Page 16 - Procanvass

DEFENCE PROJECTS – A RISKY DIVE

T
he demand of our own contemporary society for new methods of management has resulted into the
emergence of project management as a separate discipline. As a concept, project management provides
direction to plan, implement and manage activities for organizational goals and objectives. If the
organisation employs the technique of project management to manage and prioritize all activities such as planning
the sequence of the activities, setting output targets for the people and monitoring the progress of a project, then
timely completion of project and effective employment of resources would be ensured. Therefore project
management plays an instrumental role in successful accomplishment of organizational objectives.

Now when it comes to aerospace and defence projects responses dependent on knowledge experiences, skill,
which follow the same principles of project imagination, energy and dedication of project managers
management applied in any task but the amount of and their staff. Below are the 5 must recognizable risks
complexity and uncertainty in them none famous than which occur in any defence projects.
anybody knows. The production of goods in aerospace
1. Novelty
and defence industry companies is very material
intensive and cost sensitive. Cost controlling can be a When something is attempted for the first time it is in
particular challenge for integration between scheduling nature of an experiment. There is no way accurately to
judge whether it will work, how much it will cost or,
and logistics. The greatest challenge for Project
how long it will take. The more a project incorporates
management in these industries are that many
components are made and delivered by external any of the following elements, the more it embodies
suppliers and assembled at central factory. The experimental risk
 Development of new capability
complexity of these projects generates high co-
 Creation of a new design or modification of
ordination costs across many development and
production sites and suppliers, who are usually in existing one
several different locations.  First construction of new design
 Introduction of new contractor
Errors, unacceptable events, external shocks and  Construction of new factory, shipyard or other
divergence from cost schedule estimates will occur in facility
any project. But the quantum of all these inherent risk  Creation of a new corporation
varies from projects to projects. The key to successful  Transfer of technologies between companies
project management does not lie in focusing attention and corporation
on avoidance of problems but instead the focus should When the novelty involves implementation of cutting
be on prompt, creative, forward looking and flexible edge technology or new information systems the risk is
responses to problems as they arise successful even greater.
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