Question

DUBAI ELECTRICITY & WATER AUTHORITY (DEWA) PROJECTS CASE
Background
Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) delivers world-class services of electricity and water that meet the highest standards of availability, reliability and efficiency. DEWA serves over 800,000 customers across Dubai, a flourishing global city considered as a leading hub of business activity in the Middle East and Northern Africa regions. Since its inception in 1992, DEWA has evolved and grown, measuring and adjusting the ways it serves its customers and integrating project management across the organization.
The Challenge
Dubai has experienced an unprecedented growth over the last two decades that transformed the city and propelled its gradual rise to global business prominence. This growth added complexity to the already daunting task of providing water and electricity services to consumers and businesses in a region with a population that exceeds two million. In 2014 alone, water connections increased nearly 30 percent, rising from 23,350 in 2013 to 30,000. The power demand increased another five to six percent in 2015.
“To keep pace with this growing demand for water and electricity services, the advent of green technologies, and the push toward renewable energy, DEWA strives to achieve the leadership vision which was translated into the federal and local strategies. These include the UAE Centennial 2071, the UAE Vision 2021, the Dubai Plan 2021, and the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050, ensuring the sustainable development of Dubai, to make it the happiest and smartest city in the world,” said His Excellency Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, Managing Director and CEO of DEWA.
The Issue
As more and more projects were initiated, DEWA’s leadership discovered that standard project management practices were not being observed across the organization.
1. Identify and describe the multiple range of problems that DEWA would have faced due to standard project management practices not being followed.
2. What can be the most possible outcomes of initiating multiple mega projects without following the project integration management processes?
3. In your opinion, how can these issues be solved? If you were one of the project managers of DEWA, what actions would you propose to the top management?

Answer 1

1. Identify and describe the multiple range of problems that DEWA would have faced due to standard project management practices not being followed.

As projects grow in size or volume (# of projects) it can become difficult to ensure they continue to follow standard project management practices. This can cause several problems that also result in project failure :

a) Project scope is not defined well - As the details within a project start to increase in number, people can get caught up in them and not consider the actual scope of the project. e.g. Processing new water connections can mean that servicing old ones are neglected, causing failures. When possible, it is advisable to look at the big picture and ensure that the business value goal is being met.

b) Project work breakdown structures are not well-defined - Too much work can result in unclear accountability and measurement of results. If enough qualified people are not hired fast enough to keep up with the growth then there will likely be some things that do not get done. Missing deadlines or delays in key activities should be avoided at all cost, especially in the crucial business of providing water and electricity to two million people.

c) Milestones/checkpoints definition and management - The sheer volume of work can overwhelm the best teams and so clear checkpoints are needed to ensure that work is progressing as it should and in the right direction. e.g. X% increase in water connections should trigger an increase in the workforce to ensure the current team is not overloaded.

d) Stakeholder management - Having a good plan in place also means keeping the customers informed - providing the customers with advance notice in case of any planned outages/maintenance will reduce the impact for them and keep the customer happy.

e) Risk/Quality/Change management - Providing seamless service is important in the water and power industry and requires good planning in these three areas. Project management in these areas should also be scalable over time to ensure that capturing too many details allows some to fall through the cracks.

(Discenza, Forma, 2007)

f) Scalability should be built into projects else there will be problems due to growth. This is an oft ignored concept as businesses work to meet the current demand and not the forecasts for the future. Processes that are only possible to apply with limited resources cannot be changed quickly leading to problems.

2. What can be the most possible outcomes of initiating multiple mega projects without following the project integration management processes?

Integration management is needed to ensure that the ever growing elements of projects are properly coordinated to ensure successful delivery.

As the projects grow and multiply, trade-offs among competing objectives will need to be made to meet the business goal. The 'big picture' view from the integration management team can ensure that larger impact activities are always prioritised so that they are not compromised.

Project activities can get delayed or result in bottlenecks - Planning for the project activities can be done in advance so that all resources are allocated and utilised effectively taking into account all existing constraints.

Project monitoring and control can be adversely affected unless you balance objective across the projects to achieve the most success, mitigate risks, and lower any chances of failure by counterbalancing alternative - lower outputs from one base with higher outputs from another.

3. In your opinion, how can these issues be solved? If you were one of the project managers of DEWA, what actions would you propose to the top management?

The best way to resolve these issues is to enforce a standard project management technique - whether it be waterfall or agile. Any one type of project management technique should be employed and enforced by the firm.

These processes should be scalable as the firm is likely to grow more year on year e.g. don't have too many approvers that can tie up a task.

The project managers and teams can benefit from having clearly defined processes that will aid in their control of the projects.

Scope and work breakdown structures should be well defined and qualified personnel assigned to critical tasks.

Trade-offs should be discussed and planned by all stakeholers/managers to ensure most efficient use of all resources.

Project integration management can bring in other benefits such as - cost savings by using the same resources across the projects (shared service model) and also by ensuring smoother business operations by putting the focus back on delivering value to their customers by using all available resources at hand.

Projects like water and power are crucial ones and DEWA should take advantage of integration management to explore all alternatives and improve business value e.g. coordination between outages to minimise customer impact.

References :

Discenza, R. & Forman, J. B. (2007). Seven causes of project failure: how to recognize them and how to initiate project recovery. Project Management Institute.