In this episode, Gene Tunny interviews Prof. Adam Boddison, CEO of the Association for Project Management. They explore why projects—whether in construction, IT, or public infrastructure—often go over budget and run late. Adam shares insights on project planning, risk management, and the importance of stakeholder engagement. They also discuss real-world case studies, including the Sydney Opera House and the Channel Tunnel, highlighting how long-term benefits sometimes outweigh initial budget overruns.
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About this episode’s guest: Prof (Dr) Adam Boddison OBE
Adam is Chief Executive of the Association for Project Management. He has a non-executive director portfolio that has previously included being Chair of the Corporation for a Further Education college and a Trustee for a multi-academy trust providing education for 32,000 pupils across 58 primary, secondary and specialist settings. Adam is also a Visiting Professor at Stranmillis University College (Queens University Belfast) and the University of Leicester (School of Business).
Prior to this, Adam held a number of executive leadership roles including Chief Executive for nasen (National Association for Special Educational Needs), Director of the Centre for Professional Education at the University of Warwick and Academic Principal for IGGY (a global educational social network for gifted teenagers). He has published a range of education books and mathematics text books and is a qualified clinical hypnotherapist.
Adam has a particular interest in leading organisations that deliver societal benefit.
Source: https://www.adamboddison.com/
Timestamps for EP275
- Introduction and Importance of Project Management (0:00)
- Overview of the Association for Project Management (2:59)
- Professional Qualifications and Training (5:58)
- Critical Chain Project Management (11:15)
- Challenges and Successes in Project Management (14:29)
- Examples of Successful Projects (26:16)
- Risk Management and Judgment in Project Management (30:40)
- Mega Projects and Project Management Literature (34:52)
- Adam’s work which led to his OBE award (39:00)
Takeaways
- Most projects fail at the start, not the end. Poor initial planning and unrealistic expectations often set projects up for failure.
- Stakeholder engagement is critical. Involving the right people from the beginning can prevent costly mistakes later.
- Project success is about more than time and budget. Long-term benefits, such as economic impact and societal improvements, should be factored in.
- Mega-projects are prone to overruns. Large-scale projects often face budget and timeline issues due to political, technical, and financial uncertainties.
- The “Pre-Mortem” approach helps mitigate risk. Imagining a project’s worst-case scenario before starting can identify potential pitfalls early.
Links relevant to the conversation
Association for Project Management:
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Transcript: What HS2, Channel Tunnel & Sydney Opera House Teach Us about Mega Projects w/ Adam Boddison OBE – EP275
N.B. This is a lightly edited version of a transcript originally created using the AI application otter.ai. It may not be 100 percent accurate, but should be pretty close. If you’d like to quote from it, please check the quoted segment in the recording.
Adam Boddison 00:00
You know, when you’re talking about people’s health, you know, this isn’t just like, you know, any old IT system, if we get this wrong, people could die. You know, that’s the kind of risk we’re talking about here, because we’re talking about a computer system that’s going to fundamentally underpin the National Health Service and people’s access to what could be life saving medicines. So when you’re talking about that level of risk, you know the stakeholder engagement piece that we just sort of you know that that becomes absolutely critical.
Gene Tunny 00:36
Welcome to the economics explored podcast, a frank and fearless exploration of important economic issues. I’m your host, Gene Tunny. I’m a professional economist and former Australian Treasury official. The aim of this show is to help you better understand the big economic issues affecting all our lives. We do this by considering the theory evidence and by hearing a wide range of views. I’m delighted that you can join me for this episode. Please check out the show notes for relevant information. Now on to the show.
