The story so far

11

Project performance

Client satisfaction product

Client satisfaction service
Defects
Predictability cost
Predictability time
Construction cost
Construction time.

Company performance

Profitability
Productivity
Safety
Respect for people
Environmental.

These are measured at five key stages throughout the lifetime of a project.
The measurement tools range from crude scoring on a 1 to 10 basis to the
number of reportable accidents per 100,000 employees. For benchmarking
purposes the construction industry is broken down into sectors such as public housing and repair and maintenance.

The British system compared

The following studies offer opportunities to directly compare the British
system of procurement and project management with that of a European
neighbour: France.

In the mid 1990s Graham Winch and Andrew Edkins carried out a study
on the construction of two identical buildings needed to house a security
scanning system as part the Eurotunnel project. A leading UK architectural practice was commissioned for the design on both sides of the
Channel, who in turn procured medium-sized British and French firms
for the construction. The resultant projects offered a unique opportunity to compare project performance in the two countries with a functionally equivalent building, a common design and a single client. The
final analysis demonstrated how the French performed much better than
the British in terms of out-turn costs and completion times, despite the
fact that both project teams faced similar challenges, largely generated
by problems with scanning technology, yet the French team coped with
them more smoothly. Why was this?

The answer would seem to lie in the differences in the organisation of the
two projects: