Improving Major Projects
Sir Tim Laurence KCVO, CB, ADC
Chairman, Major Projects Association [MPA]
Sir Tim will address #eVa20 conference on how to improve delivery and value for money on major projects
In a recent newsletter he writes in the “Letter from the Chairman” section …
“With the economy recovering, confidence returning and the May 2015 election, the prospects for major projects in the UK over the next year have seldom looked better. MPA’s short-term aim has been to help members position themselves for the anticipated expansion of work across the sector.
In the first half of this year, the Association has been tackling some of the ‘enabling issues’ – issues which help us get the structure of a project right from the start.
Indeed our first full day seminar of the year tackled ‘Project initiation – making the right start’. Later in the spring we debated how we might better evaluate the net benefit which major projects bring to the UK, and why their evaluation should be different to medium-scale and smaller projects. This is the subject of further analysis sparked off by that debate.
The ‘enabling issues’ theme continues with the Annual Conference topic of how we fund major projects, especially now that PFI is dead and PF2 has not yet fully caught the customer’s eye.
Other seminars have tackled: how we leverage international capability in UK major projects; how we cope with the stress of leadership in what can be a lonely world, especially at the top; and whether the UK has the capability and capacity to deliver the massive nuclear new-build programme needed over the next decade.
On 25th April MPA ran a very successful one day conference entitled “Determining and Delivering the BENEFITS of Major Projects and Programmes” See resources and reports – Major Projects Association [from past-events]”
Major Projects Association
When the Major Projects Association was established in 1981 the key objective of the Founders was to share their experience, knowledge and ideas about major projects – both successes and failures – to help others to avoid mistakes and to incorporate good practice, in order that future projects would be better initiated and delivered.