Project Stakeholder Management

The Singapore Chapter of the Project Management Institute recently held a Focus Group meeting to discuss Project Phoenix, the project to restore the Pentagon (the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington, Virginia) after the September 11, 2001 attack.

The meeting covered various knowledge areas of project management and highlighted the opportunities for improvements and the lessons learned.

Project Phoenix was the code name used for the recovery of the 2m sq feet (185,806 sq m) of the Pentagon building damaged in the attack. The project was based on a self-imposed one-year deadline and involved up to 1,000 workers working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week until January 2002, followed by about 500 workers working 6 days a week in two 10-hour shifts. The time taken to perform such a project might normally take up to three years, so many tasks had to be performed in parallel.

This was a very unusual project due to the circumstances, with a very high level of managerial support and worker motivation. The project team used the normal Project Management processes with a special focus on controlling ‘scope-creep‘. The project team were able to propose and support the aggressive schedule by coordinating with the project stakeholders, who were invited to participate in the project planning efforts. The construction workers displayed an extraordinary level of dedication and support to the project and to the self-imposed deadline. This is an example of how stakeholder management helps to achieve project success in difficult conditions.

Although this was a unique project, the lesson of ensuring good communications with all the people involved in the project is always applicable to our ‘normal’ projects.

Link to USA Today.  Publishing articles in the newspapers is a great way of communicating with large groups of stakeholders including the general public, and should be part of your project communications plan.