01/10/2014 00:17 AST
In a sense, the UAE has been one big project ever since independence in 1971, a planned exercise in socio-political and economic development that has made the country into a series of interconnected, sophisticated urban centres.
Now, and especially in Dubai, the pace of change has been put into top gear. The megaprojects announced in the emirate in the past few months alone promise to transform the city once more by 2020, when the Expo business exhibition will be staged, and then again in the years after.
But megaprojects elsewhere in the world have a mixed track record. Think of the controversies over Fifa World Cup and Olympic venues; going farther back, think of the glitches – cost overrun, schedule delays, investor angst – that accompanied the 1980s project to link Britain and France via the Eurotunnel.
Huge infrastructure undertakings – like the Expo site, the new Dubai Al Maktoum airport, the Mall of the World development and the Dubai Canal, to name but a few of the spectacular developments, the emirate is committed to in the next few years – present challenges.
Mark Langley is aware of that, and can offer some solid advice to Dubai and the UAE as they embark on another hectic phase of transformational development.
Mr Langley is the chief executive of the US-based Project Management Institute, and he was in Dubai this week for the inaugural meeting on the Dubai International Projects Management Forum (DIPMF).
He was speaking directly to the most prominent stakeholders in Dubai’s infrastructure plans: the transport supremos at the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), the suppliers of energy from the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa), and the builder-architects from Emaar Properties.
“At some stage, all big projects come up against the triple constraints of time, budget and scope. You may not be able to meet the demands of all three. Dubai is on a schedule defined largely by 2020, so it may have to spend more to get there by the set time,” he says.
Time and budget are self-explanatory, but by scope he means the reality of the projects themselves, that is the building, road, bridge or airport planned. That too can change in the course of the project, he says.
And to these variables, you must add the ever present threat of “black swan” events like another downturn in the global economic cycle, or socio-political threats.
“In a down cycle you’ll see an increase in project delays, but the best policy is to proceed with those that are the most important strategically. This is where you use the benefit of past experience to arrive at risk informed decisions.”
Dubai has the benefit of hindsight in two crucial respects here: its experience during and recovery from the global financial crisis of 2009; and its stability during the Arab Spring along with the ongoing convulsions in some parts of the region.
Mr Langley believes Dubai now has the project management expertise to overcome similar challenges should they reappear.
“From my visits here – four in the past year – and especially from what I’ve heard in the DIPMF, Dubai is certainly committed to excellence in project management. In particular, Mattar Al Tayer [chairman of the RTA] has helped raise the level of maturity of the project management profession in the UAE,” he says.
When projects get into trouble or fail altogether, professionals like Mr Langley resort to what they call “multi-variant regression analysis”. Often the biggest reason for the problems is that senior executives involved as stakeholders have not understood the nature of the project. “I don’t think that’s the case in Dubai. I’ve seen a high level of senior executive involvement in and alignment with project management,” he says.
The National
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