Right First-Time Megaproject Delivery: Overcoming Complexity and Scale

MICHAEL GAUNT: Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining me for this industry talk, "Right First-time Mega Project Delivery-- Overcoming Complexity and Scale." We're all here because we care. We care about doing things better. We want to learn from others. And we want to improve. I'm here because I care about how we deliver and improve the build environment.

And I believe, as I know many of us in this room, do that the AEC industry is currently faced with a huge opportunity, an opportunity to do things better, particularly when it comes to digital as an enabler. So my name is Mike Gaunt. I'm based in London, in the UK. And I'm a Chartered Civil Engineer.

That's my background. And I've worked as a Delivery Manager on several major projects. I currently head up the information management account at Mott MacDonald, a global engineering management and consultancy firm. Our team is a mix of delivery managers, engineers, and developers that come together to transform the way the build environment is delivered.

I and the team of a particular focus on the mega projects, particularly in Europe and North America, and particularly through the development of design to construction. So it's that experience that I want to bring to share with you today and to inform the panel discussion that will come after this event.

So the aim of this session is to look at the approach to mega project delivery, understand the extent of the need from society, and understand why mega projects are different because of their complexity and scale, and understand how a right first-time process has been proven to bring success.

I'd like to leave this session-- I'd like you to leave this session to understand the key points that have made previous projects successful and how they can be reapplied in the future; an understanding of how to build digital delivery strategies, whereby people and process come first; and specifically for the mega projects, that our response to the biggest risks is considered in the strategy at the outset, considering things like interfaces and stakeholders; and finally, an understanding of what good looks like, how it can be measured as we go forward.

This is an industry tool. So there'll be time for discussion afterwards. And I do look forward to hearing your views and challenges through the rest of the conference. So why is this important to me? Working for Mott MacDonald over the last 12 years has given me the opportunity to be involved in a range of mega projects.

The opportunity to travel has allowed me to experience different cultures, different approaches, and different ways of thinking when responding to the challenges on these projects. Experiences from the wall, to the rail, highways, and aviation sectors have allowed me an opportunity to compare and contrast.

And at times through that journey, I may have jumped to a conclusion, the conclusion that what worked before will work again, and certainly an understanding that that isn't always the case. But what has always been the case, particularly on the larger projects, is that the main challenges have all principally been the same. The big risks have taken a different form, but ultimately boil down to the same key principles.

And therefore, the required outcomes have also remained relatively aligned to the same key principles. We're looking for productivity, efficiency and confidence in delivery. So the why for me is that I believe the industry is improving and moving in the right direction. But I believe that larger or bigger impact can be created to large areas of society if we better align our project delivery strategies to this right first-time approach and that we make use of the lessons and the benefits from these recent mega projects to set the approach on these new projects or those that are in development and that are responding to these increasing challenges.

So what are those challenges? In recent years, as the American economy adapts to new and evolving challenges, there have been these recurrent calls to increase the volume of investment in infrastructure. The UN Sustainable Development Goals and net zero concepts laid bare the need for this industry to improve and quickly adapt. But that adoption in the face of increasingly fierce criticism of an industry which has significant improvements to make.

Infrastructure investment has been proven to significantly boost economic activity and employment. Nearly $69 trillion of investment is expected before 2035. And the benefits of this investment to society are clear, creating thriving communities, increase social mobility, more flexibility in the face of changing climates, with huge social and economic improvements.

But the view of infrastructure, however is not universally positive. The delivery of these schemes remains under sustained challenge, due to a reputation of late and undervalued delivery. In addition, society's expectations from these schemes just continues to evolve and increase. And in this world where technology is transforming our lives day to day, the delivery of infrastructure schemes becomes more and more exposed to slow, disruptive, and often misaligned to expectations, because people just expect things to move quicker.

They expect more transparency. So why can't we spend more to remove the impact of that noise? Why is construction light? What do you mean you didn't expect to find this in the ground? Those are things that people are asking. Did you really have to dig up my verge twice in two months? Why don't you do it all at once? These are examples of those poor reputations.

And really, it is now that society is demanding more. Society expects their infrastructure to respond more quickly to them to make more immediate impact in turn. And therefore us, in this room, we've got a duty to respond to this as an industry.

So in terms of responding to that challenge from society, it's certainly not all about the picture. Through the adoption of digital tools, we can see that there's clear benefits and outcomes from projects which have now been delivered.

