When it comes to how to run business and managing the funds needed for investments, many countries and companies have already issued governance, transparency and accountability procedures to prevent projects to go astray from their planned goals.

Organizations whose growth and success is driven by investing in or delivering projects, regardless of the project type, size or nature, are required more than ever to adopt governance practices when it comes to managing their projects.

Projects can include engineering and construction of buildings, infrastructure, plants, refineries and other type of capital asset projects.

Project failure is equivalent to an investment failure where an organization's loss is not only limited to the loss of the invested funds but the lost opportunity of having other much needed benefits if those funds where invested in another project.

An organization that is faced with continuous project failure will soon find out that its business continuity is at stake.

Although many can argue on what will determine if a project was a success or a failure, very few could argue that for a project to be successful, the project must deliver the outcomes and benefits required by the project owner, create the project deliverables that were defined in the project scope, meet the project milestone dates and stay within the approved project budget.

The causes of failing to achieve those objectives can be attributed to many reasons including the lack of strategic alignment, lack of senior effective usage of project and risk management practices, scope changes, and ineffective project delivery team among others. 

Projects have their own particulars which require having their own governance framework aligned with the corporate governance framework.

Similar to corporate governance, project governance should address the areas that relate to roles and responsibilities, accountability, disclosure and transparency, risk management and control, decision making, code of ethics, performance and effectiveness and implementation of strategy.

Most of those areas of governance need to be coordinated with the corporate governance. For example, the project risk management policy needs to be coordinated and aligned with the corporate enterprise risk management policy.

The same will apply to the corporate human resources and ethical policies.

ACE recommends the implementation of a comprehensive Project Governance Framework along the following strategy:

• Conduct a formal organizational project management maturity assessment using OPM3 to determine the areas of improvement needed to achieve project governance framework;
• Develop and implement standard operating procedures (SOP) that will ensure that roles, responsibilities and performance criteria is clearly defined as well as a mechanism of separation between project stakeholder management and project decision making;
• Implement an enterprise wide professional development and training program that will ensure competence, authority and resources for delegated members;
• Implement an enterprise project management information system (EPMIS) that wil promote the alignment between the overall business strategy and projects delivered and encourage a culture of improvement, transparency and internal sharing of project information; and
• Create a Project Management Office (PMO) that will ensure the separation of project governance from organizational governance structures to minimize the project decision layers.

We at ACE understand that a project management solution is not a solution for you unless it encompasses all of your projects, people, programs and sites worldwide. You need project management software that provides you with visibility across all your projects and programs. That's why we use Oracle's Primavera Contractor, formerly called expedition.

Primavera Contractor is the complete project control solution. It empowers engineering and construction professionals with the control they need to minimize project costs and maximize project efficiency.

ACE provides you with everything you need to manage your projects, people and programs all in the same software program. So you don't have to juggle multiple project management software solution.

ACE governance services include:

• Determine what kind of PMO is needed;
• Set up and roll a PMO;
• Design and Implement PMO procedures;
• Design and Implement an enterprise management information system (EMIS); and
• Design and Implement an enterprise knowledge management system.