Speaker 1 01:09
Professor. Adam bodison, welcome to the program. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Oh, of course,
Gene Tunny 01:14
Adam, so you’re the CEO of the Association for project management. And you know, as an economist, project management is something that is of great interest, because as economists, we’re often asked to advise on the economics of of different projects. And one of the things you quickly discover is that there’s a tendency for a lot of projects to blow out or blow out in time and cost budget overruns. And what I want to what I’m interested in is to what extent is poor project management related to that. So I think that’d be that’s one of the things I’d like to get into. But first, can you just tell us a bit about the association, please, and your path to becoming the CEO there, please? Adam,
Adam Boddison 02:06
yeah, absolutely. So let me start with me, then I’ll move on to the association. So this might sound a very strange thing to say, but my background is actually not really in project management. I’m an educator by trade. Started life as a mathematics teacher, involved in teacher training, worked in lots of charities, and my route to being CEO of the Association for project management was because I run a number of other professional associations and professional bodies. So it’s quite interesting. I bring a knowledge of how to run a professional association. But actually, it’s been a pretty steep learning curve over the past four years to really build up my project management knowledge. And of course, I started by doing all of our qualifications. And it turns out there were quite a few things that I already knew, because there’s a correlation, I think, between kind of strategy execution that might be associated with kind of leadership and kind of project and program delivery, which I think is quite interesting in terms of the organization itself. So I say professional membership association. We have around by 45,000 members in the association. We’re also a chartered body, so we are guardians of the chartered Project Professional Standards, the only chartered membership association for the project professional in the world is something we’re really proud of. And of course, we have corporate partners as well. So we’re working with around about 500 organizations, some that you know, your listeners will have heard of organizations like, you know, the BBC, you know Google, you know, so big organizations right down to small organizations across a whole range of different sectors. So not just infrastructure and construction and telecoms, but also financial services, you know, government departments, retail, tourism, so a real breadth of organizations that we work with,
Gene Tunny 03:56
right? So is the definition of project expansive? Is it like it’s not just a construction project, it’s not just a bridge or a tunnel or a new building? Is it an expansive definition? That’s
Adam Boddison 04:08
exactly right. Yeah. So when we actually talk about projects themselves, it is broad, as I say, it’s it’s across all sectors. And you know, the actual kind of formal definition. We talk about the application of processes, methods, skills, knowledge and experience to achieve kind of specific objectives. So we talk about, for example, acceptance criteria, final deliverables and and importantly, the fact that there’s a finite time scale and budget. So it’s got a start and an end, if you like, which is what distinguishes it from business as usual. So, just like you can have business as usual in any sector in any organization, the same is true of projects. The difference is, as I say, that they have that clear set of deliverables within a specified time scale.
Gene Tunny 04:57
Gotcha, yep. Okay. And that could be, could be an IT project, a software development project in government, developing and implementing a new policy, a new program. Yeah, exactly.
Adam Boddison 05:10
And that breath is one of the things that makes the job really interesting, but also challenging, because, you know, it in a sense, you can have people who have these kind of multiple identities. On the one hand, they might be, you know, let’s say they’re an engineer, because they’re involved with construction projects, but then also they’re delivering projects. So to what extent do those two things, you know, overlap? And you can make a similar argument for, I don’t know, you mentioned it projects, for example, people who are, you know, software developers, but actually they’re working with organizations to put in a new CRM system or something like that. We very much see ourselves as almost the glue of the wider professional association landscape. Great.
Gene Tunny 05:53
Just to understand fully what the Association does. You’re a membership association. Do you also offer professional qualifications. Do you do the training? So we don’t
Adam Boddison 06:05
deliver the training, but we accredit the training. So we set the standards and make sure that that people who receive the qualifications are at the standard. So if you like, we do the exams. Think of it like that. So we set, What? What? What the You know, what is COVID in those so we set the standards, set the exams. We have partnerships with more than 100 training providers who are based all over the world, actually, again, some very niche and specialist providers, some who are providers of all kinds of other things, not just project and program management. They do the training, and then they come and then they come and do the qualifications with us.
Gene Tunny 06:42
And is this the prince two qualification? Is that what it’s called, no
Adam Boddison 06:47
so Prince two, for people who will have heard of that, of course, it was, we used to be a standard qualification that was kind of half owned by the UK Government and half owned by the private sector, and that was until about, I would say, you know, five or 10 years ago, that was the kind of the go to standard, that qualification has some legacy value now, but it’s kind of moved on. I think there was a recognition that Prince was great if you were talking to other people that also had prints. It was like a language, right, like that. But actually, where it fell down was that, how do you as a someone who delivering projects and programs, communicate what you’re doing to, you know, the C suite, to other domain experts, and that’s where what we do is slightly different. So the chartered standard is now replaced print to us as the go to standard in the UK, and is starting to make similar kind of tractions in other parts of of the world too. So if you look at the government’s you know, capability framework for delivering publicly funded projects, it will say that if you are a senior responsible owner for projects or programs, you need to be chartered with the Association for project management, or you need to be a fellow of the organization, because it’s all about competence. So it’s not just a qualification, it’s a standard that you need to maintain to say that you are competent to deliver projects as well.
Gene Tunny 08:13
Okay, so does that mean I need formal training and practical experience? Exactly.
