Ahead of e-VANS Corporation’s January 22 webinar, founder and president Gary Evans, M.SC. MBA, P.Eng. PMP, VMA, CP3P sat down with CCPPP to preview how Graphical Representation All on the Same Page (GR-ASP)™ can analyze potential issues and solve ongoing challenges impacting all project delivery models.
What is GR-ASP™ and how can it help deliver P3 projects?
Often, people and organizations are caught in a self-propagating cycle of downstream problem-solving that costs time and money. It is difficult to go upstream, because we cannot fix what we cannot see, it is not my problem, and we have better things to do than to find what caused the problem in the first place.
When problems arise in major infrastructure projects, stakeholders often return to the contract document to determine the intent of the contract – aka – "the rules of the game."
Graphical Representation All on the Same Page (GR-ASP)™ is a problem-solving methodology invented by e-VANS Corporation that brings together contract documents, over the project life cycle and stakeholders to provide a comprehensive picture of an infrastructure project with each stakeholder displayed in its own "swim lane" horizontally across a detailed flow chart.
When you display the data like this, you see it differently. You can understand relationship dynamics, why tasks are completed in specific ways, and why stakeholders operate the way they do. You can spot unclear roles, misalignments, oversights, duplications, gaps in governance, missing engagement procedures and other process issues.
From this graphical representation, e-VANS Corporation develops a list of ‘Problem-Opportunity Pairs’ (POP): potential problems which, through robust stakeholder dialogue, may be turned into opportunities. Each POP is evaluated on a scale of 1 to 10 and plotted on two axes – implementation and impact. The next step is to collaborate with stakeholders to develop an action plan to tackle them in order of priority.
What are some common misalignments on projects that GR-ASP™ targets?
The process of approving designs can cause significant challenges for both public and private sector partners working on complex infrastructure projects.
For example, key terms are often undefined or misaligned with best practices and subject to differing interpretations by the stakeholders. Without a collective understanding, each stakeholder may go down a different path that is only noticed when it is too late. Who was correct? When the contract's terms are not properly defined, everybody is wrong and everybody is right. It is subject to interpretation, which can lead to claims, disputes and costly project delays that could be avoided by doing a GR-ASP™ up front.
A second example occurs during the interface between a private sector partner or Project Co. and the public sector agency on a P3 contract. Project Co. often submits hundreds of drawings and work packages over the course of design and construction. However, the agency may disapprove of certain design choices and raise the issue with Project Co. The issue can often go back and forth without a decision being made within the scheduled timeframe.
This often forces Project Co. to complete parts of the project "at risk" to stay on schedule. In the engineering world, we say “you can always change it if it is on paper. Once you start to build it, it is too late.” On the other hand, Project Co could underperform or consistently deliver behind schedule and, depending on the contract structure, the agency may have limited remedies.
By revealing potential areas of friction early, GR-ASP™ empowers all stakeholders to create efficient processes before the conflict occurs.
Explore e-VANS Corporations' GR-ASP™ methodology in further detail here
Are you eager to hear more insights from e-VANS Corporation? Join us for our January 22 webinar. Registration is free and open to everyone! Featuring Gary Evans, M.SC. MBA, P. Eng. PMP, VMA, CP3P, e-VANS Corporation’s founder and president, the discussion will focus on how he analyses P3 projects by combining the contract document with the stakeholders over the project life cycle.