Across the globe, with these formal and informal mandates, we're seeing the improvements from digital tools, enabling better ways of working and delivering. Information is now being produced using repeatable processes-- more efficient, more automation, standardization, and often working together across global teams.

[INAUDIBLE] environments, for me, is key and at the heart of this transforming the way that we access and we find that information, us with that fighting chance to make evidence than quantifiable-based decisions, and making it easier to share information, communicate, and obtain this common understanding across these big teams. So I definitely see in real, measurable outputs.

And we're often seeing them now, presented in terms of time and cost. But I think we also have to look beyond this. How are these solutions delivering benefits with regards to well-being, stress, job satisfaction, and attractiveness to people to join new to our workforce? You've got to think about how stressed you get when you can't find your keys at home.

It's the same at work when you can't find that information to be able to work and to be able to deliver more efficiently. So it's not all so bad. But we can certainly do better. And that's when we come to the mega project. It's at this point that we may introduce those concepts of complexity and scale and recognize that these projects, they're a different breed of animal.

The complexity and scale needs to be recognized, because it introduces new challenges on this new scale-- new challenges, which if not managed, have the potential to cause significant long-term and ongoing challenges, which ultimately have a significant impact on production and don't help when we're responding to those societal challenges where we need to improve reputation. So when we say mega projects are different, how do we define them?

So certainly, there's a number of ways. And primarily, mega projects can be defined by scale-- often, at least $1 billion in cost, complex, designed to operate for long periods of time, and take extensive periods to plan and deliver. They impact millions of people. But they're also exciting, and they introduce these unique challenges.

And the things that those challenges that are unique are things like the constant change of people, whether it's delivery clients, stakeholder, teams. This is often accentuated because of the length of the programs and the diversity of the skill set required. And these changes bring challenges-- new people, new inputs, reduced understandings of the history and legacy.

And this could often result in delays and unforeseen impacts as the project progressed. Interface control, the need for this is accentuated on large complex projects. Changes at the micro level across big teams can often perpetuate to a macro-level impact because of the complexities and the extent of the constraints.

An example would be making a small change to an equipment underground room seems minor. But actually, if you start to progress that through the design, it can quickly have a major impact that can't be foreseen. And those things can perpetuate through the program and cause big future impacts. Configuration management and control-- with so many changes occurring on a daily basis with big teams, like I said, you can get this unintended consequences and impacts due to complexity.

So ensuring that requirements are met in the future can actually be a significant challenge. Communication and engagement, lack of early supply chain engagement, because the supply chain is so big, gaining that common understanding awareness of the design is a challenge and a bigger challenge on these projects. And small miscommunications can actually hinder that ability to work effectively.

So these challenges mean that large infrastructure projects are of a large variety and diversity of groups, all of which must be satisfied within a constantly-changing environment. So how can these projects establish long-term thinking, take decisions which balance the delivery against the impact, account for complexity, all while delivered in an evolving environment of tools and processes?

These projects are starting to realize the benefits from embedding digital solutions at the heart of their management. And digital is an enabler, an enabler to manage that complexity over the lifetime of the asset. Ultimately, the goal is to achieve that right first-time delivery. So we've talked about the why, we've talked about the challenges.

Let's now talk about what we mean when we say "right first time." I think right first time responds to these challenges. And it begins with a clear scope, a clear understanding of the requirements. And because that's come from the expectations and understanding of aligned expectations across stakeholders. It relies on effective communication and management to ensure the right inputs are received from the right people at the right time and that the impacted of those changes are fully understood.

That comes back to that interface and configuration management, ultimately enabled through clear communication, of which digital can support. But ultimately, the key to right first time is that what is delivered is what is expected, no surprises. And right first time applies to everything and everyone. It's about bringing everyone together on the delivery journey so we got the appropriate level of awareness for common, for the right input, to get the right responses so that the progress can continue.

So right first time is a process. It balances short- and long-term requirements to ultimately achieve successful delivery. So right first time is all about starting with the end in mind, starting with the end in mind to create clear requirements at the outset. Do we fully understand what information is required by what people in the future?

Because if we do, then we can make sure that we produce only that information and we become efficient with the way that we produce it. And is it captured transparently? Do we clearly understand those requirements? Once we've got them, then, it's all about this process of ongoing communication to support what we would call progressive assurance.

