This graduation research is carried out to investigate the problem of effective implementation of project strategy. The problem description is the following: Companies executing EPC projects in energy and chemicals industry encounter bottlenecks in effectively implementing projec
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This graduation research is carried out to investigate the problem of effective implementation of project strategy. The problem description is the following: Companies executing EPC projects in energy and chemicals industry encounter bottlenecks in effectively implementing project strategy. Based on this a research question is formulated: How can best practices related to strategy improve project strategy implementation in an EPC company?
The main research objective is to explore the best practices to improve project strategy implementation within EPC projects.
This research is divided into three phases. In the first phase, literature review is conducted to a) gain insight and understanding into the practices of implementation of project strategy, b) to understand the impact of the main aspects on project strategy and its implementation and c) provide a guideline for protocols for interviews in the second phase. The following ten aspects as influential in implementation of project strategy have been determined: communication, tools & methods, resources, recognition, benefits, structure, culture, leadership, decisions and actions.
In the second phase, 7 project managers and project directors of Fluor Corporation, all subject-matter experts in project execution in the EPC industry, were interviewed. The interviews have been performed to understand the practice of implementing project strategy in an EPC project, resulting in the following list of main issues with implementation of project strategy; global office communication, shared understanding, strategy-operation alignment, and bottom-up ownership.
In the ultimate phase (third) suitable best practices (tools and techniques) were selected to counter the main 4 issues based on an extensive literature study. These are as follows: planned communication, scrum, gamification, dialogue-mapping, balanced scorecard, informal leadership, and client-centric team development.