“Essayons,” the motto of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, translates to “Let us try.” Or more accurately, “Let US try,” emphasizing the “us” and referring to USACE’s ability to deliver on projects when others can’t. At the heart of that ability to deliver is the Project Delivery Team (PDT).
PDTs are comprised of the program managers, engineers, construction & contracting personnel and others involved in taking a project from conception to constructed. A strong PDT can be the difference between success and failure and since USACE plays a critical role in supporting our nation’s infrastructure, failure is not an option.
That’s why USACE’s Middle East District recently began a comprehensive effort to ensure all its projects are led by a “healthy” PDT.
The district defines a healthy PDT using the following tenets: It should be made up of trained and certified professionals, mission and results focused, innovative, experienced and adaptable.
According to the district’s commander, COL Christopher Klein, assessing the health of a PDT is a continuous process that is part science, part art.
“There are a lot of hard data points we can look at to assess a PDT; things such as a project’s schedule, and budget,” said Klein. “But there are a lot of soft touch points as well, things that aren’t as easy to measure but equally critical. Communications with our mission partners, the ability to set stakeholder expectations and ensuring the right personnel are assigned to the right PDT are harder to measure but equally important.”
One of the ways the district assesses hard data points is a data quality review board. The board specifically looks at all data related to a project to validate the baseline scheduling and resourcing milestones for a project. If the PDT is not meeting them, it looks at why.
“Since we’ve been doing the Data Quality Review Boards, the Middle East District has seen drastic improvements in schedule quality, metrics, and Project Managers “Managing” schedules in P2 (the USACE project management system),” said Joey Behr, the district’s deputy, deputy for programs and project management.
Merging the hard and soft data points can then be used to let the decision makers know whether a PDT is firing on all cylinders.
According to Klein, senior leadership involvement is critical, but equally critical is looking at data not directly tied to a project that might indicate problems.
“Things like federal employee and command climate surveys will rarely mention specific projects but trends can indicate problem areas that can bleed over into project performance. Another example would be a supervisor getting a lot of unscheduled overtime requests. It could simply be a project surge, or it could indicate a resource problem. A supervisor could simply approve the requests or dig deeper to find the “why” behind them.”
Klein also stressed that in some cases, it’s up to leadership to ensure their project delivery team’s health by saying “no.”
“For over two decades, the Middle East District responded to the mission needs of the warfighter throughout the CENTCOM area of responsibility. Rapid response was critical, and our response was to always find a way to get to “yes.” However, we’ve learned that a successful project is better than an expedited one and when something is not realistic, I’m more than comfortable saying ‘no’.”
“Fortunately, we’ve gotten much better at working with our mission partners very early in the project development process. So, whether we’re building a small facility or massive naval infrastructure our partners better understand they are getting a better project when we use a risk informed vs. expedited delivery model.”
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Middle East District provides engineering, construction and related services to the U.S. military and allied nation partners throughout the Middle East. Its projects include maritime, missile defense, aircraft and base infrastructure.