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Infrastructure Project Complexity and Decentred Governance The Role Of Project Practitioners Presentation to Annual Conference Political Studies Association 27 MARCH 2018 Shaun Drabsch Griffith University 1 Complexity in Governance Each

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Infrastructure Project Complexity and Decentred Governance

The Role Of Project Practitioners

Presentation to Annual Conference Political Studies Association 27 MARCH 2018 Shaun Drabsch Griffith University

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Complexity in Governance

  • Each of the panel today are discussing how individual participants bring their own

logics or rationalities to a governance process – in the Dutch executive, a PPP in Egypt and accountability processes in Brazil

  • I am undertaking a PhD research into how those participating in the development of

infrastructure projects interact within the governance framework

  • How do they deal with complexity as a group?
  • Can the clash of individual rationalities create uncertainties and ambiguity in the

project as well?

  • My field is economic policy but my literature review has led me to a detailed analysis
  • f project management theory
  • Both Project Management and Public Policy theory are now focussing on the role of

individuals in the practice of governance

  • Keen to explore the potential for interpretive political science to help explain the

behaviours that emerge despite the organisational frameworks that are supposed to contain them

PSA Conference Cardiff – March 2018 2

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What is infrastructure and why is it so important?

  • Physical assets to support the delivery of public services
  • Discrete projects involving large investments
  • Staged process of analysis, procurement and delivery
  • Multi-level decision making structure
  • Project teams - a network of agency representatives and external

contractors

  • Taxpayers want best asset solutions to support best service delivery

at best value for money

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Introduction

In Australia there is a curious desire to depoliticise infrastructure projects. Using rigorous process as a moat to protect projects from political interference and imposing new layers of governance such as independent assessment bodies. Large investments to transform services to the public are at the very heart of the public interest. Complexity of projects and a consistently poor record of performance forces researchers to look for something to blame - many focus on community opposition to change Much of the project management literature prescribes the cure for governance failure as more governance Internal social forces of project organisation may be a significant source of uncertainty as individual agents pursue their own agendas despite, or possibly because of, the governance frameworks

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The scope of megaproject research

  • Strong interest in large infrastructure

‘megaprojects’

  • Longitudinal studies of project performance
  • Case studies - mainly transport projects
  • Common starting point is large projects are

immensely complex

  • Research focussed on the possible sources of

this complexity

Flyvberg 2003, Lessard & Miller 2000 Hertogh & Westerveld 2010, Giezen 2012, Koppenjan 2014 Chapman 2016 Ward & Chapman 2003, Hertogh & Westerveld 2010

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The problem of project performance

  • Infrastructure Australia (2013) reported that 48% of projects failed to meet

their baseline time, cost and quality objectives

  • Flyvberg (2003) researched 258 projects over 70 years
  • 9 out of 10 projects failed to control their costs by an average 28%
  • Performance was consistent throughout the 7 decades
  • New models have been tried – PPPs
  • Frustration with cost and time of procurement process and effectiveness of outcomes

(Infrastructure Australia 2015, Productivity Commission 2014, Global Infrastructure Hub 2016)

  • Complexity – a growing realisation that projects are more about managing

an organisational process than simply executing delivery of a physical output

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Complexity in projects

  • Technical and logistical variability is to be expected
  • Uncertainty can arise throughout a project process
  • Reducing uncertainty - some risks can be identified,

likelihood assessed and consequence estimated

  • Some have observed that not all risk is manageable
  • risk is not uncertainty, but one implication of it
  • uncertainty could positively benefit a project
  • Ambiguity can arise in relationships within the project

and from lack of clarity in strategic direction

Winter 2006, Hallgren & Soderholm, Morris 2011 Giezen 2012, Liu 2017 Perminova 2008, Taleb 2007 Giezen 2012, Sanderson 2012 Atkinson 2006, van Marrewijk 2010, Ward & Chapman 2003

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The certainty of uncertainty

  • Complexity – scale, technical, organisational, external stakeholders
  • Risk – variability, probablistic, predictable, manageable with systems
  • Uncertainty – ambiguity, lack of clarity in strategic direction, ‘black swans’
  • The role of ambiguity is often ignored or overlooked in thinking about risk and

uncertainty as the focus of practitioners tends to be drawn to those risks which are manageable

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Black Swans are not so rare…

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Improving project performance

  • Flyvbjerg’s core conclusion - “no learning seems to take place”
  • Project information is often not being shared with future projects
  • Project participants rely on their own knowledge/traditions/beliefs
  • What is stopping performance from improving?
  • Uncertainty and increasing complexity in major projects
  • Teams struggle to rapidly adapt to changing circumstances
  • Reliance on static systems and governance
  • Need dynamic and adaptive practices of governing
  • Willingness to reorient to new observed facts
  • Timely access to data, the means to quickly analyse that data and recalibrate the plan

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Is governance enough?

