More Ups and Downs

Five of the top six remain there. 'Amazing' of Atkins Asia Pacific who were first two periods ago and last period slipped to 11th bounced straight back to 2nd. The shock of slipping probably produced a lot of late nights modelling their response. Atkins Asia Pacific has a great record in MERIT and have had teams in the final several times over recent years but they haven't yet produced a Champion and their eye is on the big prize. 'Singularity' of Atkins India climb from 3rd to 1st whilst their colleagues 'Ubiquitous' of Atkins India slip from 2nd to 4th. Atkins India also have a great record and have had teams in the final too and are keen to produce the first India Champion colleagues. Arup's 'Arup Infrastructure Group II' move up one to 3rd splitting the two Atkins India teams. The Arup team has started us thinking about a prize for the slickest team name! Mott MacDonald's 'Strike whilst the iron is Mott' are down from 1st to 5th. CB&I's 'Construction Brilliant Innovation' are down one at 6th and the former 6th place 'Team 7' of Subsea 7 slip out of the top six to 9th.

The big movements are below the top six see Aurecon's 'CONSTRUCTICONS' and 'CAPITAlized' of Capita Property & Infrastructure as two examples of major movements and with a good number of teams moving more than 20 places there is still a great churning going on and the top six are by no means safe . It becomes increasingly difficult to consolidate in the leading positions, nervousness creeps in and decisions tend to become cautious resulting in more adventurous teams catching and overtaking.

The average improvement this time was 16%

There are many decisions to get right and one is the project manager. A project manager whose experience is well suited to the project will produce a more efficient project with lower costs. A project manager whose experience is not well suited to the project will manage the project less effectively. This can be exaggerated if the project is far from Head Office where there may be less direct contact. So the well experienced project managers should be on the distant projects and the less experienced closer to home.