Managing Small CAPEX Projects

by Emil Randa-Boldt

Summary

The classic project management methods can be scale up and down dependent of a project size and complexity. However, it is often seen that when dealing with smaller projects, that may not differentiate much for daily operation, it can be hard for the project manager (PM) to apply the standard tools for ensuring the quality of a project. That is due to the time and resources allocated to run a project are limited. The PM has to navigate in the project management jungle and chose to focus the available resources on key elements. What those key elements are in the small CAPEX projects will be highlighted in this article.

To further emphasis the coming recommendations, the smaller CAPEX projects in question are in regards to classic engineering scopes, which engineering PMs encounter often all over the industry, e.g. Upgrade of machinery on a products line, retrofitting a crane on a cargo ship or develop/implementation of small IT systems. These projects contain same elements as in larger project, but in a very different scale and a focus in the project management process has to be adapted. The lack of standardization and methodology in smaller projects lower the probability to deliver projects on time and budget. By investigating where small projects fails it can help a PM to identify which project management tools to include in a project and which that may be skipped.

Introduction

When you are working in a technical organization in the industry or public sector do projects come in different scale and form. Not all projects come in a classic scale such as building a bridge or develop a space rocket, where it is intuitive given - from all involved stakeholders - that this is a project and therefore you adapt a project management setup to solve the project. In technical organization different tasks are processes on a daily basis. What often happens is that some of these tasks actually are projects. A key challenge for organizations worldwide is to balancing between; daily operation (“business as usual”-tasks) and transforming operation into projects that can develop their business in the right direction