Boek 'Managment of Engineering Projects - People are key'

For this book a group of professionals has worked together to share and present their experiences. They closely followed the project management cycle to introduce the basic principles of project management for projects with an engineering signature.

This book applies to the management of both private and public capital investment projects:
•    green field as well as brown field projects in the process industry
•    infrastructural projects, like railways, tunnels and harbours

What makes this book unique is expressed by the subtitle and what it stands for. The management of projects is all about people: People are key! Knowledge, experience, tools and processes are necessary to successfully deliver a project, but are not sufficient. The people who populate the project teams make the difference. Above all, success has shown to be firmly based on the way the people in the project team are joining hands within the team.

As a second line of approach in this book the importance of stakeholder management is emphasized and illustrated. Early involvement of all key stakeholders is essential for success. In the chapter on Opportunity Framing it is shown how the support for your project can be broadened and the commitment can be enlarged.

A third line that is followed throughout the book is to make sure that the chosen approach to manage and control the project is fit for purpose. It means not overdoing and not underdoing it; preferably by scaling rather than by adding or skipping.

The book is based on a reader that was developed for a master course on management of engineering projects at the Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. Over the years some of the authors presented guest lectures in this course. Next to an audience of students, the book is recommended as a refresher for people working in the industry or other members of the project management skill pool. Furthermore it presents a different perspective to people used to non- engineering projects.

Successful delivery of engineering projects is the ambition. With a focus on people in your team, on stakeholder involvement and scaling your approach to fit-for-purpose, the ambition can be achieved. It is up to the reader to make this happen, to put theory into practice.