Holistic objectives for social impact
Aidhean’s view is that his role should deliver much more than just on-target costs and schedules – as important as these are. “I want to expand what program controls does,” he says, “so it ties everything back to the original intent of the program, including the delivery of social impact.” He describes his approach as “the integrator inside the integrator”, turning data into intelligence, and melding it with stakeholder and community engagement to scope and steer multi-billion dollar programs like the UK’s Thames Tideway, Singapore’s Tuas Water Reclamation Plant, the USA’s Recharge Fresno and the London 2012 Olympics.
Harness challenges, improve outcomes
For Aidhean, managing change and risk are the main program control challenges, and unlike in conventional project management, they are not linear. “You can’t tick off items A, B and C and move on”, he says, “because the complexity of the program tends to replace them with items D, E and F, which all have the capacity to further challenge delivery.”
But a good program control model, he says, draws on these additional inputs to paint a clearer picture of priorities and responses. He cites the example of a business he worked for earlier in his career, where, by integrating (again!) change and risk into the program control model in this way, he was able to foresee impending failure early, and communicate corrective action to the Board.
Oceans of insight, not lakes of data
Regarding the future, it is perhaps Aidhean’s computer science background that leads him to contemplate the possibilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Machine Learning (ML) as a means of managing programs more effectively – creating future insights that we aren’t able to imagine today. But he is also clear that data quality is critical. “We won’t get quality insights from an AI built on today’s data lakes,” he smiles, “because I know what’s at the bottom of lakes, and it’s not quality material!”
But he is also a firm believer in training and education – and in keeping things simple. “Not everybody needs to be a specialist”, he says, “but everybody’s now used to going online and just figuring stuff out using straightforward, accessible tools. Building program controls like that gives everyone an ocean of insight into better programs that can improve outcomes.”