Improving Project Delivery (Project X)

该研究项目是学术界、工业界和非部长部门之间的合作，负责监督和有效交付政府的主要项目和计划，即基础设施和项目管理局（IPA）。我们力求通过提供高质量的证据和见解来丰富社会对项目和项目交付景观的理解，这些证据和见解将为未来的政策制定提供信息，提高部长意识并推动项目交付专业的发展。项目是临时的，灵活的组织结构，现在是大型，复杂的系统和变化计划交付的中心方式。新的交通、能源和水利基础设施系统通常以项目形式交付，就像大多数大型军事系统（如航空母舰）一样。同样，当政府寻求实施一项将改变政府提供服务和与公民互动方式的重大政策时，它通常会使用项目来实施该政策变化。不幸的是，项目往往会超出预算，花费比计划更长的时间来完成，有时也不会交付承诺的结果。经常发现项目的成本和交付时间增加了一倍以上，许多重大项目不得不取消。当项目交付时，它们在事后往往表现出低性价比和表现不佳。因为英国有很多大型和昂贵的项目，表现不佳的潜在成本非常高。然而，近年来，英国已发展出交付复杂项目的世界级能力。英国有一些成功的大型项目（希思罗机场T5、2012年伦敦奥运会、横贯铁路等）。这表明，业绩不佳并非不可避免。很难理解为什么有些项目成功而有些项目表现不佳。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。我们希望这样做能帮助降低项目成本，确保更多项目按时交付，并提高项目交付最终成果的效率，从而使政府的政策得以更成功地实施。由于项目非常昂贵，而且许多项目的成本都超出了预期，结果也低于预期，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。为了实现这一潜力，该研究项目积极与英国政策和从业者社区合作，并为他们提供有针对性的高质量研究，涉及六个子主题：主题A：定义价值，理解绩效，在整个生命周期中取得成功主题B：前端和后端管理实践主题C：数据质量和作为绩效驱动因素的使用主题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重要问题。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政府向项目经理提供的强制性建议的变化。这项研究符合英国更广泛的关于提高项目型公司业绩和盈利能力的研究，旨在提高他们在国际市场上的业绩，创造高价值的就业机会

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