Tag Archives: project management

Wind farm project management: PRICE2 vs PMP

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In another post I have discussed my experience with the PMP certification and its (somehow weak) relationship with wind farm project management.

In a nutshell, several processes and concepts are not directly applicable given the peculiarity of our industry. Said that, I believe that the PMP has a value, because it explain in detail a lot of tools and ideas that are used daily – for instance dependency types in Gantt charts, how to handle risk management or the “stakeholder management” concept.

Some days ago I have made another PM certification, the British de facto standard PRINCE2. The main reason for that has been my curiosity to see another point of view on a very broad topic such as project management.

Both certifications are trying to live together and differentiate themselves:

  • PMP define itself as a “standard” and comes with a mountain of processes and techniques.
  • PRINCE2 define itself as a “methodology”, coming with models and templates but very few techniques.

My personal impression is that the role of the Project Manager in PRICE2 is less relevant compared to the PMP idea of the same role – basically he has some decision margins, but he’s somehow squeezed between the Project Board making the big decisions and the teams doing the actual job. As soon as one of the tolerance levels is exceeded, he need to escalate the problem to the Project Board (that in the wind industry, if it exist, is usually called “Steering Committee” or something similar).

This image is strikingly different from the one that my mentor Luis Miguel gave me when he told me that, in the infancy of the wind industry, the PM was basically “the God of construction site”. Possibly the image is a bit strong but it makes the concept crystal clear.

Said that I also had the feeling that PRINCE2 was much easier to follow in the definition of the workflow, with less processes (seven) clearly linked between them and few key concepts (“Themes” and “Principles”). Understanding the relationship between the 49 processes of PMP is not that easy: I had to print them in a huge A0 and spend a lot of time staring at it to make a sense of them.

An interesting argument that I want to mention against PRINCE2 is that it is “unfalsifiable”, in the scientific sense defined by Karl Popper. This basically means that PRINCE2 has to be tailored (that is, adapted) to the specific project to work properly. If something goes wrong, you cannot proof that the problem is PRINCE2 (because possibly the tailoring you have made was wrong).

In conclusion I would recommend both certification to people interested in knowing more about project management, even if some tools, techniques and processes are not used in wind farms construction.

PMP methodology & wind farm project management

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This week I had the pleasure to pass the PMP (Project Management Professional) exam – one of the two leading certifications for project managers, the other being PRINCE2 from the UK. The exam itself is notoriously not trivial: long (200 questions in 4 hours) and based on a book very hard to read, the Project Management Body of Knowledge (“PMBoK”).

In general I would recommend it, as it provide a solid methodology together with a broad suit of concepts, tools and techniques. On top of that, a great number of terms are defined in detail and this alone is a great benefit as this facilitate the interaction with other professionals providing a common language.

Said that, and totally aware of the fact that this type of methodologies are conceived to be “not industry specific”, I believe that there are many relevant difference between the PMP concept and the way wind farm project management is today, at least seen through the eyes of Project Managers (PM) working for wind turbine manufacturers or Main Contractors.

To give some example, one of the first steps in the PMP standard is the creation of a business case for the project.  This is something that you will hardly see in wind farm construction – maybe the wind farm developer has a business case, but the company building the wind farm is selling a product (the wind turbine) and some services (BoP, installation, maintenance). No need for business justifications, this is the core business.

Additionally, in the PMP methodology the PM should start to define the scope, the deliverables, the cost baseline, etc. I believe that in general the wind industry the PM receive all this inputs from the Sales Manager and/or Tender Manager, and even if there are always open points and deliverables that need to be defined more in detail this is not the main focus of the PM.

I have also rarely seen in wind farm construction a change management system as developed as the one in the PMP standard. I do however recognize that it has a lot of sense, providing a uniformity and a logic in the way changes are analysed and approved or rejected.

Finally yet importantly, the current version of PMP (sixth edition) include a variety of Agile Development concepts. These are more relevant in software development and similar environments: onshore wind farm construction is a business where these evolutionary development and adaptive planning techniques do not usually find opportunities to be used.