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Tom Sparrow is a successful, seasoned, and certified executive project manager. He has successfully led numerous infrastructure projects in Yukon, British Columbia, and Nunavut. He is also the chief project officer of the $606.2M Cdn North Hospitals PPP project.
Aside from serving as project director and chief project officer for other multi-million dollar projects, Tom also provides advisory services to Canada’s auditor general. In addition, he also gives expert guidance and support to other Canadian provincial and territorial agencies as well as private sector healthcare companies.
If you want to understand how goals are managed in large infrastructure projects, tune in. Tom not only shared wisdom and practical field experiences, he also shared expert insights as well as valuable advice for leaders of large infrastructure projects.
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Read the Transcript Here:
Welcome to the Construction Goals Podcast, where industry experts and leaders reveal the good, bad, and ugly about strategic planning. I’m your host, Santosh. We will dive into the who, what, when, and how of goal setting in construction projects. Most importantly, why you should care. Whether you’re a seasoned leader or a budding entrepreneur, you’ll discover something new in each episode about how to manage goals better in the challenging world of architecture, engineering, and construction. Let’s get started.
Santosh: So, I’m honored and delighted to be speaking with Tom Sparrow who has had a very distinguished career in the healthcare construction industry, spanning nearly forty years. Tom has led several large healthcare infrastructure projects in Canada and has served as a chief project officer for several multi-billion dollar hospital projects. Most recently, a $1.4 billion Royal Colombian Hospital redevelopment project in British Colombia. Tom is a certified project manager, holds an MSC in health information sciences and an MBA, so I’m really looking forward to diving into his wisdom and practical field experiences as we start to understand how goals are managed in large construction projects. Tom, thank you so much for joining us this morning.
Tom: Santosh, thank you so much for inviting me.
Santosh: I have so many questions for you, but first, can you please tell us what the role of a chief project officer entails?
Tom: Boy, that’s actually a question that I’m often asked when I speak across the country. I would say as in your opening, one of the key components is probably spending about forty years in many different industries and essentially dealing with people. It’s all about people and quite frankly, even though I have a vast academic background, I am directly relying on significant team members to oversee their particular area within a project. So, the analogy I always like to use is that I juggle many balls that are in the air, whether they’re architects or engineers or lawyers, accountants, politicians, clinicians, physicians, nurses, etc. I’m really relying on these folks to do the best they can and of course, I’m there to support them to the best of my ability and ensure that we maximize on return from not only them but the work that they devote to that particular project and to their fellow team members.
Santosh: That sounds like a really interesting combination of multiple disciplines there. I heard construction, project management, healthcare, even government, and, you know, how does that combination affect the strategic planning process? What have you observed?
Tom: It’s so multifaceted, as you just outlined the diversity of stakeholders that are involved and are part of the conceptual design, development, construction, and then operations of these multi-billion dollar infrastructure objects obviously impacts essentially every way of life in these projects that we are actively engaged in managing and delivering our legacy projects and so these projects are directly impacting a community, they’re impacting the folks that live and work in that community, they’re involved with the people that are actually working within the facility itself and, of course, these massive legacy infrastructure projects are there for an extended period of time. One of the things I always mention to our team is that we are not designing out, twenty, thirty, or forty years from now. When we spend billions of dollars in an infrastructure project, it’s a legacy project and it will be there for well over a hundred years so there are a lot of ideas, concepts, issues, challenges that need to be overcome to ensure that we deliver the best possible facility or infrastructure depending on what we’re designing and building for that community, for that state or province, and, of course, for the country.
Santosh: Fantastic, let’s look at some of the projects can you use some specific examples? I’d love to understand how you’ve worked with your teams and how you’ve approached strategic planning and goal setting, how often is it done, who gets involved, what it typically looks like in the projects that you’ve been on?
Tom: You know, it’s interesting but when I hear you speak of strategic planning, objectives, goals, etc., a lot of that literally comes down to the performance of each individual and how they’re integrated and directly related to each other as we build and design these projects. Quite frankly, I think it begins right from the get go, the sort of goals and objectives, the guiding principles, the design guidelines that are directly related to these large projects is something that constantly needs to be monitored. Our team members from the front end, the skilled tradespeople, all the way up through your middle managers to your senior directors and then up into the C-suite. Everyone needs to be cognizant and fully aware of what the end goal is in order to reach it. There are guiding principles and specific strategic objectives that need to be clearly identified and developed at the initial creation or incubation of the project which need to be constantly monitored and, quite frankly, I also find individuals need to be reminded of those as you evolve through each phase and stage of a project.
