5 lessons learned with the ex CEO of Crossrail

Reflections on turning around a project that has gone off course

1. Fixed end dates are deadly. They distort behaviour in the team and generate huge unnecessary pressure. A more mature view of a major project is to use windows of uncertainty that get narrower as a project gets nearer to completion.
2. Integration is a contact sport. Crossrail’s systems engineering was world class; what was missing was systems integration, which is crucial to digital projects. Is it central to the conversations that are happening around the boardroom table?
3. Modular design matters. There were 37 procurement contracts on Crossrail and they were almost all bespoke. They were also built, tested and commissioned in situ rather than off‑site in factories before installation. If I were on HS2 now I would be all over modularity.
4. Right team for the right risk at the right time. We should have had three squads over the 20 years of the project. A civil engineering squad for the tunnelling, a mechanical and electrical squad for the fit‑out and a systems integration squad for the integration. But we persisted with the same skill set and they didn’t spot the aggregation of risk.
5. Be transparent and own the whole. Collaboration isn’t enough; you need to transition to ‘owning the whole’, where people realise that their own success or failure – and that of the project as a whole – is dependent on the success or failure of everyone else involved. It calls for total transparency on risk.

by Mark Wild, ex‑CEO of Crossrail

THIS ARTICLE IS BROUGHT TO YOU FROM THE Autumn 2022 ISSUE OF PROJECT JOURNAL, WHICH IS FREE FOR APM MEMBERS.