The New Triple Constraints for Sustainable Projects, Programs, and Portfolios

Gregory T. Haugan

• Publisher: Auerbach Publications
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781466570566
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Project Management
• Index: Business

The ongoing changes in population, climate, and the availability of energy have resulted in unprecedented threats and opportunities that all project and program managers, portfolio managers, and public planners need to be aware of. The New Triple Constraints for Sustainable Projects, Programs, and Portfolios offers a clear look at how these constra

1

Sustainability Overlay Concept and Structure

Chapter 1 outline.

Overlay Zoning Analogy

In land use planning, overlay zoning is a regulatory tool that creates a special zoning district, placed over an existing base zone(s), which includes special provisions in addition to those in the underlying base zone. The overlay district can share common boundaries with the base zone or cut across base zone boundaries. Regulations or incentives are attached to the overlay district to protect a specific resource or guide development within a special area.^*

In land use and community planning, overlay districts are used for many different purposes:

• to manage development in or near environmentally sensitive areas,
• to protect historical areas, to guide development along transportation corridors,
• to protect special areas from development, and so forth.

The author has been involved in developing local government zoning overlays for all of these special considerations Overlay zoning districts are created following three basic steps:

1. Define the purpose of the district.
2. Identify the areas that comprise the district, including the scope and boundaries of the district.
3. Develop specific rules that apply to the identified district.

There are other general considerations that involve the implementation and administration of overlay zones that include consistency between the overlay and the basic zoning district involved and the review of the applicability and usage by higher levels of municipal management and the general public.

These concepts, purposes, and considerations can be transferred to the overlays of population impacts, climate changes, and energy constraints onto our project, program, and enterprise planning. For simplicity, in future descriptions I will simply refer to program planning rather than the complete project, program, and enterprise planning.

Figure 1.1 presents a graphic of the overlay concept and the major sections of this book

Overlay Criteria

The application of the analogy of the zoning overlay to an overlay set of population, climate, and energy constraints for program life cycle planning is explained in the following text in terms of the three steps of the previous section used to define an overlay district.

FIGURE 1.1
Overlay concept.

Purpose

Three major constraints exist that apply to future and ongoing multiyear projects and programs and apply to programs in portfolios of enterprises These are changes in population, climate change, and the availability of energy—PCE constraints. Most managers have some familiarity with various aspects of these constraints and do consider them in their planning. We believe these have been underrepresented in many planning and programming activities for a variety of reasons. The intent of these overlays is to assist program managers in the consideration of and application of more robust PCE constraints in their planning and risk analyses

Applicability

The PCE overlay set is applicable to all projects, programs, and portfolios whose planning horizon extends into the next decade All programs are impacted to some degree by these constraints.

Population factors include any impacts or assumptions regarding changes in demand, demographics, racial composition, immigration, migration, birth rates, or death rates Changes in these factors drastically impact workforces.

Climate factors include any impacts or assumptions regarding weather, sea levels, biota, ice, and glaciers that are involved in the performance of the project end items or in the development of the products, services, or results that are the purpose of the basic project. The forecast changes in climate are expected to result in conditions different from what the Earth has seen for over 10,000 years. It makes no difference whether one "believes" the scientists or not; a prudent businessman and planner will take these risks into account.

Energy factors include any impacts or assumptions regarding the availability or cost of energy in the management of the program or in the resulting product, service, or result. It is difficult to identify any program that doesn’t rely on or involve use of energy in some form.

Indirect factors may, for example, include the impact of population aging affecting the economic strength of a country, which in turn may reduce (or increase) a military threat A reduced military threat may indicate a change in the performance requirements of a new military aircraft. Or an arctic construction project may depend upon the continued existence of permafrost in an area where current data and climate models show significant increases in temperature are occurring and continuing to occur, threatening the stability of the ground. Or a school district is developing its capital budget for new school construction based on projections of historic population data in an area that scientists project to be adversely and seriously impacted by droughts exacerbated by climate change and impacted by immigration, for example, west Texas.

Specific rules

The overlays provide specific information and guidance to both the program manager and the higher level of management charged with reviewing, approving, and implementing the plans

When reviewing a project of any size where an overlay is applicable, it is important that the program be consistent not only with the content of the overlays, but with the long-term goals and the overall program/portfolio plan That is, the basic schedule, cost, and performance criteria still apply; the overlay is just that—an overlay—as shown in Figure 1.1.

Consideration of the overlay should be incorporated into the existing program/portfolio review process for large-scale development programs and all multiyear life cycle programs It should become the norm to consider these three new constraints in all planning and how they relate to a sustainable future.

A series of overlays should be an enterprise-wide requirement and be part of the criteria in addition to return on investment (ROI) or cost effectiveness or other standard metrics used to select programs and to guide the program manager. They complement budgeting, scheduling, and quality/performance activities. Many organizations are already doing this piecemeal for climate change impacts

PCE Breakdown Structure

One of the principal tools in project planning is the work breakdown structure (WBS), which is used to provide the framework for planning and to define the scope. This is part of Project Management 101. It is addressed in the Project Management Book of Knowledge, PMBOK® Guide, and in many other project management texts and courses. There are two roles of the work breakdown structure in project portfolio management: (1) displaying the projects or programs in a logical hierarchical format for presentation purposes, and (2) using a WBS to design a portfolio management system.^* The first instance is not really a WBS; it is only using some of the WBS logic and familiar display techniques to organize the elements to facilitate communication. Figure 1.2 presents the PCE overlay and the outline of this book using this first type of WBS. This figure was developed using WBS ChartPro software.

The plan of this book is to follow a typical approach used in presenting the results of scientific or analytical data. Just as many major reports start with an abstract and provide a summary for policymakers, we will provide the content up front in this synthesis of the discussion and description of each PCE overlay Since we are not able to predict the future any better than anyone else, we will also present and discuss scenarios and then some possible and probable solutions or outcomes that provide the basis for evaluating the risks involved.

Under or near the heading for each section, the applicable overlay statement is included in a box. These are also summaries of the material in the section.

FIGURE 1.2
PCE overlay WBS.

^* University of Wisconsin Center for Land Use Education, Planning and Implementation Tools, Overlay Zoning, November 2005, http://www.uwsp.edu/cnr/landcenter/pdffiles/implementation/OverlayZoning.p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Prologue
• Chapter 1. Sustainability Overlay Concept and Structure
• Chapter 2. Summary for Policymakers: PCE Overlay
• Section I: Population Overlay
• Section II: Climate Change Overlay
• Section III: Energy Overlay
• Section IV: Supporting Appendices
• Acronyms and Abbreviations
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index