Adam Boddison 08:18
So there’s a technical knowledge aspect, and that’s where the qualifications come in. And that’s where Prince two and other qualifications, and our own qualifications, like we have the project management qualifications and so on, and there are other professional bodies out there, so that all comes in in the technical knowledge space. But there’s then this professional practice aspect, and that’s where the it’s not just the experience, but it’s it’s demonstrating through that experience that you’ve covered off a range of the of the different areas of competence that would meet the kind of minimum standard we talk about it as a kind of license to practice and in the third aspect is around ethics and values. So it’s not just about being able to deliver at any cost, if you like, that has to fit in with the wider expectations around things like sustainability. For example, you want to be using kind of materials that are going to make our world a better place. You can your listeners won’t be able to see but I’ve got a little slogan behind me here that says, because when projects succeed, society benefits. That societal benefit piece we think is fundamental to project success, it’s not just about time, cost, quality, actually, it’s about improving the world, making the world a better place, one project at a time.
Gene Tunny 09:35
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like, as an economist, I think about the net benefits, or the net present value of a project, and a cost benefit analysis, and if, exactly, if you reduce the costs of it through better project management, then certainly you you increase the net benefits. So that’s great. Can I ask? I mean, what would I learn in in one of your courses? And do you have short courses? So say, I just need a refresher, or I need to brush. Show up my project management skills for projects I’m running. Can i Is there a little course for me? Is there a wider course I can do? What type of things can I learn? Yeah, so
Adam Boddison 10:09
we have a whole range of different things and formal courses. As I say, we tend to work with the training providers if you’re doing a course to lead to a qualification, but let’s say that you’ve decided that you want to know more about either something like critical chain project management is a good example of a methodology that’s less well known. Then that’s the kind of thing where we have a learning, learner management system, where you can as a member, you get access to that system, and then you can kind of do a kind of online professional development, kind of top up, if you like, to learn about specialist areas. We also have various guides which can which can help people, and those guides are developed by the profession, for the profession. So it’s where we kind of take areas of best practice and expertise, and as a professional body, we then make that available to the wider profession. So, so there’s everything from the kind of formal standards, which will be our competence framework and our body of knowledge, right through to those kind of more thought leadership innovation, kind of white papers and and skills guides and things like that, right? So
Gene Tunny 11:18
by critical chain, is that the critical path of what I would think of as the critical path of a project the things that need to happen in sequence. So
Adam Boddison 11:27
critical path, of course, and I say this with my maths teacher hat on, now used to teach critical path analysis. So critical path is obviously around optimization and identifying those tasks or activities on the critical path that if any of those are delayed, the overall project is still project is delayed. It’s a kind of classic staple of the project management world. Critical chain moves the debate on a little bit. And unlike critical path, what it does is it actually identifies and prioritizes the most resource intensive tasks as part of a project or a program, and uses kind of buffers or shared floats, if I use critical path terminology to kind of ensure that resources are available when needed for the most resource intensive activities in a project, it’s not widely used. I don’t really know why it’s not widely used, because it seems to me an absolute game changer in terms of organizations who are delivering complex projects within resource constrained environments, but it kind of takes the debate further, and that’s a great example, as I say, of where, you know, we provide a kind of something quite, quite niche, quite specific, but actually can have a broad impact on project outcomes. Yeah,
Gene Tunny 12:40
I’m going to have to look that up. That sounds fascinating, potentially, that is something that could could help with improved project delivery. Because, I mean, I’m in Brisbane, and Australia, we’ve got to build we’ve got the Olympics coming up in 2032 and we’re going to have all sorts of issues trying to get the city ready for the Olympics. And I just hope that they are thinking laterally about how to deliver projects. And I suppose one of the reasons it’s not, why it may not be taken up, is because people might see it as a bit of this slack, or there’s it’s inefficient to begin with, but but actually, having this buffer, having this this capacity to bring in extra resources helps. It means that the overall project is probably going to run better and more you’re going to deliver it more cost effectively. Yeah,
Adam Boddison 13:25
that’s right. I mean, not to get too technical about it, but the thing about critical path analysis is, you know, all of the kind of float and you know, the buffer is all tied up within individual pathways and within individual activities. One of the things about critical chain is that you end up with this kind of shared capacity, so you can start with a more constrained set of resources, but make sure that they are available to be deployed because of the way in which you’ve set it up. From the outset, some people would say it’s just good project management, right? I mean, that’s that’s also a way of looking at these things. But for those people who are interested in this, we have published a senior manager’s guide and a project manager’s guide to critical path, sorry, to critical chain, which is very new. It’s come out within the last few months, and that’s available on the APM website. That’s apm.org.uk
Gene Tunny 14:17
Great. I’ll definitely check that out. It sounds really interesting, right? Well, we might get into my questions about project management. What characterizes good versus project management? What do you think are the hallmarks of good project management? Adam,
Adam Boddison 14:32
