Reference no: EM132860510
It is obvious that private projects and public sector projects or programs although might have fundamental similarities such as initiation, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling and closing phases but methodology of executing and approach to them, tools and techniques of monitoring and controlling the projects are different because performance measurement is different.
Non-Financial benefits
Public sector projects unlike private sector projects are not managed for maximizing ROI and profit whereas those projects are non-profit and managed to make efficient use of resources and increasing democratic values such as equality, openness and transparency. Public nonprofit projects are executed for people good, health and re-enforcing infrastructures such as defense, transportation or health systems.
Political Environment
Some of public sector projects are ruled by a political party who has the power of government. Once, administration gets changed, priorities and expectation might change, and yesterday's vital needs are becoming unnecessary today. This is the weakest point of the public projects because sunk cost of these type of projects could not be dodged and finally a group or entity has to bite the bullet. Governmental projects has high risk. It would be better on top of each governmental project, a committee of experts review the feasibility of projects without mixing political mentality to reduce the risk and avoid adding extra sunk cost on the budget deficit.
Formal Process
Governmental project as it is mentioned above have similarities in the process but tools and techniques for estimating budget, control cost and resources, contracts are different. These type of projects are getting their budget from different funds and it make it a little complicated budgeting process.
Mega Projects
One of the most important characters of public projects is their size although in oil and gas industry projects size is comparable to public sector as far as size, cost and resources. Last project mega projects that our company Worley was involved was $8.6B in Canada. Obviously, mega projects need more attention on the project management main elements such as cost, risk, schedule, scope, quality and resources.
Long Product Life Cycle
Public projects as it was mentioned are ruled for creating good and comfort for people and society. So, deliverables has to last long as possible to come up for a few generation needs and demand such as airports, freeways unless new technology obsolete the old one and new product is being replaced with old one.
Multiple Stakeholders
Public sector projects might be dealing with enormous number if stakeholders such a big group of population of country. It is very difficult to keep every stakeholder happy and satisfied but overall goal is by meeting project objectives majority of stakeholders get satisfied.
There are many similarities between managing public and private sector projects and programs, especially with regards to the fundamentals of project management. Consider the highly regulated government protocols and define areas that would require more attention than private sector programs?