Assessment Task 3: Project Governance Scenario

Assessment Task 3: Project Governance Scenario

1. Purpose and aims
This assignment aims to extend student's body of knowledge in terms of positioning their argument in an essay format where they will bring and discuss different arguments from the past studies. More importantly, students would discuss how a project leader will deal with both strategic and technical challenges that contribute to project governance and recommend some insights that will help future projects minimise the impact of these challenges.
2. Consider the following scenario
The following scenario will discuss some common issues in which a project may experience in its lifecycle.

East-Europe Tunnel
2010-2018, the East-Europe project was undertaken to create a connection between Greece and Italy via underground tunnel, presented one of the largest privately funded construction projects ever undertaken. It required the cooperation of two national governments, bankers underwriting the funding for the projects, numerous contractors and several regular agencies. The construction and engineering of the tunnel required the use of new technology and required significant modifications during the project due to unexpected conditions and changes required by various parties.
At the end, the project was completed, but it was late and over budgeted. The promotion of investments in the Tunnel was a challenging multinational affair drawing in institutions from several countries. In the last report (2019) presented by Jack Miller, the senior project leader, the project experiences some difficulties that resulted in project failure in some milestones, requiring the project managers to re-think and reschedule project planning for a few times between 2013 and 2016. For example, the success key factors announced by the board of directors was not fully aligned with the strategic priorities announced by the Italian government and Greek government. Lack of clear communication by senior management and the ministerial ownership and leadership was also another issue that negatively influenced effective engagement with stakeholders such as project sponsors, service and manufacturing providers and other third parties. Jack also found that mechanisms such as flexibility in emergent and situational needs during the project execution and standardisation of governance practices could better help the project professionally pass its own milestones. This could also help the project managers to better disclose and report project milestones for future planning. At the technical level, however, Jack found that the effective project team integration between clients, suppliers and the entire supply chain was lacking. Jack knew that this issue was associated with inability of the project managers to build an effective organizational culture that impacts the attitudes of people through top management support, synchronised communication structures and dedicated network structure.
Although the project was completed, it seems that the project experienced some issues at both strategic and technical levels. Indeed, assuring that a project delivers the business objectives and benefits as expected, is associated with the project governance.