well, you know, we’ve already started talking about kind of setting up for success in a conversation. So far, we have a phrase that we use a mantra, if you like, which is that projects don’t go wrong. They start wrong. To me, almost universally, when I look at projects, whether they’re ones in the public domain or not, nine times out of 10 you look at those and you say, what’s really gone wrong here? But. You can trace it right back to the beginning that something wasn’t set up right now. Why does that happen? Right if we know that, why does it still happen? It happens in my mind, not because people wake up in the morning and say, I’m going to take shortcuts on my planning to this project. I think it happens because of external constraints and expectations. Take, for example, a project that’s publicly funded. It could be any country in the world. You know, you always hear government ministers or leaders of countries talking about, in infrastructure projects, we must get spades in the ground. And it’s like, it’s like, it kind of hasn’t started right until they start to see the building go up, or they start to see the diggers turn up on site or something. And therefore, there’s a pressure both through the procurement process for these, for, you know, for commissioning projects, but then also through the the kind of delivery phase to say, don’t waste lots of time planning this. Let’s get on with it. And actually, that results in some of the long term, you know, cost overruns that you talked about it results in some of the kind of the scope changes that are needed, where things are not set out clearly enough or thought through clearly enough from the outset, and those are the things that end up costing the taxpayer a huge amount of money. Right?
Gene Tunny 16:14
Is it because they’re not doing the and the right feasibility studies or in geotechnical investigations. What are the,
Adam Boddison 16:24
no, I don’t necessarily think it’s that, you know, let’s, let’s take a specific thing. Let’s take something that’s really kind of controversial in the UK, which is the HS two project. You know, the red line. I’m sure that’s probably known about globally as well. It’s, you know, one of those scales and complexities of projects, which I’m sure will give it a status, kind of globally, but, you know, that’s been really, really challenging. You know, there’s been, you know, various debates over time about, you know, is it on, it? Is it off? What’s the scope? Or, you know, actually we’re going to cut back. Oh no, actually, we’re going to do more again, you know, one of my reflections on this is that the more you kind of change the scope of something that just adds layers of cost and complexity, and that should have been thought about in the planning stage, and once you get past that planning stage, I’m not saying you should never change the scope, because sometimes you know you need to kind of be Agile, small a Agile to kind of to change things. But actually these changes were not to do with changes in the operating environment or the kind of benefits realization piece. These were changes that were due to political will or particular political prioritization. And I think it plays into this bigger misconception, which is this idea that if you stop doing something, it will automatically cost less. That’s not necessarily true. There is a cost to stopping something once you’ve already got resources in play, you’ve got your workforce trained, you’ve started delivery, even if you reduce the scope to zero, then you’ve got to wind all of that down, and you might have to wind it back up again, you know, to deliver other aspects of the project and or the resources that you wanted to use, there’s now a gap in what you need them for because of the change. And so you have to lose all of that resource and then pick it up again somewhere else, which ends up costing more than if you just carried on. That, I don’t think is well understood by, you know, the those in public, Senior Public Sector positions, but also by the general public. I would say, think there’s a view that, well, surely we’re doing less. It should cost less. It’s not necessarily true.
Speaker 2 18:35
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19:10
now. Back to the show,
Gene Tunny 19:14
I guess. Yeah, one thing I’d like to ask, are there any rules of thumb regarding, I mean, how many, how much time or effort is there a percentage of the budget that should go into that upfront conceptual stage or project planning stage? Adam,
Adam Boddison 19:32
no, I don’t think we put a specific number on it, but whatever number people are starting with is probably more where I’d start from. And, you know, there are some studies out there. I can’t think I’m off the top of my head, but there are some studies out there which talk about the idea for, you know, for every extra pound spent in the planning phase, it saves X number of pounds, you know, kind of on the whole, whole project life cycle. People, and I think that those are kind of sector specific as well, but, but, but, but, yeah, I think, I think it is important. And I think that business case piece, yeah, is important as well. You know, you know this with your kind of economics back background and so on, you know that the business case can change. And we’ve talked a little bit about kind of project success, right? You know, in terms of, you know, time, cost, quality and so on. I’m not always sure that that’s the only thing we should be caring about. You mentioned cost benefit analysis earlier on. That benefits piece for me is often the bit that gets squeezed. It’s like what we’ve done, the projects finished now, and the benefits will automatically get delivered. I don’t think that’s always true, and also sometimes the benefits are not the ones. In the business case, the Channel Tunnel is a great example of this. The Channel Tunnel joining England and France. If you look at the business case, it was all about moving people from England and France, backwards and forwards. But look now, and actually, probably one of the biggest benefits is not just about people. It’s about moving energy between England and France. EDF is one of the big energy companies. They’re a big supplier to the UK market. They use the Channel Tunnel as the main vehicle for getting the energy from France to England. That was not in the original business case. So when you think about a channel tunnel on paper, it’s a disaster, right? It was late, it was over budget, you know, all the traditional measures that you might use, it fails, right? You ask the general public what they think about it now, they say, yeah, that’s, that’s a project success. We use it. It’s great. It, you know, and actually it delivers benefits that weren’t that so, you know, is that successful project or not? You know, I do think that benefits piece is important to focus on.
