Re-Thinking

he
Lessons
Learnt
Approach

Punler is a Director of Projects with WorleyParsons in Western Australia. His conference session was called
Harnessing Project Knowledge and looked at the way WorleyParsons has come up with an innovative take
on the traditional lessons learnt stage of project management.
He outlined how WorleyParsons successfully used the new approach as part of its work on the huge T155
port expansion project for Fortescue Metals at Port Hedland.

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Harnessing Project Knowledge

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He outlined how WorleyParsons successfully used the new approach as part of its work on the huge T155
port expansion project for Fortescue Metals at Port Hedland. Punler says with projects delivered through
teams, its very easy for organisations not to capture the knowledge acquired as teams disperse.
HSE contractor engagement strategy devised by WorleyParsons, Good to Go Hold the Line, uses the
knowledge acquired and refined from previous projects and challenges parties to work together to ensure
that teams mobilise to site ready to work on the project. Punler says it starts with executive alignment after
contract award and involves 15 steps including a joint readiness review and a post mobilisation review.

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The program was developed by Punler and two colleagues a construction manager and a safety manager
and was originally devised for a project that did not materialise. But the timing was fortuitous for inclusion
in Fortescues T155 Project, which itself ended up setting new benchmarks for brownfield expansion
projects in the iron ore industry.

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Good To Go Hold The Line

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In essence, putting that project on to T155, we had better contractor relationships, demonstrated by a
number of factors and significantly improved safety performance, Punler says.
It was one of Fortescue's best jobs and one of our best jobs.
WorleyParsons has since implemented and refined the Good to Go Hold the Line approach in projects
across Australia.

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We found you couldn't just transfer knowledge through procedure and process, Punler says.
Intent and experience have to go with it.
So we found, to embed this program in other projects, we had to transfer the (previous) construction
manager and the HSE manager into the other projects.
The program is now being run successfully in projects in the east and the west.

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The strategy is part of a wider approach to knowledge management being taken by WorleyParsons that also
focuses on positive aspects of project delivery, whereas the traditional lessons learnt approach can be
somewhat negative.
So you might be critical of something you've done in the past but it's in a positive way, doing it and
winning work for the future, he says.
The essence of it is to challenge the traditional approaches to lessons learnt you can't dispense with
them.

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But if you actually look at the traditional lessons learnt report, our analysis would suggest that 50 per cent
of the learnings in a traditional lessons learnt report might be nothing more than a veiled, thinly disguised
non-conformance.
You always find the challenges well articulated, but the solution proposed might be difficult for the reader
to comprehend without the context and experience of the project.
Sometimes, if there is no solution, the problem is just passed along.

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www.eeaust.com.au | +61 3 9274 9600 | info@eeaust.com.au