The Unruly Project

Projects rarely go as planned. Delays and budget overrun are the rules rather than the exceptions. In addition, the project often doesn't yield the expected value. Construction has long been infamous for its bad performance, but these days IT-projects set a new and unprecedented standard. The world is rife with litterature on project management, systems for its control as well as consultants eager to assist, but none of these have any impact on the project's own performance. But Why? Seek the know-why and the know-how will come by itself, says the author inspired by Japanese industrial engineer Shigeo Shingo, and so he does. In this book he unfolds his understanding of the project's nature and offers a new approach to its management, based on his Value-Flow-Operations theory, in an easy to read and understand - and often entertaining - form. The book is a piece of pioneer work where the author, who has more than fifty years of experience with managing projects, combines his own knowledge with inspiration from fields as varied as hydraulics, complex systems theory, chaos theory, social sciences and the art of warfare, along with research in lean construction. We have not understood the project's true nature is his provocative hypothesis, and therefore projects often spiral out of control. It is the fundamental assumption that everything can be planned and that plans can be followed we have to unlearn. Plans are never followed, not because of bad planning, but because plans can never be followed in real life, is his provocative statement before proposing a lean approach to better project mangement, an approach that works!
About the Author: Sven Bertelsen, born 1937 is master in civil engineering, 1961. Sven Bertelsen has spent his whole professional life among projects. For forty years as a consulting engineer in NIRAS - a leading Danish consulting firm, where he for twentyfive years was a senior partner, in charge of a number of NIRAS' major projects, including NIRAS' key role in the successful establishment of the Danish natural gas supply system. Today his name is first and foremost connected to his work within the International Group for Lean Construction - IGLC - where he since the late 1980es has contributed substantially to the development of the theory, where not least his ideas about understanding the project as a complex and adaptive system are internationally recognized. He introduced lean construction in Denmark and was a co-founder of Lean Construction-DK, of which he in 2014 became its forst honorary member.