Santosh: Absolutely, that’s a pretty broad cross section of levels and people and maybe even geographies, right? So, how have you typically communicated goals across that group?
Tom: Well, in years past and as you said I’ve been at this for a while, unfortunately, many years ago it was rarely communicated and, of course, we worked in what I and most people would have referred to as a command and control system so we’re very much top down. Over the evolution of my career, I have seen a change and, of course, recently with the introduction of digitization or electronics through IMIT, we have the ability now to more effectively utilize some tools that even five to ten years ago didn’t even exist, so there’s a couple of things happening. It’s an interesting industry today. The industry is changing. There’s a lot more demands. There’s many, many more infrastructure projects that are becoming public and in the initiatives that are underway today across North America and, quite frankly, throughout the world, there’s significantly more projects out there than there were in the past but unfortunately, from a skilled trades knowledge experience level I’m seeing a significant decline in the availability of experience and knowledgeable individuals. Now, when you combine that with what the focus of today’s topic is; development and alignment of strategic objectives and goals, it’s even more important and imperative that we ensure that we have appropriate processes in play for us to be able to effectively develop, manage/monitor, and then deliver on those. What I’ve seen over the last twenty to thirty years is definitely a movement towards more effectively developing and delivering these strategic objectives and goals, but in the same breath, there are fewer experienced people available today that understand and recognize that. There’s a huge educational component involved in ensuring that the right folks across the border are very much aware of the intention, the objectives and goals, and the reasoning behind why we want to reach out and ensure that all team members are very familiar and aware of the positive benefits around the effective development, monitoring, and delivery of those goals and objectives.
Santosh: I want to step back for a minute and just put it in context I also saw this in your background what is a PPP project? Not everyone may be aware of what makes it unique for what we’re talking about now?
Tom: Around the world today, there are two countries in particular I would say that have done a fairly good job of developing and delivering public-private partnerships which is what PPP stands for. Another term we use which aligns with a lot of our other project methodology is DBFM or “design, build, partially finance and maintain.” You can also get a DBFMO which is similar, “design, build, finance, maintain and then operate,” but essentially what the intent there is versus say a regular design-build or a design-build-finance or a construction-managed project is there is a significant risk that’s put on the private sector to effectively design and build a large facility and then not only do they design and build it and partially finance the project but there’s also a component around managing that facility from usually a combination of hard FM or hard facilities management and then possibly soft FM as well over a specific period of time, which usually runs around thirty years. On the financial side, normally 40 percent of the financing on the construction part of the project is redeemed or paid to the constructor or the design builder through the construction period but the remaining 60 percent is actually divided over that thirty-year period as well so once the project, from a construction standpoint has been completed, there is that thirty-year period where the design builder or larger group that is made up of design builders, your hard FM, your finance folks, your architects and engineers, who actually develop an organization referred to as project co which would then manage that thirty-year activation period and they receive a monthly payment that is a combination of return on that 60 percent capital plus the hard and soft FM cost that they’ve calculated in over that thirty-year period, so these projects are no longer a five- to eight-year period which might normally be associated with a multi-billion dollar infrastructure project but they’re also including the hard FM component and the management of that facility or that infrastructure for that extended thirty-year period of time.
Santosh: So, given that time-frame and again complexity in managing all those stakeholders, I’m curious to understand what are some of the challenges that you’ve observed in the goal setting and alignment process? Do you typically see any kind of awareness that there has to be some consistency of goals over that long of a time-frame or are people just changing and therefore context is shifting as well?
