Three reasons why agility is a powerful instrument in the program manager’s toolkit

When it comes to program management, agility is as much about meeting evolving client needs as managing the unexpected. Drew Jeter, Chief Executive, Program Management Global Business Line at AECOM, looks at Maryland’s Purple Line light rail, the second largest transit-oriented public-private partnership (P3) in US history, to show how an agile program management model drove the success of this highly-complex infrastructure program.

At AECOM, we often cite agility as being a key attribute of a successful program management (PgM) model. We define PgM as being a disciplined, systematic approach to orchestrating resources to plan, design, construct, and deliver a collection of projects in a coordinated way to obtain benefits for the owner not attainable if managed separately. When we talk about agility in terms of PgM however, we are thinking about the PgM model itself, and how it should be molded closely to program and client requirements. It is also a mindset that program leaders must possess when applying that model to delivering a defined client outcome.

In this article, we’ll be looking at why agility was and continues to be such a powerful tool and what it looks like on the Purple Line, a complex infrastructure program in Maryland, US. The new stretch of light rail is one of the largest transportation programs in the US, the second-ever such program to be funded through a P3 public-private partnership, and – at a design and construction cost of approximately $9.5 billion – the largest program in Maryland’s history.

Agility defined

Major infrastructure delivery programs of work are usually complex. An off-the-shelf, prescribed PgM model rarely works well. Without fully understanding a client’s needs, expectations and establishing desired outcomes right from the very start, it is hard to build a responsive PgM model that can flex as the program moves through planning, design and construction, through to effective operations and maintenance. Pre-planning is an essential step in this process, however program set-up and implementation must allow for and anticipate change.

The delivery of long-term programs of work rarely goes just as planned, often running into funding issues or other delays, and the program leadership team must be agile enough to manage these uncertainties to minimize impact on program delivery and cost. This involves understanding the critical issues, assessing them quickly and recommending a solid course of action, as well as reading the leading indicators and pivoting the program team (from the client down) to the shifting conditions. A focus on maintaining the vision is essential throughout.

Our evolving role on the Purple Line

As the lead firm in a tri-venture program management team, AECOM has been heavily involved with Maryland’s Purple Line since 2010.

Having drawn up the initial environment assessments and then overseeing the development of the preliminary design for the entire alignment, our role evolved as the program progressed from planning to construction. The design-builder – Purple Line Transit Constructors (PLTC) – was selected in 2016, and since then, the AECOM-led team has served as Maryland Department of Transportation Maryland Transit Administration’s (MDOT MTA) program manager, managing planning, design and construction, along with the integration of all stakeholder requirements.

However, despite the improvements to passenger experience that the Purple Line is expected to bring, local tensions, claims and other challenges have threatened program success. Eventually, PLTC departed the program citing financial challenges, leaving the State of Maryland with the huge legacy program on their hands without a builder to complete construction. While the new design and builder was procured, we stepped forward to keep the work on track supporting the accelerated delivery of the technical and early works elements, as well as overall management of the program. This also involved managing more than 150 subcontractors that were assigned to MTA when the design-build team left.

Agility in practice

Our PgM model on the Purple Line is very agile and enables us to:

1/Call on subject matter experts

Integrating the depth and range of our global technical strength and capabilities to bring programmatic solutions to our clients’ big infrastructure delivery challenges is an integral part of our PgM capability and approach.

Since the Purple Line is only the second transit-oriented program to be delivered under a public-private partnership in the US, the program team reaches out to colleagues in Europe and elsewhere to engage key subject matter experts (SME) whenever needed. For example, our SMEs supported the program team to identify various options that could be evaluated and/or implemented to keep the program moving forward when the original design-builder departed the program.

2/Scale up or scale down

As program managers, we understand that the program will evolve and that resources need to scale up and down, so getting the right level of staffing at the right time is critically important. On the Purple Line, we were cautious and measured in bringing new people onto the program team so that we were never out of balance with requirements.

Crucially, our agile PgM model enabled us to scale at pace to manage the huge number of subcontractors that were suddenly assigned to our client when the original design-builder vacated the program.

The program team had to grow from 50 full-time staff to about 130 overnight. Together with our partners, we quickly assembled a range of specialists from quality control to cost, expanding the commercial team as well as planners, construction managers, field coordinators and systems engineers to name just a few. The ability to implement such a rapid scale-up was due largely to keeping the joint venture leadership team well informed of the needs so that each key partner and our DBE firms could assign staff to support the overall deployment.

3/Retool as needed

Understanding program requirements is critical along with working ‘hand in glove’ with client leadership to slot the right program leaders in at the right time along the program lifecycle. On the Purple Line, our program leadership has changed to match the particular demands of each stage, enabled by strong succession planning to ensure continuity.

Agility is as much about adjusting the team to respond to program and client needs as understanding that the program will be led at different times by different disciplines and being able to transition seamlessly between them. To do this effectively, it’s important to stay focused on delivery and anticipate requirements.

Our agile PgM model has been key in elevating our offer from initial services to program solutions on the Purple Line. All early milestones were met on schedule and delivered within budget. Former Purple Line Program Director William A. Parks, commended the PgM team saying, “Each aspect of your team’s involvement has been conducted with superb professionalism. The leadership and supporting staff have been exceptional.”

Ultimately however, no matter what and where the program is, the first step is always to understand the client’s greatest needs, expectations, political ramifications and define the desired outcomes. Many may tout agility, but that alone is not enough: the program team must understand how to pivot and implement the best PgM model and options available. This only works if the client and program team have mutual trust and are aligned and adhere to the three ‘Cs’ – communication, cooperation and collaboration for the program’s success.