Study highlights main causes of project management issues

Among the key findings, Access found that only 25 respondents were able to say that less than ten percent of their projects stayed on schedule, 15% of respondents claimed that a lack of tools was the main reason for projects overrunning and the East of England was found to be the least efficient amongst the regions, with their projects overrunning between 91-100% of the time.

In the video below, Jonathan Beale, Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Project Engineer at an Australian oil and gas company, gives his insights into project management within the engineering industry. You can access more videos here.

Access' survey posed two questions: ‘What percentage of the time do your projects overrun?’ and ‘What, in your opinion, is the main reason for projects overrunning?’ The results revealed only 25 respondents were able to say that less than ten percent of their projects stayed on schedule. As to the reasons why, ‘poor time management’ and ‘lack of resource’ were the main culprits, accounting for 76.6% of overrun projects.

These results highlight just how widespread project management issues are, and that they don’t just affect projects on a national scale, but in most of our everyday work.

So how can managers keep their projects on time and within budget? Here are five processes and tricks to help projects run as timely and smoothly as possible.

1. As part of your scope of work, take the time to tease out various complications and create a plan for what to do in each case. Try to evaluate the realistic likelihood of each happening, and make sure everyone involved is on board to minimise the possibility of future conflict.
2. Grand Designs presenter and architectural critic Kevin McCloud knows a thing or two about project management. Although his expertise lies in home improvement and design, his advice can be applied to almost any project. In order to avoid cost overruns, he said in an interview with The Guardian: "If you are disciplined, add 20% to your budget. If you are not disciplined, then add 59%." Even if you consider yourself a highly organised, efficient manager, unforeseen bumps in the road can be costly, and it’s important to factor those in.
3. Continue to track and check progress against the end goals or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). If you are constantly measuring the project’s current status, you’re more likely to catch mistakes early on or identify situations before they become a problem.
4. Miscommunications can contribute to project delays or complications, so it’s important to establish and maintain clear communication between all parties involved. Agree on a preferred method or channel – whether that be a weekly call or a monthly progress report or both – and make sure everyone sticks to it.
5. Be it for project costing or timekeeping, make sure you equip yourself with the proper tools – and ensure you’ve factored in any additional software costs into your budget. Time shouldn’t be spent re-organising data or correcting organisational mistakes, and the right software can help save time and money in the long run. For example, during the migration to the shared services centre, the government did not track extensions to contracts that extended past deadlines, therefore couldn’t accurately grasp how overbudget the project ran. A tool that measured projected costs against actual costs – and regularly comparing both – could have flagged the issue before it became a problem

Unfortunately, there isn’t a fool-proof technique to ensure all projects run without a hitch– after all, ‘to err is human’, as the old saying goes. However, keeping these strategies in mind can help avoid unanticipated – and potentially expensive – complications.