Infrastructure
The Key Drivers of Successful Infrastructure Projects
By Drew Jeter
At AECOM, we believe program management is the quiet key to delivering on our nation’s infrastructure needs. It’s one of the most powerful methods through which we can ensure a positive, lasting impact on people and our planet. From high-speed rail to major water reuse programs, to tunnels and even disaster response, our field evaluates major infrastructure investments holistically to ensure the best possible delivery from the outset. As the scale and complexity of the world’s infrastructure challenges are continuously increasing, with the latest projects spanning jurisdictions, disciplines, and a multitude of social and environmental objectives, meeting these many demands will require a programmatic approach. But what exactly does it mean to think programmatically? Integrating the parts into the whole When thinking about program management, it’s easy to focus on the projects that make up a program. But that doesn’t capture the essence of our field nor how to ensure delivery of the outcomes for which programs are created. Instead, it’s more about assessing what lies between, amongst and across those projects. An effective program management team will analyze the similarities, underlying workflows, and sequence of works amongst the projects — allocating resources, managing risks, leveraging the supply chain, and minimizing costs accordingly. In short, our field takes a long- term view, calibrating and aligning these many components to create synergy across projects and orchestrate a successful program.
Over the past couple of years, AECOM has made a substantive investment in fundamentally evolving our program management approach. Reflective of the world we live in today, our offering is digitally enabled with a combination of strong existing tools and proprietary components we’ve developed in-house. Our clients want access to real-time information, and we enable them to seamlessly access data on demand. To make this possible, we have developed new digital tools like ProgramAdvance, which operates as a shared information hub for our program teams, and our Program Controls Engine, which digitizes the program controls process for alignment between top-down strategy and bottom-up execution. The number of projects and programs over $1 billion in our industry has increased tenfold over the last decade and our clients are looking for even more support to address the growing complexity of their mega investments. That’s led us to engage with clients earlier and expand our program advisory teams, who provide clients with fundamental guidance on the shape, structure and vision of multi-year programs before their outset. Integrated, multidisciplinary expertise has also become paramount. Today’s programs can span sectors and require diverse skill sets to meet stakeholder objectives. In response, we’re connecting AECOM’s technical experts from around the world through our Think and Act Globally strategy. That allows us to build bespoke client teams led by passionate people whose broad bench of expertise can drive large-scale tangible change in the communities where we work. By bringing together the right people, technology, expertise and bold ambition, we walk side-by-side with our clients and ultimately
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csengineermag.com
Summer 2024
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