Gene Tunny 21:49
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’m a great believer in doing that, that ex post, or after the fact evaluation, benefits evaluation, or, you know, benefit cost assessment, as well as having done at ex ante before the before the fact. I think, I think that’s, yeah, I think that’s a very good point. Can I ask just as a dumb question, because I don’t know much about the what was that energy company? Was it EDF? It’s a French EDF. I was talking about here. How are they transporting the energy from brands to England? How’s that work? That’s
Adam Boddison 22:24
a good question, I presume, through cables. But okay, the point is, they’re using the tunnel to actually transfer from one, from one one and one place to another. And have that tunnel not being available, that would have been a much more challenging job, right? Yeah.
Gene Tunny 22:39
So they are actually exporting electricity. I was just wondering if it’s fuel, or you’re talking about liquid fuel, but it sounds like it’s, you’re talking about electricity. I’m thinking, I think
Adam Boddison 22:47
it’s electric electricity primarily. But this points about benefits, though, it’s not just kind of immediately post project. I think it’s really long term this, you know, the Channel Tunnel thing. And just use that, because we’re talking about that example, it was decades afterwards before we really knew whether that was a successful approach. You know, let’s take an Australian example, the Sydney Opera House, right? You know, I think the guy who was the architect of that, right, never, never came back to see the finished thing, right? Because he was so disappointed by by it. Yeah, actually, I think probably it’s true. If I talk to Australians, if I talk to, you know, the many, you know, millions of tourists, they would say, this is a huge success, right? I mean, it’s probably paid for itself many times over in terms of its economic contribution, but, you know, on paper, that was not, would not have been considered a success, but, but if you were looking at it from the long term and the benefits that it’s brought, you know, particularly in terms of the tourism side of things, it’s a huge success. So I think sometimes we don’t know for sure until a long time after, and this is where, in my mind, governments around the world are well placed to take the long view, to actually open the box up on things that were delivered and closed, probably years and years and years ago, decades ago, and say, you know, looking back now with the benefits of hindsight, would we still have done that, or would we done it differently, and use the lessons learned from that type of analysis and apply them to the commissioning and procurement of projects going forwards? Yeah.
Gene Tunny 24:21
Yeah. Very good. I think I like the idea of having the long view. Yes, Sydney Opera House example, that’s a, that’s a very good one. And I think I agree with you. I mean, it, it certainly was a project. I think it ran over budget, 14 100% or something like that. I mean, when, and you, you mentioned the architect, I think Jan Woodson must. I think he was, I think that was his name. There are all sorts of problems with the building of it. They had to blow up the original foundations they laid for it because they wouldn’t support the shells. Yeah, there are all sorts of things that went wrong. But, yeah, I think now, I mean, Australians love it. It’s hard to imagine Sydney. Other without it, it’s just perfect. So, yeah, very good point. Okay. Now, Adam, do you have any examples of where good project management has led to superior infrastructure delivery? Are there any gold standard examples that that are cited, that your association promotes? Yeah, we’ve
Adam Boddison 25:22
got plenty, plenty of them. In fact, it’s a great we celebrated our 50th anniversary a couple of years ago as an organization. And as part of our celebrations, we decided that we try and identify 50 projects in the past 50 years that that we really wanted to showcase. Yeah, these are projects that are, you know, Pan sectors. So some of them are infrastructure, some of them are other types of projects. But what’s really interesting about them is we didn’t want to necessarily pull those out and say, Look, this is a, you know, a perfect textbook example of exactly how to do a project. Because, you know, I’m not sure how realistic that is to say that you’ve got a perfect one, right? Because there’s always things you could do better or differently. But what we wanted to do is, is to pull out ones that, you know, we can be, we can be proud of. And they