Press Release - Driving the Successful Delivery of Major
Defence Projects: Effective Project Control is a Key Factor in
Successful Projects
20 May 2005
Overview
The National Audit Office published today its "gold standard"
for project control of major defence projects. This aims to help
the MoD improve its performance in delivering projects on time and
to budget. It forms part of a second in a suite of studies
exploring key project success factors and how the MoD and its
industry partners can better deliver success. Project control means
having the right processes in place to track progress and keep
projects on course.
Some defence projects compare favourably with the "gold
standard" and a number are at the very forefront of good project
control. Trojan and Titan armoured engineer vehicles and the HMS
ILLUSTRIOUS aircraft carrier refit are two projects which performed
particularly well against the "gold standard". However, there is a
wide variety of performance and the MoD and its industry partners
need to improve the consistency of application of the "gold
standard" principles to stand a greater chance of meeting their
time and cost targets on projects.
Report Highlights
Success depends on building and sustaining the right
relationships between all parties to a project. There are strong
examples where the MoD is building open relationships with its
contractors. However, yet more needs to be done to develop a
supportive and open environment where staff can routinely report
bad news as soon as it happens to provide early warning of
problems.
Private sector organisations that face similar challenges such
as BP, Ericsson and Eli Lilly show that the MoD tends towards
optimism in setting performance, time and cost targets. The MoD
recognises this is a problem and is taking steps to remedy it.
The MoD uses the same set of tools and techniques for monitoring
projects as similar commercial organisations but the balance
between their use varies. For example only 44 per cent of project
teams used external cost or money spent as an explicit measure of
progress achieved compared to 78 per cent of commercial project
managers surveyed. On the other hand, compared to the commercial
survey, more MoD teams are using a joint risk register with their
suppliers which is a good way of ensuring that both parties have a
common understanding of the challenges of a particular project.
The NAO also found that the MOD’s newly implemented system for
reporting system status is moving in the right direction and is
likely to provide better, more timely and accurate management
information. However, the MoD does not have a single, consolidated
reporting system such as that recently introduced by the United
States Department of Defence for reporting project status across
all parts of its acquisition organisation.
In addition to the report the NAO is publishing a wide variety
of supporting material on its website. The challenge for the MoD
and its industry partners will be to learn from their good
experiences and those of other organisations to help deliver more
successful projects.
Sir John Bourn said today:
"Comparisons with the private sector and other defence
departments show that at their best, UK defence programmes compare
well with good practice in project control. However, the good
practices are not being consistently applied in all cases. Project
control is vital to successful delivery of projects and our gold
standards and recommendations set out in this report mean the MoD
and its industry partners should have a clear idea of what they are
striving for to consistently deliver successful defence
projects."
Notes for Editors
- Press notices and reports are available from the date of
publication on the NAO website, which is now at
www.nao.org.uk. Hard copies can be obtained from
The Stationery Office on 0845 702 3474.
- The Comptroller and Auditor General, Sir John Bourn, is the
head of the National Audit Office which employs some 800 staff. He
and the NAO are totally independent of Government. He certifies the
accounts of all Government departments and a wide range of other
public sector bodies; and he has statutory authority to report to
Parliament on the economy, efficiency and effectiveness with which
departments and other bodies have used their resources.
Press Notice 34/04
All enquiries to Mark Strathdene, NAO Press Office:
Tel: 020 7798 7183
Mobile: 07748 181693