Managing Public Sector Projects

A Strategic Framework for Success in an Era of Downsized Government, Second Edition

David S. Kassel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781498707428
• eBook ISBN: 9781315505879
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Peace & Global Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Filling a gap in project management literature, this book supplies managers and administrators—at all levels of government—with expert guidance on all aspects of public sector project management. From properly allocating risks in drafting contracts to dealing with downsized staffs and privatized services, this book clearly explains the technical concepts and the political issues public managers need to understand. In line with the principles of Total Quality Management (TQM) and the PMBOK® Guide, David S. Kassel establishes a framework those in the public sector may follow to ensure the success of their public projects and programs. The book supplies more than 30 real-life examples to illustrate the concepts behind the framework—including reconstruction projects in Iraq, the Big Dig project in Boston, local sewer system and library construction projects, and software technology.

This second edition includes all-new extended case studies examining recent issues including the rollout of healthcare.gov, the controversial California High Speed Rail system, and refurbishing the Harvard Town Hall. Contributing to critical discussions on budgeting for capital projects and cost-benefit analysis for preliminary planning, this authoritative new edition provides strategic recommendations for effective planning, execution, and maintenance of public projects. In an age of downsized government and in the face of a general distrust of public service, this book is a dependable guide for avoiding common pitfalls and for delivering projects on cost, on schedule, and of the highest quality.

Chapter 1

Introducing Public Sector Project Management

Government builds roads and schools (or at least funds and manages their construction). It funds and manages the construction of submarines and bombers, and missile protection systems. It educates children, provides retirees with Social Security and Medicare, helps care for people with disabilities, regulates consumer products, undertakes manned space flight, fights wars, keeps the peace, protects property, preserves natural landscapes—the list goes on and on.

These myriad projects, programs, and operations are critically important to the functioning of our society, and yet there is much public confusion and disagreement over the proper role of government and its fulfillment of that role. Disagreement may exist in the minds of government administrators and managers themselves. Government’s role is changing, and with it, the ways governmental employees must go about doing their jobs. As we discussed in this book’s preface, some of this change is due to the replacement of many traditional governmental functions by private sector services and markets.

Coupled with that change is what appears to be simple lack of experience and training in management in the public sector. Public projects, in particular, seem to have become symbolic of the mixed record of government in undertaking the public’s business.

Public Sector Project Management—Getting Beyond the Confusion

What is it that enters the public’s mind when headlines appear about public projects that have overrun their budgets? First of all, there is often confusion—confusion over just who is responsible, for example. While the Department of Defense might be blamed for a cost overrun in the development of a major weapons or satellite system, the actual builder of that system was in all likelihood a private contractor or a consortium of contractors. There is also often confusion over what went wrong. Was the cost overrun due to a schedule delay, and why did the delay occur? Was it the result of a problem in the development of software for the system? Was it due to a lack of proper standards and specifications set by the government agency? Were the agency’s expectations realistic? Was the delay the result of a strike by employees of the contractor? This confusion may exist as well in the minds of the managers and administrators directly involved. The answers are likely to be complex.

To begin to sort through questions like these and to bring some clarification to these issues, let’s start with the consideration of a very basic issue about which there is much confusion—the question of what public projects actually are. The objective of this chapter is to begin to address the challenge of public sector project management and how to do it better by first defining the terms “public project” and “public sector project management.” The chapter will continue with a discussion of public sector project managers—who they are and what are their skills, attributes, and requirements. It will discuss the changing and ongoing conditions under which public sector project managers currently operate; and it will conclude with a short discussion of ways in which public sector project management can succeed and in which it often fails.

What Are Public Projects?

Some of the activities listed at the start of this chapter could be considered to constitute public projects, while some might not be considered as such. Yet, just what it is that differentiates public projects from other activities is mired in the confusion we alluded to above. Most people would agree that when government undertakes to build discrete things—such as roads, schools, submarines, and missile protection systems—it is undertaking public sector projects. Nevertheless, other governmental activities that do not involve construction might also fall into that category as well. An agency that undertakes a study or investigation and produces a report has completed a public project. So has a public agency that adopts and implements a strategic plan.¹ On the other hand, when government agencies issue Social Security and Medicare benefits checks, or even when soldiers are engaged in combat, we consider them to be involved in operations, not public projects.

Taking all of those examples into consideration, the following is intended to provide some clarity to the question of what constitutes a public project:

A public project is a temporary endeavor, undertaken, managed, or overseen by one or more publicly funded organizations to create a unique product of public value.

This definition is based, in part, on the Project Management Institute’s (PMI’s) definition of a private sector project. The PMI defines a project as “a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.”²

That temporary and unique nature of projects separates them from an agency’s operations, for example, which tend to be ongoing and repetitive. Thus, both a new government office building and a document produced by publicly funded researchers could be considered “products” produced by public projects.

