pluses and minus to having the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers (USACE) pro-
vide the construction management services. On the plus side was the USACE experience
with the government contracting processes, USACE’s capability to mobilize rather
quickly, and USACE’s familiarity working with the U.S. military. On the minus side,
USACE personnel were primarily experienced at doing water and other civil engineer-
ing types of contracts and lacked the skills to manage large electrical and oil projects.

PROGRAM MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS AND
PROGRAM REPORTING

The government outsourced the responsibility to develop, implement, and maintain an
integrated program and project management system that would interface with existing
government systems. The plan was to create an integrated system using the following
major components all interconnected via an Oracle database:
● P3ec from Primavera for project scheduling
● Maximo, a requirements and life-cycle management system
● The Corp of Engineers Financial Management System (CEFMS)
● RMS, the Corp of Engineers construction management system
The other key element of the plan was that the PCOC was to develop the policies and

procedures for all six sectors to use the preceding systems in a uniform way that integrated
program reporting. Further the PCOC was responsible for the program reporting.
Some key issues developed early on relating to the integrated systems include
● The PCO was slow to define and implement policy and procedures for use of the
system, and the IT contractor was slow to develop the automated interfaces
between the systems. This meant that the reports showing planned and actual proj-
ect start dates by city or by governorate were difficult to generate for the first nine
months of 2004. This created a big problem in that mayors, governors, and other
local officials were continually asking for project lists for their geographic area,
and the PCO was not able to produce accurate reports.
● The Corp of Engineers had retained a firm to provide program and project reporting
for the corps construction management function. It turned out that there was overlap
in the scope of work called for by the PCO and Corp’s reporting firm. In the end, the
program management responsibility was removed from the PCO’s scope of work, and
the Corp of Engineers program management contractor preformed the program report-
ing function for both the corp and the PCO.