Mastering Risk, Delivering Confidence.

PROGRAM MANAGEMENT PROJECTS

When it comes to managing CapEx projects, owners need confidence and certainty to navigate risks and achieve their goals. At Arch Engineers, our program management expertise empowers owners to push for better schedules and optimized budgets from their general contractors, ensuring projects are delivered efficiently and effectively.

With Arch on your side, you gain a trusted partner committed to streamlining your projects and driving measurable results. Ready to experience the difference? Let’s make it happen

GET IN TOUCH
Non-Market Housing Utility Upgrades at 4 Sites
Arch performed program management, coordinating drawings among departments and sequencing 4 unique tender processes, each with its own schedule.
Non-Market Housing Roads & Third-Party Utilities
A known roadblock to development is that utility providers can have expected drawing production times of up to 18 months.
Winter Lights
Arch performed project management, coordinating installations and maintenance with subtrades, maintaining the schedule, and exercising value engineering.
Residential Demolitions
The Arch PMO team was requested by the City to assist in expediting the demolition of 5 city owned properties in preparation for the new non-market housing development that will take place in 2024.
Taunton Bridge Deck Design and Activation
Arch Engineers took on the role of coordinating between the Owner’s Engineer (WSP) and the design-construction group where COWI was assigned the Approval Engineer.
The I1K SaskPower Transmission Line
As an Owner’s Representative, Arch team members successfully communicated and coordinated with multiple stakeholders including Federal, Provincial, Local Municipal, Utility, First Nations, and residential rate payers.
EGPNA Power Project Monitoring & Inspection
Arch team members provided on-site monitoring and inspection services for various hydro power related projects with the EGPNA suite of power generating facilities.
Venue Construction
Technical specialists currently provide a valuable role in QAQC and validation of materials and manpower, both on and off-site.
Pioneer Winter Road Construction
Technical specialist consultants are delivered to projects and project management teams around North America.

ABOUT PROGRAM MANAGEMENT

  • Overview
  • How to gain client confidence around cost, risk, and delivery
  • Collaborate and integrate early with key stakeholders
  • Establish data trust
  • Opening a window on strategic outcomes
  • Successful program management requires an integrated approach
  • There are three reasons why building an integrated culture is increasingly important
  • Program management: Five lessons learned
  • Agility in Program Management: Meeting Evolving Needs and Managing the Unexpected

OVERVIEW

Delivering Certainty and Confidence through Program Management. At Arch, we’re united by a common purpose of delivering Certainty and Confidence to Owners.

Our program management business provides the structure, tools, techniques, and process to deliver on this vision. We manage outcome-driven projects that deliver social, economic, and environmental value. These include programs include transportation, clean energy, environmental clean-up, as well as shaping major cities.

We’ve been listening to our clients, supply chain, and the communities we serve and investing in our capabilities to meet their future needs. We’ve engaged people who are not only the best program managers in the market, but who are also committed to delivering the best for all stakeholders.

Like the conductor of an orchestra, we embrace complexity, bringing the interests and actions of a wide variety of different stakeholders together so they breathe, move and focus on the same things at the same time.

Our digital tools and capabilities help us manage a vast array of people, processes and technologies in a way that is outcome focused, encourages collaboration, and minimizes risk.

To be sustainable, programs must be designed to serve future as well as current generations but predicting future requirements is difficult because the associated demand and markets are not yet known. Yet it is only by working with the multiple, complicated connections between projects, political and public sensitivity that we can help identify the combinations for tomorrow’s success.

How to gain client confidence around cost, risk, and delivery

Managing costs on large-scale infrastructure programs is an enormous challenge. As infrastructure consultants and program managers, it’s one of the most important ways that we help our clients.
Just as delivery models demand different approaches, every project is unique.

Likewise, different clients want different levels of control over their programs. To satisfy clients and integrated stakeholder teams and to drive effective, proactive interventions, the program management team must generate insights that provide the appropriate level of visibility over commercial and financial data as well as project delivery progress.

This is as much about identifying areas for improvement as creating a culture that always examines where further improvements can be made.

At Arch, we constantly innovate the way we use systems, tools, and data analysis so that we can trust the data and the insights it brings. Following are some key ways that combined data analysis and behavioral approach helps us to avoid the use of ‘I think’ or ‘I feel’ in decision-making, allowing us to drive project efficiencies while helping clients meet strategic outcomes, particularly on large infrastructure programs.

Collaborate and integrate early with key stakeholders

As a consultant, we establish the exact level of control clients need by engaging in upfront communication before the project even starts. Once that’s achieved, we can tailor the level of visibility around cost and risk management throughout the program lifecycle as well as assurance around delivery. It’s crucial to get this step right. Get it wrong, and clients lose confidence quickly.

Ultimately, it’s up to the consultant to understand clients’ needs. Of course, the better the relationship between client and consultant, the easier it is for parties to collaborate. This trust is often built up across multiple programs.

