Expect the Unexpected: An Exploratory Study on the Conditions and Factors Driving the Resilience of Infrastructure Projects THÈSE NO 4709 (2011) PRÉSENTÉE LE 20 JANVIER 2011 AU COLLEGE DU MANAGEMENT DE LA TECHNOLOGIE CHAIRE DE LOGISTIQUE, ÉCONOMIE ET MANAGEMENT SECTION DE MANAGEMENT DE LA TECHNOLOGIE ÉCOLE POLYTECHNIQUE FÉDÉRALE DE LAUSANNE POUR L'OBTENTION DU GRADE DE DOCTEUR ÈS SCIENCES PAR Georgeta GEAMBASU acceptée sur proposition du jury: Prof. D. Foray, président du jury Dr P.-A. Jaccard, Prof. C. Tucci, directeurs de thèse Dr M. Badoux, rapporteur Prof. M. Finger, rapporteur Dr C. Reynaud, rapporteur Suisse 2011 Expect the unexpected: An exploratory study on the conditions and factors driving the resilience of infrastructure projects Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to many people whose support made my journey to the completion of this thesis possible and enjoyable. I owe my deepest gratitude to my advisor Pierre-André Jaccard for giving me the opportunity to work on a topic that is of great interest for me. His advice and guidance has been invaluable in structuring this thesis and shaping the final outcome. Always available for advice and gentle redirection when I wandered too far off in the wrong direction, he also provided me the best working conditions that a PhD student could dream of; in addition he encouraged me to purchase all those wonderful Project Management’s books. Un GRAND MERCI POUR TOUT du fond du Coeur! My thesis co-advisor, Chris Tucci, was a source of great ideas, encouragement and enthusiasm. He spent time with giving me constructive feedback on the final version, for which I am very grateful. Furthermore, I would like to express my appreciation to my Jury: Professor Matthias Finger (EPFL), for his suggestions that enabled me to improve substantially the structure of the thesis; Dr. Christian Reynaud (NESTEAR) for encouraging me to uncover the socio-economic side of project management; Dr. Marc Badoux (M2 Lausanne) for his comments, which challenged my thinking and allowed me to present more eloquently the contribution of this thesis for PM practice; I would like to thank as well the president of the jury, Professor Dominique Foray (EPFL), for showing interest in my research and for contributing his time to assess the report. I am indebted to Professor Philippe Wieser (EPFL) for his support and for giving me the opportunity to present my research in different occasions. As well as for involving me in the activities of the Institute for the Management of Logistics (IML); this allowed me to enlarge the professional horizons beyond the PhD thesis. I would like to thank the many people who helped me in the case study. Heinz Ehbar (Alp Transit AG), Michel Béguelin, Daniel Blaser (BLS Alp Transit AG), Elmar Lambrigger (BLS Alp Transit AG), Giovanni Lombardi, deserve special mention. 1-1 Expect the unexpected: An exploratory study on the conditions and factors driving the resilience of infrastructure projects I am grateful to TSR for providing me valuable material and to the secretaries and librarians in the visited institutions for assisting me in many ways. To my colleagues in the EU funded project (EVA- TREN) for rich and stimulating discussions that helped my ideas to crystallize. I would like to express my appreciation to my PhD fellows and friends at the 4th floor for creating such a stimulating and fun environment: Jana, Daniel, Intan, Gustave, Janine, Joanna, Marcel, Catherine, Farah, Aymeric, and Yousre. I cannot forget our philosophical debates, knowledge exchanges, shared frustrations and personal experiences, which enriched my PhD journey. And the others: Catia, Patricia, Alexandra, Ximena, Sandrine, Severine, Mary-Jean, Barbara, Carolyn, Tea, Françoise, Rosangela, Christiane, Marianne, Jeanine. I’ll keep precious souvenirs of our lunches, baby-showers, Hen’s nights, girls’ dinner and other events, which pigmented the last 4 years and a half of our lives and bridged our friendship. I would like to thank my Romanian friends: Dana, Ion, Mira, Codrin, Horia, Tudor and Bogdan for unforgettable moments abounding in rich discussions and exchanges that enabled my body and spirit to gain the energy and the motivation to pursue this journey. I doubt that I will ever be able to convey my appreciation fully, but I owe my family eternal gratitude: to my parents for raising me to be the person I am today, to my mother for her love and support when I most needed; my sister for continuous encouragement and my brother for contagious optimism; as well as my extended family for unconditional belief in my capacity to finish this thesis; to Sorin who shares my life and dreams, for his unconditional love and support and for pushing me every day to become a better person; to my twins, little girl Léa Ioana and little boy Horia Alexandru for remembering me in every single moment what truly matters in life… My resilience developed with this thesis, enabled by the support and contribution of all these people. Many others professors, lecturers, colleagues at LEM and friends who provided good teaching and advice, nice company, and good ideas in my PhD journey, although not mentioned here are present in my heart. 