Paul Naybour
happened during the project life cycle are:
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Gate Review is commissioned by the sponsoring organisations as part of their
governance structure. It is carried out at the end of the Concept and
definitions phases. It is important as it enables sponsors to decide the
viability of the project and whether it should be completed or terminated (go
or no-go decision). For example, gate review for a deep sewage
tunnelling project to replace sewage pumping stations indicated the extremely
high costs for the construction of the project that are not justified against
the gained benefits, therefore sponsors decided to terminate the project.
project. It is usually conducted by experienced colleagues. Technical reviews
are form for the peer reviews. Peer reviews are important as they are
carried out by experienced personnel who can spot hidden problems / risks in
the project and suggest solutions based on their practical experience. For
example, during the technical reviews for the mechanical drawings for a
valve chamber, the reviewer noticed that no ventilation system was provided.
in the organisation. These are usually carried out during the development stage
to make sure that the project is meeting its KPIs, and the project activities
are progressing as per the plan. Stage reviews are important as they give
senior management and sponsors visibility about the actual status of the
project which enables them to detect the delays and take immediate recovery
actions. For example, delay was noticed in the building works of a
warehouse, and it was decided to engage one more subcontractor to speed up the
work progress.
plan in order to assure that projects are conforming to standard procedures and
therefore are having good chance for success. Organisations always engage third
parties to conduct the Audits. These are useful as they spot the non-conformities
in the projects and officially record and report them which drives PM and
project team to follow the system. For example, during project audit it
was detected that technical review forms for one deliverable were not done.
to assess the effectiveness of the project management tools and procedures as
well as the performance of the PM and the project team. These assessments will
be recorded as lessons learnt and will be reviewed by the organisation during
their governance structure reviews in order to make required adjustments
to improve performance. For example, post project reviews indicated that
the organisation needs to introduce modern web-based share point link to enable
project team (located at different offices) to easily share and exchange project
information.