Establish data trust

Managing and presenting information sits at the heart of an effective program delivery organization. Digital dashboards, such as Power BI, allow us to give clients maximum visibility of their projects as they are fed by data from multiple sources to generate regular progress reports.

For this process to work most efficiently, it is important to establish data trust right from the outset so that all parties can focus on the trends and intelligence gleaned from the information rather than the quality of what is being presented.

In addition, the program team must judge exactly how to present the information to best meet stakeholder needs and intents. In reality, the possibilities are endless – all data levels could be opened if the client so wished and presented either digitally or on paper. In the past, this would have been a huge, resource-intensive undertaking. Now, however, the process is much more efficient and a lean team of skilled operatives using a single source of truth can meet even the heaviest of data demands.

Opening a window on strategic outcomes

Most programs exist to create or enable some form of wider strategic outcomes. Having a thorough understanding of these outcomes allows us to drive the right data through the digital dashboard so that it becomes the lens through which customers, owners, and delivery teams can measure performance against them. Right from the start, all program team members should be able to answer the question, ‘Why are we doing this and how are we contributing to those outcomes?’ In this way, individual organizational needs are no longer the primary driver for decision-making.

Ultimately, setting the environment for how multi-disciplined and different organizations work together and behave commercially will drive program success, which should be measured on the realization of the wider benefits as well as the traditional critical success factors of time, cost, and quality. Generating insights from trusted data to provide the appropriate level of visibility is key to making this happen.

Successful program management requires an integrated approach

When it comes to infrastructure-led programs of major transformational change, establishing a shared operational culture is key. While the outcomes and vision must be clearly defined right at the start, Arch’s Devlin Fenton and Leon Prinsloo propose also taking time to build desired behaviors from the bottom up.

When people talk about program management, they often focus on the processes rather than the people involved. But if you want a disparate group of people who aren’t used to working together to operate as one, the first step is establishing a culture of collaboration.

Human-centered design is key for adopting technology that is right for the program, rather than trying to retrofit a program around new technology. A common operating culture should be the platform on which the technology is built. Digital tools and systems should then be set up to process and share data from multiple sources in a single source of trustworthy, reliable, real-time information. The objective is to make it easier for designers, contractors, and supply-chain to collaborate.

Our experience has taught us the importance of taking time to build a structure that brings the interests and actions of different stakeholders together right from the start.

There are three reasons why building an integrated culture is increasingly important

  1. Complexity: Infrastructure programs are growing in scale and complexity, a reflection of the increasingly complex world they inhabit. This means working with a vast range of organizations and people at local, regional, national, and even global levels, many of them with competing interests. All the while you must consider specific political, geographical, social, cultural, linguistic, and economic climates.
  2. Sustainability: Unlike other types of programs, capital programs create the infrastructure that will exist for a very long time. To be sustainable, programs should be built to serve future as well as current generations, avoiding the need to expensively retrofit or rebuild. Endeavoring to provide intergenerational equity and a legacy through sustainable planning, design, and construction is vitally important. This could be as simple as leaving space for new walkways or carriageways or envisioning cycle routes in the skies.
  3. Technology: At the same time, it’s important to keep pace with technological change. The objective should be to establish a connected system that brings consistency and value to an entire pipeline of work. From the very beginning, all the program information should be held in a common data environment (CDE) and kept up-to-date. Each team member across all disciplines should know how to navigate, store, and collect data within the CDE, including contractors or supply chain at each phase of the project. To properly prepare the teams, we implement a structured ‘fast start’ mobilization process, increasing the certainty of delivery on time and on budget.

Program management: Five lessons learned

Program management is both an art and a science, requiring bespoke solutions for each unique program. However, through our experience, we have distilled five key lessons that guide our approach to delivering successful programs.

  1. Creating a Compelling Narrative

Every successful program begins with a well-defined vision. The first task is to articulate the program outcomes, ensuring they are informed by the client’s ethos, values, and strategic objectives. This vision becomes the foundation for shaping the scope and objectives of the capital program. A compelling narrative aligned with this vision provides direction, setting the tone for strategy, execution, and collaboration.

  1. Establishing an Effective Operational Structure

A program’s success hinges on stakeholder collaboration. Identifying, categorizing, and engaging with all stakeholders early is essential to building a ‘one team’ culture where organizational affiliations are secondary to program goals. The operational structure must balance the client’s desired level of control with flexibility to adapt to complexity and long durations, often spanning 5–10 years. Collaboration across the supply chain, driven by this unified team structure, ensures the successful delivery of even the most challenging infrastructure programs.

  1. Efficient Information Management

Modern program management depends on effective data flow across the asset lifecycle. Tools like Building Information Modeling (BIM) streamline the design and construction stages by resolving logistical and design issues before they reach the site, avoiding costly retrofits. Beyond construction, BIM data in COBie (Construction Operations Building Information Exchange) formats can integrate seamlessly with asset management software, enabling smooth transitions to operations and maintenance (O&M). Placing emphasis on O&M from the start ensures better data gathering, improving stakeholder engagement and long-term asset performance.

