Our Concord® PDS Maturity Assessment™ is a small investment that can save you millions of dollars, not to mention failed initiatives, business headaches and a damaged company reputation
I often say that implementing Advanced Work Packaging (AWP) is like doing transplant surgery on your company’s project delivery system. You need a trained surgeon, someone who understands both AWP and traditional project delivery systems. Good surgeons won’t put the patient on the table without running a battery of tests to make sure the business systems are capable of accepting and sustaining AWP. If you start the transplant before running the required tests, you risk organizational rejection of AWP. It happens a lot.
A Comprehensive Testing Protocol for the Predictability of Your Project Delivery System
Concord’s PDS Maturity Assessment™ is the testing protocol for capital project organizations looking to implement Advanced Work Packaging. Our proprietary tests answer a host of essential questions about your organization, all designed to help you understand what you need to do before introducing AWP. By understanding your organizational strengths and weaknesses, and working to mitigate the latter, you can significantly lower the risk of AWP rejection, and dramatically increase the likelihood of success. Some of the key questions we ask include:
- Do you have a blueprint for AWP implementation?
- How mature are your engineering, scheduling, construction and procurement systems?
- Are your contractors ready for AWP? Are your contracts AWP-ready?
- Is your company culture capable of adopting a new approach to project delivery?
- What steps and upgrades do you need to take to successfully transform your project delivery system toward safety, predictability of cost and schedule?
This comprehensive assessment of your Project Delivery System is ultimately designed to answer this one question: What will it take for your company to implement AWP successfully? Our PDS Maturity Assessment™ is a small investment that can save you millions of dollars, not to mention failed initiatives, business headaches and a damaged company reputation.
If you start the transplant before running the required tests, you risk organizational rejection of AWP.
What is the Process of Conducting Your PDS Maturity Assessment™?
The process is quick and straightforward, and can be completed in just six weeks assuming that your team is responsive and ready to work.
Methodology
Step 1: Data Collection
We start by collecting multi-source data, reviewing documentation, gathering and analyzing project data and past company performance.
Step 2: Survey
We conduct a comprehensive proprietary organizational survey, aiming to garner responses from as many team members as possible.
Step 3: Interviews
We conduct and analyze one-on-one interviews with key people across multiple departments and functions.
Step 4: Education
While we are undertaking this work, we provide your AWP implementation team with complimentary access to Concord Academy’s Advanced Work Packaging Fundamentals course, so they can each obtain the Concord Certified Advanced Work Packaging Professional® designation.
Step 5: Workshop
We conduct a preliminary analysis and host a three-hour workshop with your newly trained implementation team.
Deliverables
After the workshop, we finalize the report, complete with a suite of recommendations designed to position your organization for AWP implementation success. You are free to use the report in an executive or management presentation as well.
Our proprietary tests answer a host of essential questions about your organization, all designed to help you understand what you need to do before introducing AWP.
What Kinds of Problems Surface During a PDS Maturity Assessment™?
If you’ve never been through a PDS Maturity Assessment™ — or never implemented Advanced Work Packaging — it can be difficult to understand what we mean when we say that we will identify systemic and structural issues that will undermine your efforts to adopt AWP. Here are a few real-world examples from some of our recent clients.
Example One
The PDS Maturity Assessment™ revealed that key company departments were operating independently from one another, creating a siloed organization. Advanced Work Packaging requires collaboration, integration and transparency, making it incompatible with the existing company structure. In this specific case, the gap between certain departments was so significant that we recommended a change in the org chart to address the challenge before implementing AWP.
Example Two
The PDS Maturity Assessment™ revealed that nearly half of the projects in the company were being fast-tracked, but the company had no mechanism for identifying fast-tracked projects and was unaware of this important fact which impacts project delivery performance. Implementing AWP in a fast-track environment is very different than implementing AWP in a standard project environment; when working in a fast-track environment the AWP implementation requires modifications to the stage-gate system. In this specific case, we recommended modifying the stage-gate system before introducing AWP, though I should caution that this is not always the most effective approach.
Example Three
The PDS Maturity Assessment™ revealed that the company was generally mature and ready to implement AWP, with the sole — and significant — exception of the scheduling system and capabilities. We reviewed both the company’s own scheduling systems and the contractor schedules and determined that, without meaningful changes, any attempt at implementing AWP would almost certainly fail. The recommendation: To upgrade the scheduling systems and contractor protocols before implementing AWP.
Other common challenges include a lack of training, cultural resistance to change, and misinformed or unsupportive leadership. Every organization is unique, and so the problems identified by a PDS Maturity Assessment™ vary greatly from company to company.
If you recognize your company or organization in any of these stories, it may be time to scheduled your own PDS Maturity Assessment.™ The Concord® team is standing by to help — contact us today!
Book Your Concord® PDS Maturity Assessment™ Today
Revitalize your Project Delivery System (PDS) in just six weeks with a Concord® PDS Maturity Assessment™ and Best Practice Selection Protocol.
