Project Deliverance - The 20 Key Factors To Project Success

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3 years ago

Around a year ago, or maybe more I embarked on the writing of a book to describe my work experience and what I had learned from my vocation in construction and project management over many years, it is called Project Deliverance.

I developed the book and although it took quite a long time to complete it, it has now been published in May 2021.

I was pleasantly surprised after the successful launch of the book to discover that it became a best seller in amazon kindle in the UK, USA and Australia within a week or so.

I have had the privilege to be involved in many projects from the smallest to the largest size. and In my book I identify the 20 key factors which I think are essential for project success.

I was also privileged to have the opportunity to work in many different countries apart from the UK where I completed my initial training many years ago. Countries, where I worked, were the United Arab Emirates, the Bahamas, France, Botswana, Azerbaijan, Slovenia. I also visited the USA, and Denmark, Germany, France, Holland, Macedonia, Serbia Sweden, Belgium, Turkey and Spain for business purposes.

I was also fortunate to have had the opportunity to be involved in many different types of construction project including housing, shopping centres, retail parks, supermarkets and hypermarkets, offices, hotels, railway projects, and even a port reclamation project.

The size of these projects was quite small when I started working a long time ago, for a small local building company but gradually became bigger and bigger up to a value more than $1.5bn for the largest in 2012/13.

I will cover the 20 key factors for Project Success in a separate article since they perhaps warrant some discussion in more depth.

The reason for the title, Project Deliverance, is because there is no immediate right for any project to assume that it will be successful. In my book I recount some projects, a minority of all of the ones referred to in my book, that have gone wrong, sometimes with drastic consequences for those involved.

In one particularly bad case the contractor managed to wrest control of the project development site from the developer, which cannot have been part of the original plan.

One thing that I have always done is prioritise management of health and safety on my projects, and I am proud to say there was never any serious injury on any of the sites that I was involved in managing.

At the time I started working in the construction industry it was not where I wanted to be. I would have preferred to have continued at school and then gone to university. However, my father preferred that I should get a trade and make a living from earlier than I would have liked, so that is what I did.

Retrospectively, and taking account of the current job market, it is clear that a university degree may or may not be able to get you a better job.

It is possible to acquire skills that enable you to make a living and prosper from your ongoing experience and by continual professional development on the job.

In fact, to avoid going to university may mean that you can avoid getting into a lot of student loan debt as a result of following a university course of study.

Another thing that I have started to do recently is to keep a Gratitude Journal. I thank God for the blessings that I have had, and that I have had the ability to do the things that I chose to do, and more importantly that I was given the chance to do those things by various people during my life.

I am grateful that I have been born to an ordinary family in a free country. My life has not been hampered by deprivation or prejudice or oppression. My gratitude list easily reached 50 items that I can recount every day. If I thought about it some more I could easily add another 50 items to my gratitude journal.

For this article, I will be grateful for the opportunities that God gave me and the experience that I gained in my working life.

Have a great weekend and stay safe!

Cheers

Alan