  1. Adapting to Ambiguity, Uncertainty, and Risk

Major infrastructure programs inherently involve uncertainty, requiring cultural and organizational transformation. Managing this dynamic environment demands flexibility and dynamic program structures, such as the Integrated Delivery Partner model, which provides scalability in both capacity and capability. Certainty grows as programs progress, but the modern world’s evolving technology and customer needs necessitate flexible strategies to thrive amidst continuous change.

  1. Adopting Sustainable Accounting Practices

Traditional business case planning often fails to fully account for socioeconomic and environmental impacts over the long term. To address this, programs must embrace a broader ‘six capitals’ approach, which evaluates financial, natural, human, social, intellectual, and manufactured capital. This holistic perspective ensures sustainability and resilience, with metrics such as carbon footprints integrated into decision-making.

Evolving Program Management for Success

In the past, program management focused on delivering objectives with the understanding that uncertainty was inevitable. Today, the emphasis has shifted to certainty and predictability, often constraining programs to predefined outcomes. While precision is important, it risks stifling ambition and adaptability.

At Arch Engineers, we believe success lies in balancing clear vision and flexibility. A unified narrative aligns teams and strategies, fostering behaviors that drive outcomes. By integrating sustainable thinking and evolving with the program’s needs, we deliver solutions that not only meet today’s goals but also create enduring legacies for future generations.

Agility in Program Management: Meeting Evolving Needs and Managing the Unexpected

In program management, agility is not just a buzzword—it’s a mindset. At Arch Engineers, we view agility as essential to navigating evolving client needs and managing the unexpected. Program management (PgM) is a disciplined, systematic approach to orchestrating resources to plan, design, construct, and deliver a collection of projects in a coordinated way. When done right, PgM delivers benefits that would be unattainable if projects were managed individually.

However, agility isn’t just about processes; it’s about molding the PgM model to align with program and client requirements. It’s also about ensuring that program leaders have the mindset to adapt to changing conditions while staying focused on delivering defined outcomes.

Agility Defined

Infrastructure programs are inherently complex, and cookie-cutter PgM models often fall short. Without a clear understanding of the client’s needs, expectations, and desired outcomes from the outset, it’s nearly impossible to build a responsive PgM model capable of adapting as the program moves through planning, design, construction, and into operations and maintenance.

While pre-planning is critical, successful program delivery requires a setup and implementation process that anticipates and embraces change. Programs rarely go exactly as planned, often encountering funding challenges, unexpected delays, or shifting conditions. Agility allows program leaders to:

  • Quickly assess critical issues and recommend actionable solutions
  • Monitor leading indicators to anticipate changes
  • Pivot the team and program direction without losing sight of the overall vision

The ability to maintain focus on the program’s vision, even amidst change, is a hallmark of an agile PgM approach.

Agility in Practice

At Arch, we have developed an agile PgM model that allows us to adapt to the unique challenges of any program. This approach enables us to:

  1. Call on Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)

Leveraging the depth and range of our global technical expertise, we bring programmatic solutions to complex infrastructure challenges. Our SMEs work alongside program teams to evaluate options and implement solutions that keep programs moving forward. For example, when a design-builder departed a program unexpectedly, our agile model ensured the team had the technical support needed to identify alternative paths and sustain progress.

  1. Scale Up or Scale Down Resources

We understand that programs evolve, and staffing needs shift over time. Our PgM approach ensures we can scale resources efficiently, deploying the right expertise at the right moment. This ability to scale rapidly is underpinned by strong communication within the leadership team, enabling seamless coordination among partners.

  1. Retool and Adjust as Needed

Adapting to client and program requirements is critical. By working closely with client leadership, we slot the right program leaders at the right times, ensuring smooth transitions between disciplines across the program lifecycle. Agility here means being ready to lead with the appropriate expertise for each phase while staying focused on the ultimate goal of delivery.

The Arch Approach: Agility with Purpose

Our agile PgM model is not about reacting to change but proactively anticipating and planning for it. The first step is always to understand the client’s greatest needs and expectations, including any political or organizational implications, and define clear desired outcomes. Agility alone isn’t enough; success comes from knowing how to pivot and implement the best PgM model to suit the situation.

True success also depends on alignment between the client and the program team. At Arch, we prioritize the three “Cs”: communicate, cooperate, and collaborate. These principles ensure that everyone involved is working toward the same vision and delivering on shared goals.

Agility is the cornerstone of our program management philosophy, allowing us to deliver projects with confidence, precision, and flexibility—no matter the challenges that arise

NEED PROGRAM MANAGEMENT? LET’S DISCUSS.

CONTACT US

CAREERS

CALL US

+1 604-337-1723

EMAIL US

connect@archengineers.com

© Arch Engineers 2024

Terms and Conditions | Corporate Policies

Scroll to Top