came from many, many different fields. So, you know, to give an example of some of them, you know, one of them was, for example, Dolly the sheep. If people remember that one of the fast cloning technologies that led on to some of the great advances in kind of medical science. So, you know, that’s an example of a project which, at the time, was quite novel and innovative, but actually led on to some huge advances in medical technology. In the UK, we had one which was around it, so the electronic prescription service. So for to explain what this is, because people might not have heard of this, we used to have a system where, if you went to your doctor because you were, you know, you were unwell, and they prescribed you with some medication, they handwrite a kind of prescription, and you take it down to your local pharmacy, yeah. And because the way that system worked, there was a lot of, I said there was a lot of corruption. I can’t put a number on that, but let’s say there was a potential for corruption in that type of process, and it wasn’t very fast and so on. So the government under Turk, a national kind of, you know, IT project to kind of automate this so that the doctor on their computer, which is a kind of NHS, you know, National Health Service, kind of computer, can say what you you need. That will automatically be picked up by what are a private a private sector set of pharmacists in a very secure way, and you can just go and pick that up by the time you’ve got to the pharmacy, your prescriptions ready. This was a government funded it project that was within budget changed probably the life of every person in the country, directly or indirectly, overnight. And you know what was really interesting about it? I didn’t see a news story about this in any newspaper, because there’s a problem here. You know that there’s a kind of trial by media, I call it, where projects that go wrong are from page news, you know, government, you know, overspends on infrastructure project or IT project. But the ones that go well, we don’t hear about, and I think that’s the problem. That’s why I want to showcase the these great examples, right?
Gene Tunny 28:19
And can you reiterate, please? Adam, why did that one go? Well, was it because of good project planning at the outset? I
Adam Boddison 28:26
think there definitely was good, good project planning in there, but I think it was also because of really effective stakeholder engagement. You know, they understood what is the problem that we’re actually trying to solve here, and so they knew already that the solution was going to actually deliver the benefits that they wanted to, and they kept monitoring the benefits afterwards to make sure, you know, the project wasn’t, kind of clicked. Once the system was in place, it wasn’t job done. They’ve made further changes to that system since then. So, so that’s just, that’s just one example. I think
Gene Tunny 29:00
talking to stakeholders is so important. I mean, I just know that from my own projects, like, if I think about the work I do as an economist, if I’m doing, you know, doing a cost benefit analysis or an economic impact study, I think you really need to talk to relevant people who know about the issues, who be effective, because you get such great insights, and if you don’t talk to them, you could miss something really important. So I think it’s, it’s so important to have that stakeholder, yeah,
Adam Boddison 29:29
I think I’d also just adding the, you know, really effective monitoring of the risks here as well, and those risks, because, you know, when you’re talking about people’s health, this isn’t just like any old IT system. If we get this wrong, people could die. That’s the kind of risk we’re talking about here, because we’re talking about a computer system that’s going to fundamentally underpin the National Health Service and people’s access to what could be life saving medicines. So we’re. You’re talking about that level of risk. You’ve, you know, the stakeholder engagement piece that we’re just sort of, you know, that that becomes absolutely critical. I mean, it should be critical anyway, but, you know, the stakes are really, really high to get that right.
Gene Tunny 30:11
Yeah, that’s, that’s a very good point. It just got me thinking about, with the tech sector, or with with startups, there’s this view that you should move fast and and break things. I mean, do you have much? Does your association have much to do with startups in the in the tech sector, and are you trying to encourage them? Well, you actually, you should be, you know, doing more project planning.
