Another 18 ministry infrastructure projects out of 86 (21%) are now catogorised as 'sick' according to the Health Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai (Borneo Post Wednesday 23rd December, Page 22). These contractors will now '...be imposed a penalty of RM3,600 for every delayed day, until the project is completed'.

The question I ask is why are so many projects failing to complete on time and what is being done to reduce this trend?

I do believe the reason for the high rate of faillure is due to a lack of maturity and understanding by the contractor and ministries' agents on how to monitor and control projects succesfully. To increase this maturity I suggest the monies collected from the imposed penalties could be used to educate and implement standard Project Management Methodologies across the ministries'agents and their contractors.

For example let us assume that on average each of these 18 projects is delayed by 20 days resulting in RM1,296,000 generated (18 projects x RM3,600 x 20 days). Instead of this money being tipped into the IR why not use it for training the agencies in project monitoring and controlling.

As an additional penalty the contractor should be forced into attending these courses that will increase their understanding of Project Management and should be made to produce a certificate of attendance before being allowed to tender for additional projects.

The imposing of penalties alone on the contractors does not solve the problem of completing future projects on time.


All comments are welcome.

The intention of this blog is to promote discussion on standardised project management (PM) methodologies adopted (or not adopted) by Malaysian companies and organisations especially those in East Malaysia.

As Sarawak moves further into the SCORE development the adoption of standardised PM methodologies becomes more of a requirement than a 'nice to have' option. This requirement should obviously come from the client side who will want their projects completed on time, within budget and to specification but the contractors also need to look towards PM standardisation not only because of this requirement but because it makes good sense from a business point of view.

The inherent value it returns is higher profits and a greater success rate that will, in the longer term ensure more projects are awarded to them. As the new circular released by the Ministry of Finance dictates that as of 1st September if contractors fall behind schedule by 20% or 2 months then the project will be classified as 'sick' resulting in the possibility of the contractor being terminated if the project be deemed as being unrecoverable.

There really is no excuse for the number of projects that default on the triple constraints of time, cost & quality given the availability of standardised PM processes. For instance the most popular proces is the 'Guide to Project Management Body of Knowledge' (PMBOK) published by the Project Management Institute (PMI) that details nine competencies for greater project success.

If PM competencies like those detailed in the PMBOK were adopted by clients and contractors alike then the chances of the projects falling behind schedule by 20% would be greatly reduced, benefiting all project stakeholders including the general public.

I look forward to all comments regarding this and future postings.