Rethinking project delivery with Ali Mafi

In today’s podcast we will delve into the knotty and, it seems, unending challenge of controlling and reducing the cost and the time spent delivering our major infrastructure projects. 

As we a constantly reminded by politicians, the public and our colleagues, the track record of global major project delivery is not good. I have referenced the findings of Oxford University professor Bent Flyvbjerg’s book How Big Things Get Done many times on this podcast before – specifically his findings that globally over the last 30 years, just 8.5% of projects met cost and schedule targets while just 0.5% satisfied all benefit goals.

It's a pretty shocking set of findings. And we don’t have to look far in the UK to see evidence – I give you HS2, Hinkley Point C, Crossrail, etc etc. But given that the UK government just published its £800bn pipeline of infrastructure aspiration in the face of an increasing public finance black hole, the pressure is growing to turn this around.

So what is going wrong? Well my guest today is Ali Mafi, an engineer who has spent a career, largely in the shadows, trying to drive change across the sector. In fact he is currently collaborating with Bent Flyvbjerg and Alex Budzier of the Oxford Saïd Business school under their Oxford Global Projects consultancy to try to bring some new thinking to the sector.

And the focus for this work, is the Timist programme, which he founded last year and, as he will explain now I hope, he defines as a next generation project delivery system – a new approach major projects that he reckons could see teams deliver better outcomes in a shorter time and at lower cost than any other systems available.

He believes – as the name of his approach suggests – that most problems really stem from our inability to focus on time. As a result projects lose on average 2.5 days per week which means that the output and productivity is half of what it should be. That’s the diagnosis – so what’s the cure?

Resources
Timist website
The Latham Review - Constructing the Team
The Egan Review - Rethinking Construction
Association for Project Management article on ward rounds