Comments on: Skagway and Project Management

By: mishu

mishu — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:13:27 +0000

I looked the the Southeast “high speed” rail corridor link and scrolled to the bottom of the page. The longest part of the plan is Environmental Studies. I somehow doubt it was a major concern for the Skagway rail.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:45:50 +0000

Great post. David Foster’s posts on this topic are also excellent.

I agree that regulation and litigation are most of the problem. This is mainly a political rather than a project-management issue.

By: Robert Schwartz

Robert Schwartz — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 16:54:49 +0000

The Egyptian Pyramids.

By: Carl from Chicago

Carl from Chicago — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 15:09:04 +0000

I think that some methods of project management have improved, mostly by default. Computers and spreadsheets make it easier to track some items and distribute information than when it was done by hand. However, this doesn’t make management any better, it just provides a way to do a subset of routine tasks and communications easier.

The biggest problem with “modern” project management and the profession is that they haven’t publicly acknowledged that projects are not going well right now and that they need to regroup and focus on how to do things faster and better. They are pretty self-congratulatory given the state of the industry right now.

Probably it is all due to lawyers. Look at China and Dubai, they are building their whole economy out of nothing. I am sure that regulatory barriers are nominal, at best, in those societies, and they just use our engineers (in Dubai at least) and our architects (everywhere). The construction is pretty safe, anyways, I am sure that their death rates on projects are higher than ours but much less than it was in the old days (i.e. not hundreds or thousands).

By: PM Hut

PM Hut — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 13:53:58 +0000

I totally agree with you that public projects are just taking too much time right now. I don’t think before there was Project Management as it is today, there was planning, excellent planning. Additionally people (I’m talking about the workers) loved their jobs (not like today), and people overseeing the project had a lot of experience, power, and will.

I even have to question safety in today’s public projects.

Probably Project Management was not a really the solution.

By: david foster

david foster — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 13:16:40 +0000

Check out the website for the southeast high-speed rail corridor (but take "high speed" with a grain of salt.) Notice particularly the timeline at the botton of the home page. See also my post like swimming in glue.