Main contractor perspective

You have seen that it is often difficult to find the correct way to judge a project’s performance.

You saw previously that project management performance in traditionally thought of in terms of the iron triangle. This looks at the resources (cost), scope (functionality), and schedule (time). However, the iron triangle has a very narrow focus.

The iron triangle has two main flaws.

1. Narrow stakeholder perspective

This analysis only considers the main contractor’s and customer's perspectives. The customer agrees what work to complete within a certain time, budget and scope with the main contractor.

After delivering the project, the main contractor often has little more involvement in the project. The exception to this might be where warranties, maintenance and upgrades are involved.

During the 1950s, the Department of Defence in the USA had its own contractors and asked them to produce equipment with certain functionalities by a certain day, paying a certain price. The contractor used to receive their payment once they delivered what was necessary by the deadline.

The discussions between the customer (the Department of Defence) and the contractors considered the equipment's functions (ie scope), schedule of delivery (ie time) and budget/resources to be used (ie cost). Other stakeholders were mostly ignored. This created a culture of the iron triangle which disregarded the wider perspectives held by other stakeholders involved in, or affected by the project.

2. Focus on project delivery phase

The traditional approach of building to specification by a certain day and price looks only at the delivery phase of the infrastructure.

Projects are agents of change. The bigger the project, the bigger the agent of change so you have to look at how major projects fit into and change the context.

This context is the economy, society and the environment. For example, you do not build a bridge for the sake of building a bridge. You build a bridge because you want to connect two territories and foster their development. You build a new university in a city because you want to provide education to citizens, create jobs and revitalise the city. You might want to evaluate the construction of a bridge or university ten, twenty or a hundred years later.

Overall, the traditional measures of cost, time and quality do not provide an accurate measure of success.

Please refer to the glossary to check any terminology you are unfamiliar with: Glossary of Project Management Terms

Coming up....

In the next section you will consider how you should measure success.