An investigation of the risk of changes to key project personnel during the design stage

This research examines whether a change to key personnel is a risk to construction projects and, if so, its likelihood, and its impact should it arise. Such an investigation is of vital importance as the fundamental aim of project risk analysis and management (PRAM) is to establish a 'picture' of future events which enables management to make informed decisions. Decision making must capitalise on opportunities and control or make provision for risks. Experience has shown that such a picture must include all important aspects and not be limited to purely technical issues, as 'people issues' can have as great an impact as technical issues on the outcome of a project, and sometimes even greater. The absence of such factors in risk analysis can result in the gross underestimation of a project's risk exposure. In consequence, the direction of this research called for the examination of both the building design process and PRAM. The design management literature is examined initially followed by an examination of the field of risk analysis and management. Examination of the literature of design management reveals that it is an incremental process of information gathering, problem solving and communication. This process is seen to involve human interaction between different 'stakeholders' of the project as it moves through a series of steps from an initial statement of requirements to a three-dimensional interpretation of those requirements. A survey of completed projects confirms that the design process is predominantly a communication process, identifies risk events which have actually materialised and establishes that changes in personnel would be significant. The results clearly illustrate that the inception and feasibility design stages are the most vulnerable, these being the stages when the client is attempting to communicate his requirements to the design team. The PRAM literature reveals that while the identification of risk has been clearly recognised as the most important aspect of the process, it has received the least attention. Existing risk identification techniques borrowed from disciplines outside of PRAM have not contributed to our knowledge of the effects of changes in personnel. To overcome the vacuum in the design management and PRAM literature, case studies were implemented on twenty-two building projects with an in-depth study carried out on two of them. Of the twenty-two projects examined, sixteen suffered from a change of key project personnel. The findings of the research clearly show that a change of key project personnel is an adverse event that commonly occurs and can be directly linked to project overrun during the design stage. Through the use of a system dynamics model, it can be seen that incoming team members pass through an orientation phase, which undermines productivity. Other issues discovered that might extend or accentuate the learning curve were the clarity of the project brief, the lucidity of the terms of appointment of the design team, the lines of communication, the degree of completeness of the design audit trail and the experience of the key project players.