A lot of these risks develop in an unforeseen manner. And digital solutions can help us to share and communicate these risks to the right people at the right time, allowing that effective resolution, which means that we get that confidence and delivery at the end-- again, no surprises. And then, what we need is that ongoing reporting to manage configuration changes, so we ultimately deliver confidence and certainty in the solution.

So requirements, ongoing communication to manage change and control the change to ultimately deliver confidence to allow us to move forward to build. So let's take a further look into that delivery progress and what we mean by progressive assurance. So on the screen here, I have just a very simple graph. We see confidence in delivery on the vertical axis.

And then, horizontal is the time. And what this is about is about bringing people together in a collaborative manner. What we want to be doing is following that green line and getting the progressive understanding and the progressive assurance of the submission. What it's not doing is working along that red line, whereby we work in isolation, in silos, until the point where we get to our first delivery milestone, and we submit. It's a surprise to everyone.

There's lots of comments, misunderstanding. We have to go back and make a lot of changes before then doing a second submission, which then becomes light and starts to degrade on representation. So it's about bringing people together, collaboration, and building confidence as we go to avoid late rework. And digital is an enabler to this solution.

But the approach must be embedded through the way that the teams come together to collaborate, through the way that the organizations are set up and the communication lines are established. Therein lies the key to why first time, as a process for mega projects, must be embedded at the heart of delivery and management at the outset.

Let me show you a few examples of how this has been done. So as a process, this isn't new. It's been adopted extensively in other industries-- manufacturing. But perhaps, it's not been adopted to its full extent in the built environment. Because as we've seen, the prolongation of bringing people together and embedded around the tools is still developing as an opportunity.

So let's have a look at a case study. So this is the Thames Tideway East project, a 4.2 billion pound sewer tunnel, which traverses through the center of London. It intercepts sewer flows, which discharge into the River Thames, thereby cleaning up the river and bringing improvements to society through reduced pollution of this river that flows through the center part of a major city.

So the Tigray project used a common data environment, digital assurance, and approval workflows to bring together all stakeholders and project participants. Using that single control source of truth for design enabled people to come together effectively and work collaboratively.

And I think what's key is that controlled collaboration, using a single day of the week to bring people together to look at undeveloped information, that they could trust, understand, so that then people could work collaboratively to then mean that when the final design is delivered, everybody has seen the progress, no surprises and we get acceptance first time.

Using this approach, we have 82% of the packages actually accepted first time around. Did that bring significant benefits to the program? Maybe. Maybe not. But what it did bring was confidence in the delivery. The other aspect of this is then because you've got people working together much more effectively, you can then upskill people in a more effective manner and then adopt the use of that 3D model.

And again, using that 3D model rather than the drawings resulted in this reduction in production effort of around a third. It's now over four years since the operators were able to virtually lock and engage with the team and perform those trial maintenance scenarios using the models, using virtual reality technology.

By bringing together all project parties using the CDE designed around how the organizations come together, right first time delivery has been achieved, bringing confidence in the project delivery, meaning that when this scheme is finally constructed, we've got confidence that it will work, will meet the requirements, and has been delivered on time, therefore boosting the reputation of the industry.

As international standards continue to govern the approach to managing the development of design information and collaborative environments now provide those kind of consistent foundations to major project delivery, these standards have developed and adapted from earlier projects, such as the Northern Line Extension, again, in London, which is now open-- an underground subway extension through a dense urban environment, where there's lots of external stakeholders, lots of parties that need to be brought on this journey, and a lot of stakeholders to manage to achieve right first-time delivery.

So this engineering delivery was, again, supported by a CDE of accessible globally and model-based delivery defined by the BS 1192 standard, which is now ISO 19650. So change, stakeholder input, and early supply chain engagement was achieved through that progressive assurance process, the regular sharing of trusted and controlled information packages for ongoing review and approvals.

Supported and enhanced by visualization techniques, this project again was able to gain early acceptance of fire routes, maintenance scenarios using the model to ensure that we've got that confidence and no surprises that what is to be constructed will meet all the requirements, but well in advance of construction.

Again, a little bit closer to home here, and the BSV, BART Silicon Valley II project, an extension of the BART network through the heart of San Jose in the Bay Area. This project enabled multi-center working through the adoption, again, of a common platform.

