Project assurance refers to the process of evaluating and monitoring a project to ensure that it is being executed effectively and efficiently. It is a proactive approach that helps to identify potential problems before they occur and to ensure that appropriate measures are taken to mitigate risks and achieve the project objectives.
Project assurance involves a comprehensive review of the project, including the scope, timeline, budget, and quality of deliverables. The process typically includes assessing the project management approach and methodology, as well as the skills and experience of the project team.
The goal of project assurance is to provide stakeholders with confidence that the project is on track to achieve its objectives and that any issues or risks are being addressed in a timely and effective manner. It helps to ensure that the project remains aligned with the organization’s strategic goals and that it delivers the expected benefits.
Project assurance is typically conducted by an independent third party or a dedicated internal team with the necessary expertise and authority to evaluate the project objectively. The findings and recommendations of the project assurance process are then used to inform decision-making and to guide corrective actions if necessary.
Welcome to our site! This is Project Assurance, according to Wikipedia:
“Project or Programme Assurance is a discipline that seeks to provide an independent and objective oversight of the likely future performance of major projects for those responsible for sanctioning, financing or insuring such undertakings. The discipline has emerged as a response to consistent problems in major projects and the need to provide confidence for project or programme stakeholders of technologically advanced, high capital or high risk projects.”
Engineering and construction projects don’t just happen by accident, and they don’t run themselves. It takes effective systems, methods, techniques and tools. It also takes discipline and mastery of the systems, methods, techniques and tools.
What We Do
What do we do? We provide that independent and objective oversight. We provide specialist expertise and services to project owners, financiers, insurers, architects, quantity surveyors, accountants, contractors and others with an interest in the successful execution and completion of projects.
We do it better because we are dedicated to our mission. We are obsessive about getting it right. Good enough and mediocrity is not an option. We are convinced by a lifetime of experience that projects can be planned and executed much better than is ordinarily acceptable. Actually, the bar is pretty low. Expensive chaos and preventable problems in projects is usually accepted as inherent to projects. The typical problems encountered in the course of executing projects have consequences and can escalate into financial disasters and worse. Problems that develop during projects are not just an inherent part of conducting business or bad luck. They are the direct consequence what was done or not done at the earliest stages of project development. The future is always uncertain, but much can be done to eliminate or minimise uncertainties and risks, provided they can be discovered and identified.
We tell the truth, even when it is perhaps not what our clients want to hear. This is not negative thinking. As the saying goes, if you want to know how your project is going, ask the most pessimistic person in the room. He’s the only one who really knows what’s going on.
There is always a tendency in organisations for people, with the best of intentions and sincerely held positions, to feign optimism. It is human nature to go along to get along and to cultivate favourable expectations of project outcomes, even if those may be unrealistic expectations. This tendency and this aspect of human nature have to be tempered. That is what we do. We work on what could possibly go wrong.
How We Do It
How do we do it? We provide a valuable, independent and comprehensive audit and assessment of management systems. We find the gaps (there are always gaps) and repair them. We usually find that what exists in construction management systems has faults and flaws, weak or fragile systems, contributing to a lack of effectiveness, and in some cases essential components are simply missing. We often find that the faults and flaws are similar in all enterprises. We are objective, disinterested observers with the authority to effectively intervene in the client’s interests. We have no interests in our clients’ businesses other than to improve them. There is always room for improvement. Improvement requires change, and change can be difficult to achieve from within in any organisation.
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries … and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it.
— Niccolo Machiavelli
An independent view is indispensable.
Completion Bonding
We also provide completion bonding. Completion bonding is usually a requirement pre-requisite to obtaining construction finance and insurance.
Project Auditing
Project auditing is not new. Progressive organisations recognise a need for it and the value in doing it, and especially the necessity of making it independent.
Credit rating agencies and other organisations provide project owners with auditing services in order to assess a construction contracting company’s financial stability and financial capability to undertake a construction project. These kinds of audits are based strictly on the financial value and exposure of the contractor. The assumption is that a contractor with a favourable financial audit result will be able to successfully execute and complete the project. This is just too limited. And it doesn’t work. The problem with this is that financial stability and capability are not the only pre-requisites for project success.
It is fairly obvious that project failures still occur. Many projects are over budget and late, even though the contractor may have been assessed to have a satisfactory audit result, especially if the audit is conducted from an accounting and financial perspective only. What is not addressed by audits is the contractor’s management systems and capabilities.
There are insurance products which provide project owners with a degree of protection from a contractor’s failure to perform a project. Of course, access to completion bonds and similar insurance products is limited to larger “sure thing” government projects. The insurance industry does not like to gamble on outcomes in an industry where project failure is widespread and commonplace.