Rijkswaterstaat (Dutch Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management) used the Locks Programme Project Management tender to contract for the project management of five major DBFM waterways projects for the period from September 2016 to September 2024. This represents a unique opportunity for AT Osborne to provide quality integrated project management for five interesting and complex projects.
The DBFM projects in the Rijkswaterstaat Locks Programme include:
- Eefde lock expansion
- Construction of third lock chamber at Princess Beatrix Lock and widening of Lek Canal
- New sea lock construction at IJmuiden
- Construction of new floodgate in Limmel
- Afsluitdijk project
These projects consist of construction and maintenance components over several years and are offered for tender as DBFM contracts. The locks programme also includes a few projects offered for tender as D&C contracts. The programme was created to increase cross-project learning opportunities as much as possible. An important contributor to these learning opportunities is the project management.
Within the five DBFM projects, AT Osborne is responsible for tasks relating to scope management, planning management, risk management, financial management, quality management and capacity management. We developed a dashboard that uses the data from these processes to generate project management control information and to report accountability information to the projects’ internal clients. Once a project has been in the maintenance stage for a year, the AT Osborne team’s work is over. In the first year of maintenance we will ensure a smooth handover to the maintenance team. This has the added value of guaranteeing project management continuity even after construction has finished, and allows enough time to include the maintenance team in ongoing processes. The first project (New Limmel Floodgate) has been successfully passed on to the maintenance team.
“By contracting out the project management, we are aiming to find a partner who will ensure that Locks Programme project management is done properly and reliably, who will guarantee project management continuity and who will increase the project management quality. We also want users, the client and the surrounding neighbourhood to be satisfied with the project management. AT Osborne and its consortium partner have proven to be excellent partners capable of handling our project management for us and realising our goals and ambitions.” (Richard van den Ancker, Contract Manager Locks Programme Project Management Tendering)
During the first three months of the contract, we focused on performing a controlled takeover of the tasks from our predecessors. In this phase, we also gained an idea of the current status of the files and to what extent processes and products aligned with the Rijkswaterstaat framework and guidelines. Based on this analysis we developed an improvement plan to increase process and output quality in order to achieve the contract objectives. Every year we undergo an improvement cycle where we set ourselves new goals to further increase the quality of our services.
In addition to information on a project level, we offer various products at programme level to help with programme control. Our programme planning provides insight into project milestones, identifies opportunities for knowledge exchange both inside and outside the programme and detects peaks in capacity. Our programme risk management encourages the resolution of shared bottlenecks through programme-wide control measures. Our quality management system is set up at the programme level as much as possible to be able to transfer improvements from one project to the others (and vice versa) and extract common elements from different audits for structurally improving the quality of the project.
“Contracting out the project management means the market ensures the integration and quality of the various project management disciplines. I have noticed that I don’t need to invest as much energy into operational tasks. The products help me concentrate on providing strategic advice to my management team and challenging them. As the same team is working on all five projects, we learn from one another much more efficiently. Improvements are trialled in one project and can then be employed in the other projects without further adjustment.” (Maarten Beer, Manager Project Management New Sea Lock IJmuiden)