Using lessons from similar projects, the team adopted these tried and tested practices aligned to that international standard for collaboration to avoid the need for a heavy training and upskilling period, but ultimately to focus on bringing people together, to quickly learn from each other, and have that ongoing sharing and confidence-boosting process-- no surprises, ongoing collaboration in a controlled manner.

So using that single information system and a model-based approach to deliver through progressive assurance, those weekly meetings to bring people together-- and then, ultimately meant that you've got delivery on time and on budget as the project then moves to its next phase of design.

So stakeholder perceptions and, as I mentioned, changes in team members can actually heavily impact the configuration and interface management. And again, on these mega projects, those changes are accentuated on these more complex programs. High Speed 2 in the UK is a subject of intense media speculation.

The scale of the project justifies a necessity to manage and control the change from the minimum maintainable components through to every asset. So by developing the design in the digital environment, using a component-based approach, we've got a whole project parties can review the build up of the design, analyzing variations using the data to understand what is the impact of those design decisions on a micro and macro level.

And that model information provides that early understanding. The supply chain is better informed, through an accurate and ongoing understanding of the development of these components. And ultimately, those requirements at the start are actually now in part defined by a standard component catalog, which aligns to the supply chain, the contractor, and the operator. It's reducing the risk of late changes, because we've understood the requirements at the outset of what is required at the end.

Configuration control is controlled through data, providing that ongoing oversight to the project development without the influence of perception and emotion. We're using that evidence data. And offsite manufacture is enabled, through the design, driven using these standardized components. Prefabricated bridge decks-- factories on the route are becoming fairly standard as a method of delivery now.

And we're seeing significant savings during production development because of those requirements defined at the outset, which means it's more efficient to produce and reduces the surprises at the end. Ultimately, better data, better information delivery, and enhanced likelihood of right first-time delivery.

But ultimately, right first-time delivery is about the people. It's about the way the people come together, enabled by the right information, to be informed, in order to enable collaborative delivery. Putting a CDE tool in place is not going to bring people together. The CDE tool or the digital processes need to be defined first by the organizational models and the delivery strategies. And that journey will be different for every project or organization.

But it's important that no matter how quick that journey is, that that vision is established, and the journey is begun. The projects that we've described have not sought value from this approach immediately, but their lessons learned can be adopted to implement short-term wins on the journey, maintaining commitment, maintaining belief as this approach is implemented.

Digital strategies require targeted approaches. They must be focused on the training and development of people, because people's lives which must become easier because of these tools if they are to gain acceptance. We also feel that these approaches must be supported by top-down leadership. Some of these projects, the later projects, have managed those deployment risks by adopting tried and tested approaches.

Because once the project and its people are on board, the potential to then increase and accelerate that approach is enhanced. Large, complex programs with work evolve. Pressures and priorities change. Unknown priorities arise. But the strategy must remain clear and must be able to cope with these changes.

So this image, it represents a kind of theoretical ideology of how people can be aligned to this approach to right-time delivery. It describes the user experience. And founded by those digital tools, it must be accessible and accessible to all, represent information through a number of limited lenses, geospatial and the map information on the left, data and insights on the center, and then, the 3D model and reality on the right-hand side.

Crucially, this user experience in this environment captures the decisions made. And understanding the decisions made enables the outcomes to be understood in the future. And ultimately, it ensures accountability. So my challenge to you then is how will you embed collaboration. How do you ensure that collaboration on your next delivery project has its best chances of succeeding because of the alignment of people?

Which then, enabled by processes and tools, means that we're on the journey of this right first-time process, increasing confidence every step of the journey to therefore have an improved chance of successful outcome. So when we talk about outcomes, what does success look Like And how can we measure it?

Every project is different. But as with everything, what's measured can be managed. Baselines, though, are crucial in order to be able to bring context to the improvements measured. As we progress through projects, we've got an understanding now of the key statistics that we feel are worthwhile measuring, to then demonstrate that this process is or isn't working. Some examples-- number of meeting attendees from stakeholders.

In the early days, that was a good way of tracking what the engagement was like. But actually, as we move forward, we're getting those engagement figures from information on the CDE. Automated validation statistics, you can only get that if your requirements of what you're producing is really clear.

