Link to thesis - Concept - NTNU

Engineering traditionSocial science traditionTimeFront-endExecutionFigure 3. The relative impact of the social science and engineering traditions over time in a projectIn accordance with the engineering tradition in project management, the Quality-at entry regime strives to providethe project owner and project management control over the environments related to the project, or a type of“framing” of the projects. To achieve a high efficiency in the projects, the stakeholders appear to strive for control ofthe prerequisites for their tasks. It is in accordance with the engineering tradition, with its roots in project planning,that project management shall strive for control of the environments related to the project. In the QA2 reports, this isrepresented by the high priority given to change management, as shown in table 3. As shown by the use of projectreserves and reduction lists, stakeholders also strive for freedom to maneuver within the defined prerequisites. TheQA2 aims at defining the projects as precisely as possible, but still provide project management with the freedom todecide how the specifications shall be met, work carried out and budgets to be held. In a similar way, Turner (2004)claims that one of four necessary conditions for project success is that the project manager is empowered. Theproject owner should give guidance on how the project can be best achieved, but allow the project managerflexibility to handle unforeseen circumstances as they chose.One purpose of this paper was to contribute with empirical data on some issues related to project flexibility. Byusing the results presented in Table 7, a part of the curve for the freedom to maneuver in Figure 1 can be drawnbased on empirical data. The relative size of the remaining open reductions can be seen as an empirical illustrationof the “room for maneuvering”. Figure 4 shows the curve generated from the reduction lists placed into the wholeproject time span. To do so, another reference point on the scale of the room for maneuvering was calculated basedon information from eight of the 48 projects. This reference point is located earlier in the front-end phase and isrelated to the first budget estimated budget of projects to be found in official documentation. This first estimate is onaverage 3.4 years before the final approval. As an illustration of the room for maneuvering at this point, the firstbudget is compared to the final approved. An average of 42% of the final budget was not locked at this point.Because all differences were positive, the final approved budget was on average 42% higher than the first estimate,with a standard deviation of 17%. The reference point in Figure 4 represents the average plus one standarddeviation, in a similar way as for the curve based on the reduction lists. The position of the first estimate point inrelation to the zero-point on the time scale raises questions – when does a project start? Previous experienceindicates that this time span may vary from about 30 years to one or two. As an indication, this point is located at theequivalent to four years after project initiation in Figure 4. This was done because more than 50% of the projects arerelated to transportation infrastructure, and the strategic planning of such projects is repeated every four years inNorway.16