Quality assurance in projects can help companies avoid costly problems
Are you in full control of your projects? Many large projects have in recent years gone over budget and received negative media coverage in Norway.
A few examples are the new Holmenkollen arena and Oslo’s transport ticket system Flexus. A heavy strain has been put on many project leaders – could this have been avoided?
This was the backdrop to DNV’s recent breakfast seminar in Oslo , which attracted a high attendance of representatives from the public and private sector.
“We think the problems are often caused by insufficient anchoring of needs, unclear goals, inadequate project management and lack of risk management,” says Peer Chr. Anderssen, head of DNV’s Risk Management and Corporate Responsibility Unit. “This can be put right through a thorough process of quality assurance.”
Sharing knowledge and best practice
“Along with some of our customers, we aim to share our experiences and contribute to making their projects more successful,” adds DNV’s senior principal consultant Rune Moen. “For DNV, this means that the more our activities can be seen as part of the customer’s value-adding chain, the greater the impact of our work for safeguarding societal interests. This way we can help realise DNV’s own vision as well as our customer’s business goals.”
The seminar started off with DNV’s assistant director Henning R. Vahr who gave an introduction to the term quality assurance, and talked about what DNV emphasises as important in the quality assurance process to achieve optimal management and control.
Next up was Eivind Dale, secretary general, Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development. He talked about the eValg 2011 project, which will allow residents of 10 municipalities to cast advance votes on the internet in this autumn’s local elections. Dale, who heads the project steering committee, shared his “quality assurance in practice” experiences from the development of systems for electronic elections in Norway.
Significant savings
This was followed by Peder A. Berg, divisional director of the Ministry of Finance. Berg is responsible for the development and coordination of the Ministry of Finance’s regime for quality assuring large public investment projects. This regime was introduced in 2000 and expanded in 2005. It includes two decision-points in the early project phases. Since its launch, over 100 projects – each with a value of over NOK500m and raising to NOK750m – have been quality assured and this has “resulted in significant savings for the Norwegian society.”
Tove Paule, former sports president of The Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederation of Sports (NIF), gave a presentation on the quality assurance of application processes for large sports arrangements. As a case example, she shared her experiences with the application for state guarantee for the 2018 Tromsø Olympics and the 2016 European Football Championship
DNV’s specialist in project management Vibeke K. Binz, wrapped up the seminar by taking the audience on “a short journey into the world of uncertainties and alternative choice making.” Binz has worked with uncertainty analysis and alternatives analysis in projects of all sizes and gave a presentation of methods, techniques and tools for building decision-making foundations for both large and smaller investment projects.
Source: DNV
