Structures for an improvement project - the Permanent Way Company

The Permanent Way Company is a global player in the construction and

maintenance of railway infrastructure - lines, signalling and communications systems.
The work relies on the formation of teams to carry out projects and these are drawn
from different divisions of the company. The divisions of the firm are based around the
different relevant specialisms, mechanical, electrical, electronics and signalling,
construction and surveying. Within each of the different divisions of the firm there are
different specialisms - for instance, designers, cost engineers, marketing engineers and
IT specialists. Most projects involve working across several divisions, often drawn from
geographically diverse locations.

As a result of major worldwide growth in the market for their services, the
firm undertook a review of their processes. Key weaknesses identified included their
ability to deliver projects on time. This was consistently the main complaint of their
clients (usually national rail operators) who were becoming increasingly concerned with
the ability of their suppliers to deliver. A new 'project system' had been put in place that
stated the documentation requirements for large projects, but this had not been well
implemented, and its use was very inconsistent within the firm.

A Project Management improvement team was convened and tasked with

improving the processes of the firm, with a nominal 12 months to see some results. The
question that they faced at the first meeting was: where do we start? Everybody had
their own ideas:

1. we should start training people straightaway,

2. we should employ a firm of consultants to find our needs,
3. we should write a report to the board,
4. we should adopt one of the bodies of knowledge and base our work around that.

The meeting broke up with no agreement of the way forward, other than that another
meeting should be held.