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Defence Project Management Conference 2005: Achieving Project Foresight

19 - 21 Oct 2005

About the event:

Driving the Successful Delivery of Major Defence Projects

A Challenging Environment for Project Management

It is widely recognized that UK defence contractors operate in a challenging contractual environment that is characterised by the Government's drive for sustained improvements in performance, the global domination of a handful of major companies creating intense competitive rivalry and the politics of maintaining UK employment for a highly skilled but specialized workforce.

Adding significantly to this pressure is the fact that defence systems and equipment are consistently pushing the boundaries of innovation and technology. It is an environment fraught with risk for all those involved.

The UK Ministry of Defence is constantly seeking to reduce its risk and financial exposure on procurement contracts, whilst industry seeks to maintain competitive advantage and shareholder value through the effective management of risk and commercial exposure.

If industry is to deliver faster, cheaper and better solutions, then achieving sustainable improvements in project control will be a significant contributory factor. Business and project leadership, the consistent application of control processes and the maintenance of a balanced portfolio of commitments all impact upon overall performance, yet often each is addressed in isolation.

If a theoretical ‘gold standard’ of project performance based on elements from globally successful organizations could be used as a comparator and subsequent motivator for improvement, what would it look like?

Conference Objectives
The aim of the conference is to position a theoretical ‘gold standard’ for project control in the defence environment, based upon extensive research by the NAO and the Ministry of Defence, to debate the challenges to achieving project foresight and to introduce both academic and experiential viewpoints to generate specific outputs that can form the basis of further development of the ‘gold standard’.

Participants will leave the event:
• Feeling challenged and be thinking about appropriate solutions, not right or wrong answers.
• Able to relate the conference themes to their own projects.
• With practical ideas from the shared knowledge and lessons learnt.

Conference Theme
The scope of the conference is to explore how theory translates into practice:
• How do we establish common goals, objectives and realistic project targets?
• How can project stakeholders avoid the ‘nasty surprises’ of schedule slippages, budget overruns and technical failings?
• How do we benchmark what ‘acceptable’, ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’ project management should be?
The conference will explore how project based organizations can move from being ‘surprised’ to find that things are not going well, to being ‘controlled - but reactive’, and onward to ‘proactive and predictive’ approaches to the management of projects.

The conference will examine how organizations can progress from ‘hindsight’, the default stage of maturity, through ‘insight’, where many organizsations would like to be, moving forward to ‘foresight’, where all the investment in leadership, people, processes and systems comes together to enable organizations to be proactive and predictive.

Conference Structure
The conference will comprise a series of related plenary sessions with comments from the defence industry, MoD and analysts and advisers to the industry.

The plenary sessions will establish the basis of the conference and provide a vision of the issues to challenge the speakers and delegates to determine how the required improvements can be made.

The plenary sessions will be supported by three tracks focusing on:
• Leadership, Organization and Behaviours - Delivering project performance through a behavioural environment that fosters efficiency and effectiveness through leadership and team work.
• Processes-Process will always affect performance. The way in which you do something will always effect the outcome.
• Portfolio and Programme Management - Achieving a balanced portfolio of risk and return with controlled investment in technology and resource to underwrite project performance across a business is easier said than done. What can we learn from other industries? Track sessions will allow diagnoses of the causes of the current state and to offer advice and guidance on how to improve and present case study based evidence of the benefits that can be attained.

DO YOU WANT TO BE INVOLVED?
We are now finalizing the programme for this event. However, opportunities remain for others to share their views and experiences. If you feel you have something to contribute as a speaker, sponsor or exhibitor, please contact:
Louise Heywood, Head of Defence Management Programme, tel: 0207 747 2630; louiseh@rusi.org