Examples for outstanding project management

Four projects are announced as finalists of this years German Project Excellence Award. They could not be more different, however, they have one thing in common: All four projects had to go beyond of what was usual or even possible in their fields. In the end they not only delivered impressive results but are also setting new standards and showed how to cope with most difficult challenges by the use of professional management.

ARGE Fahrbahn Transtec Gotthard: Railways for the longest railway tunnel of the world

In 2016, after its official opening, the Gotthard Base Tunnel will be the longest railway tunnel in the world with a total length of 57 kilometres, containing about 115 kilometres of rails in two pipes. ARGE Fahrbahn Transtec Gotthard, a consortium of Swiss and German companies, has to deal with planning, installation, and commissioning of the railway technology inside the tunnel through the Gotthardt mountain.

The ARGE participates in the German Project Excellence Award with the project, that has installed the railways. It shows how a huge construction project can deliver on time despite strictest requirement catalogues and challenging deadlines for completion. The circumstances pushed the envelope regarding conventional construction methods, so that new and innovative technologies had to be developed during the project, which are now being patented.

BMW AG: Construction of the new BMW’s plant in Brasil

A distant continent, a new country, and an innovative construction management: The BMW AG participates with the construction of a new BMW’s plant in Brazil . However, not on famous Copacabana’s beach but in Araquari , a city in the deep south of the country, was the plant to be build. There, the project had to cope with all kinds of uncertainties, and has forged new paths in the management of construction projects. Cultures were united, hierarchies minimised, subcontractors were integrated as partners. By the use of Lean Construction, existing conventions of construction projects were scrutinised and inherent restrictions vanquished. The result is impressive: 500.000 square meters production area built in less than one year of construction time and the cost objective was undercut by several million Euros. A flagship project within BMW company and surely beyond that.

Regierungspraesidium Stuttgart: Flood hazard mapping for a whole federal state

Public administrations commonly have not the reputation of successfully handling with projects or even stakeholders. Hence, it is even more impressive to see how the Regional Council of Stuttgart has revised the federal state’s flood risk management during a project of several years runtime. The foundation for this project was not less than a shift of paradigms: modern floodwater protection concepts must consider no longer just the resistance of individual structures, but in a broader context the resilience of whole areas towards flooding. Such approaches need high-resolution flood hazard and flood risk maps, which deliver comprehensive information about possible events and their impact.

This is a complex task considering the amount of affected stakeholders in one of the biggest German states and the federal structures of involved institutions. The Project Excellence assessors have found a procedure in Stuttgart that can be exemplary for quality improvement in public major projects by the use of professional project management.

TenneT TSO GmbH: Planning and public stakeholder management to build 600 kilometres of high voltage power lines across the country

SuedLink is so far the biggest infrastructure project of the energy transition in Germany and shall ensure the national supply of electricity by connecting producers of mainly wind-generated power in northern areas with consumers in the south. Therefore the project is about to build 600 kilometres of high-voltage power lines through several federal states. The SuedLink project has divided the minds of the whole country, and has also dominated the front pages of national newspapers in recent months; even long before the construction works will begin. TenneT  participates the German Project Excellence Award with the public consultation and planning stage for SuedLink that was managed and delivered in form of an own project.

Not only through the regulatory corset of the public project planning but also in the light of the sensibility of the topic, the team of TenneT recognised the importance of a professional project and communication management. The outcome is an intense participation procedure during which hundred rounds of talks with citizens’ groups, politicians, and associations as well as 3,000 individual statements of the stakeholders were systematically conducted and processed. Thereby, TenneT sets a new benchmark for planning of large public projects and citizens participation procedures from which future infrastructure project can learn.

Proven project management quality

In the last months, all projects have undergone a multistage assessment and jury process. During the review they were examined according to the Project Excellence Model by a team of experienced project managers. The four finalists have demonstrated not only outstanding project results but have also applied professional project management on their way there. The findings of the reviewers were individually documented in a comprehensive feedback report, which has been handed over to all participants of the German Project Excellence Award.

Learning from the best

The German Project Excellence Award honours outstanding project management performance and strives to identify approaches of excellent project management. The assessments of participating projects are carried out according to the Project Excellence Model. The model has been revised and updated thoroughly and was published in a new version 2014. The award ceremony of the German Project Excellence Award 2015 takes place in the evening of 27 October during the PM Forum 2015 in Nuremberg, one of Europe’s largest professional conferences for project management with more than 1.000 participants expected. Already in the afternoon, the project managers of the finalists will present their projects, and will give an insight of challenges faced during the project and their management approaches. The entire congress programme can be found on www.pm-forum.de.

Note: The finalists are listed in alphabetical order in this text.