Engineering and Construction Projects Characteristics

Companies try to use better techniques to deal with complex projects. The maturity of companies to apply these better techniques can guarantee project success or not. The environment, where the engineering and construction project is developed, also has influence over the success. The maturity of a company's project management processes is also a factor of success. This chapter aims to talk about concepts related to engineering and construction initiatives.

Project Maturity Analysis in the Energy Sector

This chapter will show a macrosystemic view of the energy sector, highlighting its particularities and challenges for the implementation of projects in the sector. The objective of this analysis is to bring enough elements to compose a panorama of the sector in the country, highlighting points in common with organizations related to the theme in the world, allowing establishing justifications for the result found in the maturity research contained in this work.

How to Apply the Model to Measuring Complex Engineering Projects

In this chapter, the authors present the proposal of the questions and the final model which will be applied in the company in order to obtain at the end the result of the maturity level. These questions, as explained in the Chapter 2, came from a mix of project management methods and good practices and from the nature of the pillars of complex projects. The chapter also introduces the questions, explains the pillars in which the questions are split one by one, and finally presents the questions. This is one of the most important chapters in the book because it introduces the proposal to measure maturity in complex projects. The reader can easily perceive by looking over the questions and pillars that this is a different model proposed, which now includes some different pillars such as stakeholders, environment, engineering, and others. The main idea of this chapter is to introduce and explain to the reader the origin of the questions which will be, at the end, the model proposed for the book.

Stakeholders in Engineering and Construction Projects

This chapter describes what stakeholders are, how to classify them, how they can affect and be affected by the projects, and then describes how to establish a dialogue with them to achieve success in project implementation. Throughout this chapter a series of specific observations are made for complex projects with the purpose of contextualizing the subject of the chapter for this type of project. What is the relevance of stakeholders for complex projects?

Maturity and Models Around Project Management

Initially, this chapter discusses what maturity is in project management, what maturity models are, and what their role is. In the second part, this chapter looks at four of the major maturity models currently in use, describing the structure and talking about their application. The purpose of this analysis is to support later discussions in this book. In a world where complex projects are increasingly frequent, project management must provide organizations with a set of managerial processes to survive in this scenario of fierce competition and scarcity of resources.

Culture, Knowledge Management, and Maturity in Complex Engineering Projects

This chapter opens a discussion of how mature organizations in project management deal with culture and knowledge management in complex projects. This discussion also includes organizational structure and communication aspects. This chapter seeks to establish relationships between these four aspects and the three main characteristics of complex projects: ambiguities, multiple stakeholders, and multinationality. At the end of chapter, a table summarizes these relationships. The purpose of this chapter is to begin a discussion of the culture and knowledge management aspects of mature organizations dealing with complex projects. Along with culture and knowledge management, the authors also cover aspects of organizational structure (for project implementation) and communication, since they have a strong relationship with each other. In fact, the boundaries between these four aspects (culture, knowledge management, structure, and communication) are not clear and there are overlaps between them.

Project Maturity Analysis in the Mining Sector

In this chapter, the authors present a case study with the objective to evaluate the results of the same in the mining sector, one of the sectors in the economy with more relevant complex projects around the world and in which one can easily apply all of the pillars as discussed during the presentation of the model. To better give the reader an understanding about the idea, the authors first introduce the sector and then perform and present the results of the investigation over this case. In order to calibrate the proposed model, the authors decided to apply it by checking at the end if the result achieved was closer than what they imagined for the company.

Choice of Maturity Model to Complex Engineering Projects

After understanding maturity in project management, it is important to understand how to choose the ideal model for complex engineering projects. This choice will be assigned to the number of interfaces in the project. Survey of stakeholders and how they relate to the enterprise will directly result in the number of such interfaces. Once the maturity model is understood, it will be possible to manage the projects more accurately and increase the chances of success. This chapter will present how interfaces are identified and managed in an engineering and construction project.

Types of Complex Engineering Projects

Works, constructions, and fabrications are examples of projects that in themselves are complex, especially for inexperienced project managers or other areas. The complexity classification of engineering projects is important to determine the necessary efforts for the management of this enterprise and also to analyze threats and opportunities. This chapter looks at how this categorization is done and the best practices in engineering and construction projects. At the end, it presents a proposal to classify the complexity of enterprises in energy, civil construction, mining, and other related business sectors. This is a conceptual and applied reading in engineering and construction projects.

Introduction to Complex Projects

Complexity is an inherent feature of any project. It is used to classify and designate project managers. Explaining whether a project is complex, classifying this complexity and thus score for prioritization is often not a simple task. Each project will have its particularity, and this will be even more particular within each business sector. A $1 million project can be simple for a construction company, but of high complexity for an information technology company. This chapter will address common complexity concepts for different business sectors.