Improving Project Delivery (Project X)

这一研究项目是学术界、工业界和政府中负责监督和有效实施重大项目和方案的非部级部门--基础设施和项目管理局(IPA)--之间的合作。我们寻求通过产生高质量的证据和见解来丰富社会对项目和方案交付情况的理解，这些证据和见解将为未来的政策制定提供信息，提高部长认识并推动项目交付专业人员的发展。项目是临时的、灵活的组织结构，现在是交付大规模、复杂系统和变革方案的中心方式。新的交通、能源和水利基础设施系统通常通过项目交付，航空母舰等大多数大型军事系统也是如此。同样，当政府寻求实施一项重大政策，以改变政府提供服务和与公民互动的方式时，它通常会使用项目来实施这一政策变化。不幸的是，项目往往会超出预算，比计划完成的时间更长，有时无法交付承诺的结果。项目成本和交付时间翻了一番以上是很常见的，许多重大项目不得不取消。当项目交付时，事后看来，它们往往代表着物有所值，表现不佳。由于英国有如此多的大型和昂贵的项目，表现不佳的潜在成本非常高。然而，近年来，英国已经发展出世界级的交付复杂项目的能力。英国在一些重大项目上取得了成功(希思罗T5、2012年伦敦奥运会、Crossail等)。这表明，业绩不佳并非不可避免。很难理解为什么一些项目是成功的，而另一些项目表现不佳。本研究项目旨在加深对如何改进项目交付的理解。通过大学研究人员和政府之间的合作，我们的目标是帮助英国政府更有效地建立、交付和移交项目。通过这样做，我们希望帮助降低项目成本，确保更多项目按时交付，并改善项目交付最终成果的效率，以便更成功地执行政府政策。由于项目非常昂贵，而且许多项目都会出现成本超支和低于预期的结果，因此这项研究为英国节省的潜在成本非常可观，很容易达到数十亿英镑。为了发挥这一潜力，该研究项目积极主动地与英国政策和从业者社区接触，为他们提供六个子主题的有针对性的高质量研究，这些子主题涉及：主题A：定义价值、了解绩效、在生命周期中取得成功主题B：前端和后端管理实践主题C：数据质量和用作绩效驱动因素主题D：保证、报告和治理主题E：能力和知识管理主题F：转型项目这些子项目是与研究用户共同设计的，以确保我们的研究解决了重要的问题。对于一些研究，我们将能够使用首次向学术界开放的高质量数据。此外，通过在多所大学开展更大规模的研究项目，我们可以使用更标准化的方法来提高研究质量，使其更加稳健和有用。通过与IPA密切合作，我们的研究结果可以直接导致改变政府对项目经理的授权建议。这项研究符合更广泛的关于改善英国项目型公司的业绩和盈利能力的研究，旨在改善它们在国际市场上的表现，创造高价值的工作岗位

This research project is a collaboration between academia, industry and the non-ministerial department responsible for the oversight and effective delivery of major projects and programmes in government, the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA). We seek to enrich societies' understanding of the project and programme delivery landscape by generating high-quality evidence and insights that will inform future policy making, improve ministerial awareness and drive the development of the project delivery profession.Projects are temporary, flexible organisational structures that are now the central way in which large scale, complicated systems and change programmes are delivered. New transport, energy and water infrastructure systems are typically delivered in projects, as are most large scale military systems like aircraft carriers. Similarly, when government seeks to implement a major policy that will transform how government delivers services and interacts with citizens, it will typically use projects to implement that policy change. Unfortunately projects have a tendency to run over-budget, take longer than planned to finish and sometimes don't delivery the outcomes that were promised. It is common to find projects' costs and delivery times more than double, and many major projects have to be cancelled. When projects are delivered, they often represent poor value for money in hindsight and under-perform. Because the UK has so many large and expensive projects, the potential costs of poor performance are very high.However, in recent years the UK has developed a world-class ability to delivery complex projects. The UK has some major project successes (Heathrow T5, the 2012 London Olympics, Crossrail, etc). This suggests poor performance is not inevitable. It is not easy to understand why some projects are successes and others perform poorly. This research project aims to deepen understanding of how project delivery can be improved. By working in partnership between university researchers and the Government, we aim to help the UK Government set up, deliver and hand over projects more effectively. In doing so, we hope to help reduce the costs of projects, ensure more are delivered on time, and improve how effectively they deliver final outcomes, so that Government policy is implemented more successfully. Because project are so expensive, and many are subject to cost-overruns and lower than expected outcomes, the potential cost-savings for the UK from this research are very significant, and could easily run into many billions of pounds. To delivery on this potential, the research project proactively engages with the UK policy and practitioner communities and provide them with targeted, high quality research across six sub-theme that address: Theme A: Defining value, understanding performance, achieving success over the life-cycle Theme B: Front end and back end management practices Theme C: Data quality and use as performance drivers Theme D: Assurance, reporting and governance Theme E: Capability & knowledge management Theme F: Transformational projectsThese sub-projects were co-designed with research users, to ensure our research addresses important questions. For some research we will be able to use high quality data that is being opened up to academics for the first time. Moreover, by having a larger research project across a number of universities, we can use more standardized methods to improve the quality of research, and make it more robust and useful. By working closely with the IPA our research findings can lead directly into changes in mandated Government advice to projects managers. The research fits within a wider body of research on improving the performance and profitability of project-based firms in the UK, which aims to improve their performance in international markets, creating high value jobs i