And if measured against clear requirements, these then become key KPIs to demonstrate confidence in the process, demonstrating you've got that quality of information and data early, rather than waiting for a review, and comment, and elongated negotiation process. I mentioned earlier about a 32% reduction in production effort on the Tigray project.

I think this is just a nice indicator to demonstrate real efficiency improvements of producing information more efficiently, because we know what to produce and all the stakeholders involved. Interestingly, we worked with a client who wanted to implement this process, but then implement only a five-comment limit on anything issued.

If you have more than five comments, then you haven't effectively engaged with suppliers and parties and engaged in the right first time process. And interesting way to make sure that the process happens, because ultimately right first time delivery means first-time acceptance. So just reflecting on those right first time delivery strategies, I think a few thoughts-- firstly, it's all about starting somewhere.

It's all about starting on this journey. Focus on those quick wins using evidence from previous projects and using that to build confidence in the team, so that you can then begin this digital transformation journey. It's about taking a long-term approach, which means thinking about the outcomes and the end in mind to start with, to drive clear requirements, to then be much more confident in the information we're producing.

Can you use technology to definitively capture the quality of that information? If so, great. If not, why? Is it not sufficiently defined? Good challenge. I think it's also really important to recognize the complexity and the need to scale on these projects, and specifically accounting for that change in people. With people in mind, digital becomes an enabler.

It becomes an enabler at the heart of management. But ultimately, we need those processes to make sure that decisions are captured, decisions are understood, so we don't repeat ourselves, and we understand why we've got to where we are. And finally, these are long projects. Things change.

The ways we are delivering now, we could not conceive of two years ago. So we need flexibility. Flexibility is part of that strategy, which then becomes a central part of that plan. But ultimately, I think it's about defining the way people come together, that delivery strategy, before we then even think about the types of tools and things we're going to use.

So as major programs of work become ever more complex and the expectations from society and local communities continue to increase, the need to deliver right first time engineering solutions has become even more critical. Past and ongoing projects have shown the opportunity that digital solutions can bring to mitigate these risks of late or over-budget delivery.

We've now got a track record of projects to prove the benefits of digital delivery on these complex projects. And that will continue as these skills continue to develop when we get this critical user mass within the delivery community and as these process approaches become more and more standardized.

But every project will require a different strategy [INAUDIBLE] one that provides structure and flexibility, as well as delivering long-term success, but also short-term wins. Right first time is a process to deliver high-quality engineering solutions and digital is an enabler to that to get this continued stakeholder input and approval, so that the project can be successfully delivered in a transparent, but structured manner.

So to summarize, while the industry is evolving and recognizing the improved outputs from adoption of digital tools, mega projects brings a new state of complexity, which must be recognized. But hopefully, as I've shown today, there's reason for optimism-- continuous learning. And with a focus on people and the key risks, we can already start to see these benefits being delivered.

Let's bring people on the journey and achieve progressive confidence, progressive assurance to avoid an impact on schedule, cost, and ultimately, reputation. But let's not forget, momentum is supported. It's supported through the emergence of these industry standards. And we're seeing more and more of these [INAUDIBLE] 19650 or IFC data standards.

These continue to help us to more effectively bring people together. But let's not forget, we've got a long way to go. And as I said at the start, we're here because we care and we have a duty. We have a duty to society. Enhanced connectivity reduced disruption during delivery.

On-demand services during operation are just a few examples of the hoped but [? near ?] expectations of our local communities. And these are hopes that grow because of the increased ability for society to challenge planning, increased ability to communicate concerns, and increased proven capabilities of new infrastructure schemes across the globe that are now set in unprecedented levels of society enhancement and user experience, which is becoming the norm.

So I hope you've found this session thought provoking to lead on to our panel discussion. And I'd like to leave you with a few challenges in line with the learning objectives of this session. How can you create impact by challenging your own delivery approach and use these case studies to improve your existing processes towards a right first time approach, founded on people?

How can you bring together people more effectively to enable progressive assurance and manage those interfaces? Could it be better aligning the CDE to how people work or as impactful as realigning your organization to better collaborate? Finally, how can you measure the success of this approach using your available data to build confidence and ultimately improve our impact on the built environment as we work to support society, improve the reputation of infrastructure delivery in response to these evolving economic, social, and environmental challenges.

So that's my challenge to you. And I would just like to say, thank you for your time, and look forward to the discussion just now, as part of our panel. So thank you very much.