Adam Boddison 30:36
Well, we do have some some involvement with some of those organizations. What we’re not doing is telling them they shouldn’t take a shouldn’t take risks. I think, understanding what the appetite for risk should be given the context that you’re operating in. And clearly, if you’re a tech startup, you’re going to need to take risks. So you’re not going to get very far, right? I mean, if you’re running a kind of national infrastructure project, or a national IT project, which is operating in the kind of high risk health sector, for example, then I think you’re going to have a different level of tolerance around risk. But I think it’s understanding what that is, and therefore how that determines what you should do on a real, practical level. One of the bits of advice, I think, is probably works well unanimously, irrespective of where you are on your risk appetite spectrum, is this idea of undertaking a pre mortem? Now, pre mortems, I don’t know if your listeners would be familiar with this. Everybody’s probably heard of a post mortem. You know, when we picked the bones out so someone’s died. What was the cause of death, if you like, in a medical sense, but a pre mortem is the opposite of that. You’re almost saying at the outset of a project, if this goes wrong, and I don’t just mean the small risk, but if this goes catastrophically wrong, and in a year’s time, we are all, you know, licking our wounds, you know, to say this was a complete and unmitigated disaster. You know, how on earth, how on earth did we get here? You’re almost putting yourself in that situation and saying, what could the cause of death have been? And you start with that at the outset. And with stakeholders. You do this with stakeholders a really transparent process. You know, I found that those organizations that invest in that kind of process as part of the planning, you know, that’s the kind of thing which is really going to enable them to be more effective in their approach to risk,
Gene Tunny 32:21
yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely, okay. And, I mean, how do you go about finding a good project manager? So I guess you’ve there are the qualifications. Is your your association, these are your members, aren’t they? They’re, they’re project managers. And okay, and so. So, I mean, you’d want to find someone with those qualifications, with experience in successfully delivering programs, wouldn’t you? I’m just thinking about who, the types of people you’d want, yeah. I mean,
Adam Boddison 32:52
the qualifications is one part of it, but right, look, I started off this whole conversation today by saying, Look, I’ve done some of our qualifications. You know, should you employ me to come and, you know, deliver some of your projects? Well, I wouldn’t employ me to do that, because just because I have the knowledge and understanding doesn’t mean I’m the right person to do it. And I think that’s why the chartered standard that we have, that standard piece, is so important, because that says it’s not just about the technical knowledge, which you can learn from the book. It’s about saying that actually, you have demonstrated through other projects in the past that you are able to apply that knowledge and understanding in specific contexts to deliver the kind of outcomes and benefits that we’re talking about.
Gene Tunny 33:35
Yeah, but how much of it comes down to? I mean, the challenging thing often is or the challenging quality in people to evaluate is often judgment, unless you see them performing again and again. I mean, there’s that quality of judgment. Is it the case? There’s a project manager you often have to make on the fly decisions, or you’ve got to make a trade off you didn’t expect to make. Is that the type of thing that the type of thing that happens in project management, you need some people with good judgment. I
Adam Boddison 34:04
think judgment is probably essential in goodness think of a job where good judgment is not a good, good thing to have. But the thing with judgment right is, how do people don’t just rock up on day one with good judgment? Some people do, but I think most people don’t. Yeah, that’s something that people acquire over time, and they acquire it because they’ve seen things like that before. You know, I go back to my maths teacher years and years ago when I started my profession, and I remember my students would say to me, sir, how did you know to solve that particular problem in that particular way? And the answer was, usually, because I’ve seen something like this before, and so I kind of had an idea of what to try. You know, there’s a bucket of strategies over here that I think probably aren’t going to work, and there’s a bucket of strategies here that I think there’s probably something here that’s going to have a good chance that comes with time and experience, and I think that helps to really hone your judgment over time. Yeah. Yeah,
Gene Tunny 35:00
yeah, absolutely. Okay. Adam, can I ask about the mega project literature? There’s the Danish geographer, and I’m not going to say I’m going to pronounce his name incorrectly, so I won’t even try, but it’s bent. F, l, y, v, B, J, E, R, G. I think a lot of people, lot of listeners will be familiar with him. I mean, he he argues that the mega projects are almost doomed to run over budget. So if we think of a mega project as something a billion dollars or more, like a very large project, they just seem to invariably run over budget. We’re not very good at estimating what these things are going to cost. Are you? Do you have any thoughts on mega projects, on that literature? Yeah, well,
Adam Boddison 35:45
I mean, I, you know, bent has his view on the world. I would say that other views are available as well. And, and I would say that Ben bent is, you know, he’s an APM Honorary Fellow. So we know him well, I think he’s probably at the more pessimistic end of the impact of projects. And there are others who are at the more optimistic end. However, all of them, actually, any of the figures that you look at in the literature, none of them are great, really, probably the most positive you’ll find. It says something like maybe, you know, 40 or 50% of projects are successful. I mean, if that was the case in any other business, you’d probably close down tomorrow, right? Yeah. Why are we doing this? But I think it comes back to what I was saying earlier on about what do we really mean by success, if we really pin our colors to the mast on time, cost, quality, which is where, you know, Ben’s stat of, you know, only naught point 5% of projects are successful then, then I think you can come and step quite quickly, and you will get those negative numbers. But let’s use there’s a great expression in the Netherlands, actually medical expression, where they talk about things which are successful in terms of the outcomes, but don’t deliver any benefits. So you imagine the surgeon that says the operation was successful, the patient is dead. You know, you know, the operation went exactly as planned. We did all the things we said we’re going to do. You know, there were no hitches whatsoever, but, but that means nothing if the person is dead, right? So, so you can imagine this in the context of an IT project. Let’s say you set out to deliver an IT project, but because the pace of change in in, you know, in the IT world is so fast, and maybe it takes 18 months to deliver this, you get to the end and approach, you know, it’s not needed anymore. It’s in a situation where you’ve delivered everything on time, within budgets, the required specification, you’ve engaged with the stakeholders, you’ve managed all the risk, all of these things have been great. You’ve planned it properly, but you get to the end, then it delivers zero benefits because no one needs it anymore. You know, that’s the kind of thing we’ve got to get away from. So that’s why I think this kind of pinpointing success by saying, you know, was it on time? Was it within Bucha? And then saying, Well, yes, therefore it’s successful or unsuccessful. I’m not sure how helpful that is. Yeah,
Gene Tunny 38:10
yeah. Very good point. Very good point. Okay, Adam, this has been great. Yeah. I think it’s good to get your perspective on project management as someone involved in the field as the CEO of the association in the UK. Does the association have international connections? Are there associations in other countries that you’re liaising with?