  • Is project failure simply a function of poor

governance?

  • Are there elements beyond the execution of

delivery?

  • The social element – is a project really an
  • rganisational process?
  • Radical indeterminacy – the future is socially

constructed

  • Important role of individuals acting within a

governance framework – dispersal of influence

  • Projects as Practice – praxis, practices & practitioners
  • Confluence with ‘decentred governance’ theory in

public policy

Pinto & Winch 2016, Morris 2011 De Bruijn 2011 Van Marrewijk 2008, Sanderson 2012 Hertogh & Westerveld 2010 Hallgren & Soderholm 2011 Bevir & Rhodes 2017, Atkinson 2006, Muller 2011

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Decentred governance

  • Network governance – dispersed but

interdependent players jostling for strategic input

  • Metagovernance – the State overseeing the

application of governance through networks

  • Governance is seen as the core rationality - but is
  • nly a goal for those wishing to keep control
  • Other individual project actors will seek to apply

their own rationality to the application of governance frameworks, shaped by their ‘webs of belief’

Schmidt 2014 Bevir & Rhodes 2017 van Marrewijk 2008, Atkinson 2006 Bevir & Rhodes 2017, Muller 2011, Sanderson 2012, Winter 2006

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Explaining project performance

  • Failure to learn from past projects despite a growing body of knowledge.
  • Need for a richer understanding of the actuality of projects (Sanderson)
  • The practice of governing
  • how practitioners interact within governance frameworks
  • what shapes their behaviours
  • Categories of uncertainty have been identified but further work on the

source of these uncertainties and what causes them to arise would be instructive to future project practitioners.

  • Interpretive political science provides a vehicle to explain what is occurring

in dynamic project organisations

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My research question

  • What can the practices of governing explain about the effect of uncertainty and

complexity on project performance?

  • Is it true that some uncertainties cannot be ‘risk managed’ and how well placed are

governance mechanisms to deal with these uncertainties?

  • To what extent do the approaches of ‘projects as practice’ and ‘decentred governance’

explain the presence of ambiguity in the practice of governing infrastructure projects?

  • Can the ‘practices’ or ‘webs of belief’ and their interpretation into ‘praxis’ by individual

‘practitioners’ help to explain observed behaviour in project assessment and delivery?

  • Do these webs of belief help or constrain the recognition and application of learnings

from past projects? What is otherwise impeding practitioners from drawing upon the lessons of the past?

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Case Study – Gold Coast Light Rail

  • 1996 - congested contiguous urban corridor needs a transport

solution

  • Light Rail the early favourite vs dedicated bus corridor
  • 2001 – Preliminary Business Case
  • 2004 – Detailed Business Case
  • 2005 -2008 Various revisions
  • 2009 – Investment Decision
  • 2012 – Stage One opens
  • 2018 – Stage Two opens

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Case Study - competing rationalities or webs of belief

  • Transport Department – public transport charter
  • Gold Coast City Council – road congestion and tourist mobility
  • State Development Department – open mind to delivery options,

fixed track underpins development

  • Treasury – buses are cheaper, anti-PPP and anti-debt
  • Federal Government – aversion to infrastructure spending
  • External Advisors – complex transactions earn more fees

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Case study Practice overrides governance

  • Key agencies had entrenched and conflicting perspectives, not always

embraced by individual representatives to the project

  • Uncertainty of funding pushed business case into an iterative loop
  • Need for business case rigour was used as a stalling tactic
  • Political necessity of post-GFC stimulus overrode the resistance
  • A virtuous ‘black swan’ – uncertainty can create opportunity
  • Certainty of State/Federal funding drove efficient procurement process
  • Two stages of the project now successfully completed as an availability

payment PPP with State retaining farebox revenue

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Conclusion

  • Governance can go only so far
  • The practice of governing determines how effective a governance

framework will be

  • Future research should seek to explain how individuals engage with a

project organisation, and the sources of their behaviour

  • Public Policy theory of Decentred Governance and Project Management

theory of Projects in Practice both have this focus on the individual practitioners, and the forces that influence them

  • This Conference provides me the opportunity to learn more about the

process of interpretive ethnography as I seek to explain the rationalities of project practitioners

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Thank you

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