Capital Projects by Paul H. Barshop

Author:Paul H. Barshop
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781119119210
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2016-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

Strategies for Coping with Staffing Shortages

Of course, you will not always have the luxury of having as much experience as you would like. One strategy IPA has identified as being successful is to leverage your experienced people with less experienced personnel in closely associated jobs. For example, on most projects, the project manager and design/engineering manager work closely together. The design manager in many respects is nearly the deputy project manager because so much of the total project, especially in the Define stage, involves design activities. A study done by IPA on team staffing shows that you can achieve good results by combining an experienced project manager with a less experienced design manager. Doing the opposite also works. You can put together a less experienced project manager with an experienced design manager. In either case, the experienced person is able to mentor the less experienced person. What clearly does not work is staffing both positions with inexperienced personnel. The staffing strategy has to account for the relative levels of experience in key leadership positions as it is developed.

Hiring experienced people for a project under contract to supplement your project team is also a viable, if less desirable, option for adding staff to a project team. These people are often close to retirement but not quite ready to stop working; they may have one or two more projects in them before they hit the golf course permanently. Finding the right person will require a careful search by your human resources department to match the person's skill set to the specifics of your project.

Using hired guns is an expensive option, especially during periods when capital activity is high, but you may have no choice if you want to do the project. The salaries of experienced project professionals may be outside the established salary ranges for comparable positions within your company. You may have to make the case to more senior management to get permission to pay these people more than what others make in the company. The contract the project professional signs has to include penalties for leaving before the project is complete (or incentives for staying until the project is complete). Also, the project sponsor's involvement in a project using a project manager under contract must be much higher to ensure that the project manager is making decisions that are aligned with the business goals for the project.

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