1-2 Expect the unexpected: An exploratory study on the conditions and factors driving the resilience of infrastructure projects This thesis is dedicated to: Sorin, Léa and Horia, And my mother As well as to the memory of my farther 1-3 Expect the unexpected: An exploratory study on the conditions and factors driving the resilience of infrastructure projects Abstract This study originates from the recognition that project management research is replete with normative theories on what need projects to be successful. However, it has performed worse with respect to assisting the understanding of how and why similar projects do not have similar performances during their life-cycles. It claims that the poor performance of major infrastructure projects, acknowledged by cost overruns and scheduling delays, is due to their lack of resilience when confronted with critical events that are inherent in their life-cycle. Therefore, it addresses the overarching question: How do projects cope with the critical events that occur at some point in their life-cycle? And why and how are some troubled projects able to maintain positive adjustments (cope successfully) while others cannot? By addressing these questions, the first goal of this study is to reveal the “resilience enablers”. These are factors and conditions enabling the successful coping process (maintaining performance after the critical event) in projects confronted with unexpected events. The second goal is to translate the new knowledge of “resilience enablers” into recommendations for practitioners to enable them to actually make use of the insight into a troubled project’s behavior. To study these questions, a qualitative research design was developed. It is articulated on the exploratory case study of one of the most important infrastructure project of this century. The result consists of two sets of findings, both relate to the critical events’ managements and the factors and conditions that enabled the project’s resilience. This thesis contributes to project management research with a middle range theory. The project performance can be seen and explained from a new and original perspective of project resilience. It also contributes to the project’s management practice with recommendations aiming to help project actors to 1) identify and assess the resilience of their project organization, along with the identification and management of the risks. And to 2) maintain project system performance after the critical event through continuous adoption of risk– focused, and protection-focused strategies, which imply uncostly measures that enable project resilience. Key words: infrastructure project, critical events management, project life-cycle, project resilience, performance, project system 1-4 Expect the unexpected: An exploratory study on the conditions and factors driving the resilience of infrastructure projects Résumé Cette recherche part du constat d’une littérature scientifique relativement riche, en gestion de grands projets d’infrastructure, concernant les conditions préalables à réunir pour assurer leur mise en œuvre, mais qui ne traite que rarement des causes de leur échec. Il paraît, en effet, légitime de chercher à comprendre pourquoi des projets de même nature évoluent différemment au cours de leur cycle de vie et ne parviennent pas au même niveau de performance. La réflexion engagée ici, concernant cette nature de projet, repose sur l’hypothèse que les déconvenues observées et mesurables par des dépassements de crédits et des retards dans la planification, sont dues, pour l’essentiel, à leur incapacité à s’adapter à des événements critiques survenant au cours de leur cycle de vie. Les objectifs de ce travail visent, en premier lieu, à apprécier comment réagissent les responsables de tels projets face à des événements perturbateurs et, ensuite, à comprendre pourquoi certains projets en difficulté parviennent quand même à leur terme, alors que d’autres échouent. La démarche sous-jacente passe en conséquence par la recherche et l’analyse des éléments «facilitateurs» de la résilience ou, en d’autres termes, des facteurs et des conditions permettant la mise en place d’un processus d'adaptation et de réajustement des projets confrontés à des événements fortuits. La seconde étape consiste à traduire les connaissances théoriques et pratiques récentes en la matière en recommandations destinées aux praticiens engagés dans la conduite de projets particulièrement risqués. Les résultats de la recherche débouchent sur deux catégories d’enseignements relatifs à la gestion des événements critiques et à la mise en œuvre des facilitateurs de la résilience de projet. L’originalité de ce travail se manifeste ainsi par une approche nouvelle, celle de la résilience, appliquée aux grands projets d’infrastructure où des dépassements de budget-temps et budget-coût sont fréquents.