No matter why an initiative was put on hold, a project manager must show skeptical stakeholders that he or she has cleared former obstacles and defined a path to success.
“There's always this nagging concern among stakeholders that needs to be addressed—the concern that what caused the project to be delayed or killed will happen again,” says Phil Doty, PMI-RMP, PMP, PgMP, program manager, Serco, Reston, Virginia, USA.
“There's always this nagging concern among stakeholders that needs to be addressed—the concern that what caused the project to be delayed or killed will happen again.”
—Phil Doty, PMI-RMP, PMP, PgMP, Serco, Reston, Virginia, USA
But past failures also provide a treasure trove of lessons learned. Whether it's a power project in Mumbai, a commuter rail initiative in Kuwait or a port city construction in Sri Lanka, a stalled project's risks are often front and center.
“With restarted projects, you know the project's problems and the team's concerns, and you can work to minimize them,” Mr. Doty says. “If you know what the negative factors were the first time, you can bring them forward to the current time and overcome them. Now you've jump-started your risk management.”
The Hoekse Lijn rail project in the Netherlands
“Restarting is very much like starting, but you can take advantage of the time-out to check your project on earlier mistakes or missing demands.”
—Johan Dolman, City of Rotterdam, Rotterdam, the Netherlands
START FROM SCRATCH
Yet, even when the biggest issues are obvious, projects that get a second lease on life require a rigorous review of their first incarnation, Mr. Doty says.
For example, the Hoekse Lijn metro rail project near Rotterdam, the Netherlands was restarted after a two-and-a-half-year delay. The €315 million project, which is scheduled to be completed in 2017, is transforming a 25-kilometer (15.5-mile) stretch of heavy rail passenger and freight line into light rail. As part of the relaunch, the project team needed six months to develop a new project management plan, says Johan Dolman, general project manager, City of Rotterdam, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Mr. Dolman says the team reviewed all the project's original specifications, requirements and designs to find any gaps in the documentation before it submitted new documentation.
By reaching out to stakeholders and external technical engineers, his team discovered new risks and requirements, such as revised climate change forecasts that spurred the project team to design and build taller water barriers to mitigate flood risks.
SECOND LIFE
Location: Jakarta, Indonesia
Project Details: A two-line elevated monorail project restarted in October 2015 after a five-year shutdown due to a lack of funding. The US$1.5 billion project resumed after state-run China Communication Construction Co. agreed to finance and construct the entire system.
Location: St. Petersburg, Florida, USA
Project Details: In July 2015, the St. Petersburg City Council approved funding for the US$5.2 million Pier Park project that had been stalled for two years. Public opposition initially halted the project, but ongoing maintenance costs for the shuttered pier buildings convinced the council to move forward.
“Restarting is very much like starting, but you can take advantage of the time-out to check your project on earlier mistakes or missing demands,” he says. “There is momentum to redefine the project with more acceptance for improvements or changes.”
REGROUP AND REFOCUS
When a project is put on hold, uncertainty abounds. While many team members may want to jump ship, the project manager must assess the situation pragmatically.
For example, London, England-based telecommunications company Colt Technology Services halted a €1 million software-upgrade project in Bengaluru, India for two months in late 2015 after a vendor-designed patch that was supposed to improve the program's operational efficiency instead caused the system to shut down.
“That's when a crisis began,” says Vinit Gupta, PMP, a Bengaluru, India-based manager of project practice at Colt. “At first, the team didn't know if things would return to normal, what the new timeline would be, how the project would be delivered—it was a critical and tense situation for us.”
“I had to explain to them what happened, what we were doing to fix the issue and why we wanted to restart the project—emphasizing the benefits the project would deliver to the business.”
—Vinit Gupta, PMP, Colt, Bengaluru, India
Colt stopped the project as Mr. Gupta and his team created a new risk register, a new project plan outlining the completed and outstanding activities, and a new schedule accounting for the two months the vendor would need to repair its patch. Mr. Gupta knew that being proactive was the best way to make sure the project would eventually be restarted, so he communicated progress regularly.
He kept in touch with his team members’ functional managers, especially those who had been assigned to other projects temporarily. This helped ensure those resources would be available when the project was ready to restart. He also held weekly stand-up meetings with project stakeholders and sponsors to keep them on board—and remind them of the project's long-term strategic value.
Location: Rochdale, England
Project Details: Originally proposed in 2006, the £100 million revitalization of Rochdale's town center is now slated for completion in 2018. Legal issues had kept the project at bay, but developers are now confident the team will break ground in 2016.
Location: Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Project Details: The AED600 million Dubai Maritime City was first announced in 2003—and was scheduled to open in 2012. In December 2014, the project finally broke ground on a 48-story tower, with the full development slated for completion in 2017.
“I had to explain to them what happened, what we were doing to fix the issue and why we wanted to restart the project—emphasizing the benefits the project would deliver to the business,” he says. “It's all about proactive communication.”
A NEW VISION
Restarting a project also means ensuring effective engagement and buy-in from executives and stakeholders. Project managers can show sponsors and key stakeholders how the project will avoid repeating past problems by increasing the frequency of updates with executives and outlining how previously damaging risks will be mitigated.
On the Hoekse Lijn metro rail project, the delay was caused in part by a legal dispute over which organization controlled the line—Pro-Rail, the government agency that oversees heavy rail infrastructure, or RET, Rotterdam's regional metro rail service. Although the Ministry of Infrastructure settled the dispute by handing control to RET, ProRail remains a critical stakeholder. The metro line will handle some freight traffic, so ProRail still is responsible for the authorization and construction of parts of the line, Mr. Dolman says.
Before the initiative restarted, the project team drafted an agreement to define mutual scope and conditions that all parties could agree to, he says. The team also brought both sides together for decision-making meetings and continues to hold individual meetings as necessary to resolve any potential conflicts.
“Mitigation of risks mainly consisted of increased communications, where the project team sometimes was like a mediator between RET and ProRail,” Mr. Dolman says. “Several issues were effectively addressed in multidisciplinary teams.”
When starting over, all eyes are on the finish line—and anything that could prevent the project team from reaching it. When a project gets a second life, project managers must treat it as another chance. PM