by Nushaba Guliyeva
From the day of Creation of Universe all the way through its existence, the history of mankind is all about evolution, be it rapid, slow or on pace. Everything rejuvenates with a new challenge. Everything refreshes with new energy and strength. A lifelong and never-ending journey. This is what quest means – quest means change.
Change through Inspiration
The root for the success of every project comes through a connection between those who physically deliver and those who set the vision. The ability to influence and enthuse your team through advocacy, vision and drive in building a solid platform for progress and success is a huge challenge for project leaders. Leadership is a gift given by Nature. It is a personality, a character that has a strength to transform and be transformational.
Throughout the past 20 years, I have experienced the different challenges of being a leader. But the strength of leadership I unravelled in my Recognition Stand Down – onshore and offshore plant shutdown completed ahead of schedule with excellence in safety. I realized that standing in front of many people, working in the project and delivering a speech to them puts a lot of pressure on how can I make a difference. It needs more power than talking during site safety conversations – it continues the momentum. I decided to recognize the workforce and thanked everyone, individually for a great contribution and a true accomplishment. More than 85 people received awards and cash bonuses and those who were recognized were not managers, supervisors, safety advisors or team leaders. Those were welders, electricians, scaffolders, surveyors, fire wardens and many others, those that we’re constantly in the line of fire throughout the execution of the project.
A success story must start from the day when a project leader is at the site. Not for the sake of statistics, not for ticking the box and not to show up the commitment. To connect with people, to care about people – those in line of fire; those that are on the front line. To have a flavour of what it is to be like being at risk daily and working under unfavorable circumstances. I must admit that I was sorely disappointed to realize that the rule of thumb is different from how it is presented, made public and recorded. Perhaps it was I that had lived with an illusion until such time that one day I turned up at the site and witnessed a short-cut by a scaffolder. “The client presses on our management and our management on us, progress is what matters…” – a man explained. I was woeful to hear this astonishing and appalling truth. Astonishing because there is nothing more satisfactory than to observe the courage of the workforce to speak up. Appalling because as they were outspoken, it became apparent that in many cases the approach to safety is nothing more than to support statistics one way or another.
I am absolutely confident that many project leaders have “touched and felt” of what is called as Site Safety Stand Downs. I am not equally confident if these bring the desired result unless it is re-set from one-way communication to two-way interaction where voices are heard and thoughts are listened to. This is incredible when people that build and operate feel safe to raise their voices. This is an extraordinarily contributing factor to success when workers feel valued, supported and energized. To a probable question “Why is this so important? I answer: “It breaks up their “belief” that voices from the below do not reach out to those above. Leaders must prove that it can and does”.
I vividly remember that I was delivering a speech in front of hundreds on “Changing the Mindset” and receiving the post-conference feedbacks how my powerful speech impacted others to change. I am a true believer of Changing the Mindset and have experienced how this has deterred many bad decisions for the industry. I also remember the first project meeting post-management of changeover – a very challenging but critical for the Region to deliver on schedule. The only way to transform this project from turmoil to success was through establishing the spirit of teamwork. And this is what I was saying to the project team: “No more should we wear a hat of Client, Contractors, Vendors and Suppliers. Everyone puts on a Project Hat and delivers a common goal. The mission of the project is what should unite us all. Everyone has a part to play and will be part of an outcome to feel proud”. The power of speech makes a big difference when a leader is passionate about making an impact. Simple words become influential and inspiring when spoken with passion. It needs to reach out to ordinary men and women, sticking the message into their minds and energize them towards the goal.
Change and succeed
Ironically, the industry tends to believe that every project’s success is measured if it is complete. Cancelling a project can be equally or even more profitable for the business. There are innumerable cases that by the time a project leader delivers his or her project, the value is either eroded or lost completely. If it really doesn’t make any difference when the project is completed, it probably should not be done anyway.
One of the underlying causes for over-budgeted, delayed and unsafe projects is that a problem is not properly defined at the front end. The front-end development is skimped and business risks are not understood. I found it overwhelmingly tiring to substantiate across a wider organization to cease a project at the concept development when it had been a wrong decision to push it to the CD in the first place – its cancellation saved the business an estimated capital cost of USD150,000,000. Decision-makers need to re-prioritize a strategy of “Doing the right project” over “Doing the project right” if we do not want to be more and more expensive for the industry.
The significance of understanding, identifying and eliminating risks from every aspect of project delivery, be it engineering, procurement, fabrication, construction, commissioning and start-up is very crucial. I was invited as a guest speaker to a workshop organized to sanction a project for a full investment decision. I shared a couple of examples from separate projects to demonstrate how impactful risks can be to affect the projects’ outcome positively and negatively. In most cases, this impact is as large as affecting the business as a whole. If project risks are identified, understood, managed and eliminated consistently, you are a halfway through to success as this will provide an adequate safeguard against fallouts.
My decades of capital projects experience convinced me that the largest challenge in delivering the competitive projects is to overcome “personal agendas” and to bring on the business and technical people together to work in a fully integrated way. Projects sponsored by oil, gas, chemical, power and other related industries have increased in size and complexity so that their fallout. We seem to be making the same blunders over and over again to doom projects to failure. The learnings from projects albeit recorded and registered but rarely referred or returned to by the next projects or teams. And this is done by very intelligent business and technical leaders. Unless a project leader takes the ownership and control of the outcome, a degree of confidence in success will considerably diminish. In modern times, when demand in energy is fast to grow and the world economies are in a tendency to decline, this becomes like a “must” that we embrace changes in everything we do from concept to execution.
Path to success
Outcomes are controllable when you have the ability to foresee the risks before they materialize in harming projects. Having the knowledge and experience on how to remove causes for failures help make the business sustainable and profitable. Projects evolve and people change, leave and move on to the next phase but most certain than not, challenges remain the same but only in a different time and sometimes with different people involved.
In situations alike, LR Consultants consolidate expertise from various fields of industry that can support the leaders, individuals and companies in achieving better outcomes for projects. The capacity of vast knowledge and experience and innumerable success stories from “people who have been there” must be shared through professional consulting expertise. This is the foundation of LR Consultants that aims to change the cycle of the same project failures and mishaps – Sharing to business leaders the experiences of professionals from all over the world who have done it in the past and succeeded in doing it!