Journalists’ Questions

As broad as it is, the PMI definition above of a private sector project still seems somewhat incomplete. It says only what a project is and something about when (it takes place during a discrete interval of time, i.e., it’s temporary). What about other journalists’ questions that might be addressed in a comprehensive definition: who, where, and why? It would probably be asking too much of the definition to answer where projects are undertaken since they’re undertaken just about everywhere. But in defining “public project,” we have broadened the definition above of “private project” to answer the question why public sector projects are undertaken and who undertakes them.

First, the “why.” James Lewis notes that all projects are undertaken to solve a problem of some kind.³ An office building might be constructed because an agency has expanded its operations and its current location has become too small. The project becomes a solution to the problem of a lack of space. A problem doesn’t necessarily have to have negative connotations, though. Lewis points out that a problem is basically a goal with obstacles in the way of reaching it. A project therefore can become a way to overcome obstacles and reach the goal. As we will discuss in Chapter 3, the planners of a new public library in the town of Harvard, Massachusetts, faced the problem of a declining lack of space for books in the existing town library. The new library building was the solution to the obstacle created by the cramped space in the old building.

In a public project, there is an added dimension to the “why” question. Unlike private sector projects, public projects are undertaken to serve public purposes or create public value. Public value is a broad concept that pertains to actions that promote the public interest and to stewardship of the common good among many other public characteristics.⁴ A product of public value produced by a construction project might be a courthouse, a submarine, a school building, a highway, and so on. The product might also be the delivery of food and medicine to the victims of an earthquake as part of a humanitarian relief project. Or it might be the findings of a publicly funded study on links between a particular chemical and cancer in humans. Thus, the definition above of a public project includes a reference to public value.

The question of who undertakes public projects is not as straightforward a question as it might first appear to be. It could be argued that public projects are undertaken by agencies that are supported in whole or in part with public funds. But that raises the question what are public funds. Clearly, money for projects that comes from tax revenues is public funding. But what about an airport construction project that is funded by an airport commission through fees imposed via a surcharge on tickets? We discuss some of the different aspects of public-project financing below.

Definition of public project: A public project is a temporary endeavor, undertaken, managed, or overseen by one or more publicly funded organizations to create a unique product of public value.

There is another important aspect to the “who” question implied in our definition of public projects. As we will discuss throughout this book, much of the planning and execution of public projects is undertaken today by private sector entities—principally contractors and consultants. In some cases, often referred to as “public-private partnerships,” public agencies enter into contractual, leasing, or other arrangements with private “partners” to construct and sometimes finance and operate facilities that serve the public. Those facilities can range from water and wastewater systems to prisons to highways. In some of these cases, the private partners or entities take on nearly all design, construction, and management responsibilities for the systems; yet, these systems are still public in some fundamental ways. The public, first of all, continues to pay for them, either indirectly through tax dollars, or directly through user fees, such as highway tolls or water rates. Second, these projects continue to serve public purposes in that the broad public interest or stewardship of the common good is promoted by their operation. As a result, public agencies continue to oversee these facilities or systems, usually in the form of contractual controls that determine which costs can be passed through to taxpayers or ratepayers.⁵

Hence our definition of a public project is that it is a temporary endeavor undertaken, managed, or overseen by one or more publicly funded organizations to create a unique product of public value. There is a class of fully or partially publicly funded projects that are largely undertaken by private entities and which do not serve primarily public purposes. Professional sports stadiums are an example. They are consequently outside the scope of this book.

What Is Public Sector Project Management?

Public sector project management is also a source of much confusion. Where does public sector project management end and private sector project management begin, for instance? One way to begin to clarify that issue is to define public sector project management as

the application and integration of project planning, selecting agents, enacting agreements, and monitoring and controlling work to achieve a unique public sector project vision.

As will be discussed more thoroughly in Chapter 2, the activities listed in this definition correspond to the elements of this book’s strategic framework for successful public sector project management. That framework calls first and foremost for adequate project planning to correctly identify both the problem to be solved and the project’s scope of work. Next, the public sector manager must select the best possible agents (e.g., in-house staff, consultants, and contractors) to undertake that work and must enact clear and mutually advantageous agreemen...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Praise
• Managing Public Sector Projects
• American Society for Public Administration
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword by Marc Holzer
• Preface
• Introduction
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introducing Public Sector Project Management
• 2 A Strategic Framework for Public Sector Project Management
• 3 Project Planning, Part 1: Getting the Concept Right
• 4 Project Planning, Part 2: Developing and Refining the Process
• 5 Project Planning, Part 3: Finalizing the Process
• 6 Selecting the Best Agents, Part 1: Building the Project Team
• 7 Selecting the Best Agents, Part 2: Contractors and Consultants
• 8 Enacting Advantageous Agreements
• 9 Controlling Public Projects
• 10 Project Closeout and Beyond
• Appendix 1: Discussion Examples Used in This Book
• Appendix 2: Master List of Tips for Success for Public Sector Project Managers
• Appendix 3: Websites of Interest to Public Sector Project Managers
• Appendix 4: Extended Case Studies: Managing Public Projects
• References
• Index