18 Jun
How to Grow and Thrive as a Project Business
In my last post Project based Businesses and how they are different? I discussed the identification of a project business, i.e. your core business function is project management.
Identifying as a Project Business will help you prioritise and enhance your business activities and assets properly. You will clearly understand how to structure your business and what systems and solutions are viable. Unifying your Core Project Business activities and setting up your Project Business Structure will give you the foundation to grow, expand and increase your return on investment.
How to Get Started
In order to grow and thrive the way traditional industries have for the last 25 years’, Project Businesses need to govern their business activities in the same way i.e. control their business processes to optimise business performance.
Let’s start with the core activities of a project business which can be broken down into these categories.
We see that the majority of the Project Business activities are centred around project management.
Project Management | Project Financials | Project Analytics | Operations |
Scheduling | Estimating | Profitability | Sales |
Resource management | Budgeting | Earned Value | Customer service |
Time and Budgets | Cost Control | KPIs | HR |
Risk Management | Forecasting | Business Finance | |
Change Control | Business Intelligence | ||
| Procurement | Administration |
Integrating Specialisms
Some businesses such as engineers and architects will have specialist competences and use specialist software such as CAD, BIM and Revit. Construction businesses may be thinking about their estimating tools and supplier management?
These are important parts of your specific industry however, if you do not have the fundamental project business processes working, it won’t matter how well your CAD, BIM or estimating tools are working.
The project business must look beyond these and get to the core of what makes their business work efficiently and drive profitability. In doing this they will see:
● Why the business is not operating as well as it should
● Where the problems are
● What the solutions are
In my experience the core of what holds a Project Businesses back can be the lack of standardisation and integration within the business and a lack of focus on project management. The business needs to create the structure that will set up the company for success.
In future articles I will delve deeper into what I am exploring here and shed light on the Project Businesses challenges and how they can overcome these.
If you want to know more about Project Based businesses and how to increase project success and translate that into increased ROI us for a free consultation.
Brian Cleere is a Project Management Consultant and Chartered Engineer operating within the Small and Medium business sector. He has many years of experience in Project Management both operationally and in delivering training. He is a Certified Project Manager and Certified Project Office Practitioner.