An island of constancy in a sea of change: Rethinking project temporalities with long-term megaprojects

Synchronous and Diachronic Timing: Insights into Managing Projects from Disaster Management and Fast-Response Organizations

Timing, that is selecting the right time or speed, is critical in urgent projects, yet there are few studies addressing timing in project management. This article emphasizes event time to better understand that timing is not simply a given externality and points to the importance of enacting events and urgency. Furthermore, the article distinguishes between synchronic and diachronic time perspectives. By transferring insights from disaster management and fast-response organizations, the article shows that (synchronous) coordination is best done by organizational improvisation and fragmentation, whereas (diachronic) pace and rhythm are marked by seizing opportunities, deliberately induced interruptions, and periods of patience.

Explorative Learning in Infrastructure Development Megaprojects: The Case of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge

Research on explorative learning has primarily focused on the organizational level. Not much research has been done at the megaproject level, which is a more complex form of organizing. Therefore, it is advisable to analyze how the pursuit of explorative learning is enabled at the megaproject level. This research draws upon the case study of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (HZMB)—a cross-sea link construction project—to study how explorative learning was achieved and sustained. The findings from archival documents, interviews, and focus group discussions indicate that megaprojects are more likely to increase in complexity but might bring value via more significant learning opportunities. Explorative learning is enacted through the complementary use of owner leadership, collaboration, external resources, and experiments. This research adds to our knowledge of how explorative learning works in practice and highlights its significance in the context of megaprojects.

Re-Creating Organizational Routines to Transition Through the Project Life Cycle: A Case Study of the Reconstruction of London’s Bank Underground Station

This article provides new insights into the project life cycle by proposing an alternative image to the predefined time boundary between life cycle stages. It makes a theoretical contribution by identifying how project organizations re-create patterns of action—organizational routines—as they transition through life cycle stages. It presents the findings of an autoethnographic empirical study and, through the lens of routine dynamics, contributes to the project management literature by identifying a five-stage process model of transitioning and the generative mechanisms involved in re-creating patterns of action.

Transition and Temporalities: Spanning Temporal Boundaries as Projects End and Operations Begin

As projects end and operations begin, we argue that transition involves boundary-spanning work to ensure continuity across changing forms of organizing. A study of transition in the London megaproject ecology (Heathrow Terminal 5, London 2012 Olympics, and Crossrail) is used to build new theoretical insight into how transition is accomplished. We find that multiple temporalities meet and disjunctures emerge, with stability to close projects sought as interorganizational futures shift. Our work extends the research on temporal boundary spanning, to articulate how disjunctures and shifts are managed, and continuity is enhanced, through the use of artifacts, procedures, soft landings, and tests.

Social value for whom, by whom and when? Managing stakeholder dynamics in a UK megaproject

Studies of project success have generally recognised the role that stakeholder management plays in shaping a collective understanding of value. While these studies have typically focused on new builds, few studies have examined stakeholder management at the end of the life of a built asset. This paper draws on a single megaproject case study into social value in nuclear decommissioning and remediation to examine how ‘success’ or ‘failure’ in projects is framed and the implications of stakeholder management in shaping these notions of performance. By tracing the historical development of Dounreay, UK, an experimental nuclear energy site at an advanced stage of decommissioning, it was found that key stakeholders change over time, as those most affected by the changing dynamics of the megaprojects come and go, with resulting impacts on the ways that conditions for success are framed and social value is defined. The authors’ findings stress the importance of taking a pluralistic and processual view of stakeholders and demonstrate the need for policymakers, practitioners and researchers to pay greater attention to fragmentation and integration of stakeholders’ interests and influences as they change over time. These dynamics of stakeholder management will in turn challenge preconceived ideas of success that are often framed in the early stages of a project.

Taking a Holistic Exploration of the Project Life Cycle in Public–Private Partnerships

Operations and projects are typically treated as dichotomous concepts; projects create assets to be operated. The segregation of operations from projects is evidenced in the generic project life cycle (concept, feasibility, design, execute, and close) in which consideration of an operations stage is omitted. This article, however, suggests that this omission renders the generic project life cycle (PLC) unsuitable as a frame of reference for managing (and researching) long-term public infrastructure projects, in particular those delivered under the auspices of private participation in infrastructure initiatives such as public–private partnerships (PPPs). Drawing on the normative literature and the authors’ phenomenological research that is embedded in practice, this article demonstrates that operations are an inherent feature of PPP projects. Thus, the generic PLC model is inconsistent with the actuality of PPPs. Implications of this inconsistency for operations management and research of PPPs, particularly in relation to quality, risk, and human resource management are identified and discussed.

How Digital Information Transforms Project Delivery Models

This study articulates how increasingly pervasive digital information transforms project delivery models. It builds on and extends the literature on innovation and knowledge codification, analyzing London’s evolving digital innovation ecosystem across 15 years of industry/government initiatives and infrastructure megaprojects. Findings suggest profound and ongoing changes in digitally enabled project delivery models. Novel contributions are: first, to identify new generations of integrated solutions; second, to articulate changes in supply chains and relationships with owners, operators, and end users; and third, to recognize the growing importance of digital workflows and analytics, rather than documents. There are implications for project management practice and scholarship.

Symbols, Sublimes, Solutions, and Problems: A Garbage Can Model of Megaprojects

In this article, we deploy Cohen, March, and Olsen's (1972) garbage can model of decision making to produce a different lens on the performance of megaprojects. Using a sample of firms involved in hydrocarbon megaprojects, we show that the problems given the most public attention by the industry are different from those responsible for budget overruns. Furthermore, the attribution of reasons for exceeding project budget differs between project owners and supply chain firms. This is consistent with garbage can model predictions around problem latency when the multifaceted symbolism of these projects drives divergent prioritization of problems in project execution.