Adam Boddison 38:30
Yeah. So although we kind of are headquartered in the UK, we are a global professional body. So we have members all around the world, including in Australia, in the Middle East, Canada, you know, lots of different places, and that includes chartered project professionals as well. So we have direct relationships with organizations and individuals around the globe, but we also work collaboratively with other professional bodies in the project space in those countries as well. So yeah, anyone who’s listening to this, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world. If you’re interested in being more involved in the association, you’ll be very welcome. Very
Gene Tunny 39:08
good. Okay, that’s excellent. I’ll put a link in the show notes before we go out. It turns out you you have an OBE so of the British Empire for services to children with special educational needs? Can you tell us about that, please? I mean, that sounds I mean, that’s phenomenal. That’s brilliant. Yeah, very, very
Adam Boddison 39:27
kind of you to say that. So as I mentioned the beginning, you know, my background is in education and other professional bodies. Before I joined the Association for project management, I did six years as Chief Exec of the National Association for special educational needs, and I was in that role during the global pandemic where children with special educational needs, particularly those with complex medical needs, were really obviously in a very vulnerable situation, because some of these children were already had life limiting conditions, where, if they were to, you know, become unwell. You know that. Had been very, very serious indeed. And we had government policy in the UK which was to which was with good intentions, but the policy was to protect children with special educational needs. We should protect their education, and they should go into school. Well, of course, for these children, that was almost the worst thing we could possibly do, because we didn’t want them to have that exposure to to what was going on with the children. So my role really was trying to help convene those people who were making the key policy decisions with those people who were leading some of the schools and residential organizations to make sure there was a proper join up, I suppose, in effect, to bring it back to a project. Well, I was helping to manage the significant risks there and helping to ensure there was effective stakeholder engagement. Very
Gene Tunny 40:52
good. It’s a, it’s a very, I mean, as I understand it, it’s a very prestigious award. And, I mean, you would had there was a ceremony at the palace. Is that right at Buckingham Palace? Yeah,
Adam Boddison 41:05
that’s right, yeah. So it was Princess Anne who presided with, with the award. So, a very special day, indeed.
Gene Tunny 41:12
Very good. Okay, well done. And, yeah, thanks for your for your contribution. I mean, that that’s, yeah, that’s really valuable work. Adam, really, really good stuff. And look, thanks so much for the conversation. It’s, it’s been great. I’ve really enjoyed it. I think I’ve, I’ve learned a lot. And, yeah, all the, all the best in in future endeavors, with with project management. And, yeah, look forward to connecting with you sometime in the future. Excellent.
Adam Boddison 41:40
Thank you. It’s been a pleasure. Thanks. Adam
Gene Tunny 41:44
Righto, thanks for listening to this episode of economics explored. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please get in touch. I’d love to hear from you. You can send me an email via contact at economics explored.com or a voicemail via speak pipe. You can find the link in the show notes. If you’ve enjoyed the show, I’d be grateful if you could tell anyone you think would be interested about it. Word of mouth is one of the main ways that people learn about the show. Finally, if your podcasting app lets you, then please write a review and leave a rating. Thanks for listening. I hope you can join me again next week. You music.
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Credits
Thanks to the show’s sponsor, Gene’s consultancy business, www.adepteconomics.com.au. Full transcripts are available a few days after the episode is first published at www.economicsexplored.com. Economics Explored is available via Apple Podcasts and other podcasting platforms.