Tom: Well, I think it’s a combination thereof Santosh. One of the things that happens of course is you have the owner who is essentially kick starting and is the source of the development of the project and you have their strategic objectives and goals because at the end of the day, they are very keen to ensure that their business plan and their strategic objectives are directly aligned with the design, development, and the operation of that facility. But on the private sector side, of course, they themselves have their own strategic goals and objectives and those are, again, like the owner representatives typically based on a five-year long-term lookout. They’re not really based much longer than a five-year period so if you’ve got a project that between design, construction and operations is running somewhere between thirty-five to forty years that’s an extended period of time. Things happen over time in companies, organizations, people and the culture within those organizations. Their strategic objectives and goals are going to evolve as the company evolves to obviously deal with whatever the issues are at hand over that period of time. I wouldn’t say they’re constantly changing but they’re constantly evolving and it is very important that all of the stakeholders that are directly related to that project over that period of time are kept aware and abreast of the existing strategic objectives and goals and obviously involved with the development and the evolution of those objectives and goals over that extended period of time.
Santosh: So, I’m curious to understand given that context and maybe even looking at some of the specific projects that you’ve run, what are some challenges on the ground that you’ve seen within this process?
Tom: Well, I think we can easily focus on people because at the end of the day it’s the people that are going to make the difference. The mindsets of the people, the education, the knowledge of those individuals and their awareness of the culture, strategic objectives and goals of the company in the organization and the initiative itself as these large projects take on a mind of their own in a sense and the individuals that are involved in these projects need to be aware of all of those parameters. I do think that there’s significant pressure because of some of the issues that we’ve just addressed have an impact on the effective delivery of many of those strategic objectives and goals but as I said earlier, I do believe that there’s a huge opportunity with the digitization of integrated technology that will enable many organizations and their stakeholders to be more clearly aware and abreast of what the evolution of those objectives and goals are and the changes in their ability to directly participate in the development and further enhancement of those strategic objectives and goals over time as well.
Santosh: So, one of the things I’m really trying to get to through these conversations is to really get down to the brass tacks of the difference between a construction project with well-managed and cascaded goals and another where goals are not so well managed. Let’s try to look at maybe two scenarios, in the first if you could think back to a project where you did see a lot of alignment from the top levels down to the field workers, tell us about the situation. What did you observe, what do you think and what are the factors that’s contributed to it?
Tom: Alright, I think I’ll start with the negative one if you don’t mind?
Santosh: Okay.
Tom: I’ve got some great examples. These large infrastructure projects involve hundreds, if not thousands, of companies and individuals that are directly associated with the projects. They also attract many companies, not only from a regional level but quite frankly national and when you’re into the billions with international organizations the key denominator there is the varying cultures that one experiences or comes into play with when you’re dealing with international firms. Unfortunately, or fortunately, we all recognize our own set of cultures and beliefs that directly impact the successful effective delivery of a project, and so a good example I would use is in Canada. We’ve had numerous companies from Europe come over with their past experience and knowledge and the size of these organizations. They’ve been involved in the delivery of healthcare facilities in many parts of Canada, and unfortunately I find that, at times they bring with them baggage from previous projects or from a culture from their origin, their company of origin, but, unfortunately I find that the way we do business here in Canada or the way we do business in the United States is somewhat different than it could be in other parts of the world. I’m not denying or saying that what they’re doing is wrong but it’s different and because of that there is a clash between. I find their international executives usually have come from that particular country and then the folks that they’ve brought on is their executive in Canada and so you get this disconnect with some of these companies because they are not recognizing and respecting, I think, the business core values of a particular country.
Santosh: Wow.
Tom: I think that can have a huge impact then on the relationships that are then developed through the owner representatives and, of course, I represent the owner and I have a fairly large project management office/team that need to work hand in hand very closely with these individuals over many, many years in order to initially design and develop these projects and, of course, through construction and then into operation. So, again, you want to ensure that the values, the beliefs, the culture of organizations align with the delivery of that particular service. Now, the other interesting point in a public-private partnership is just that. We are expecting our private sector organizations to understand the importance of delivering public infrastructure to our citizens and we all recognize the importance of a profit for the private sector, it’s absolutely critical to the longevity of that organization, but you certainly cannot do that overnight and it needs to be fair for all organizations. I’m finding, specifically here in Canada because we’ve been doing public-private partnerships largely in Ontario and British Columbia for about the last twenty-three years, there’s been a significant learning and understanding and awareness of our private sector partners of how important it is for their teams right from the front end, their skilled trades right up through to the C-suite executives that are managing these large projects in Canada that they become very aware of the importance of that aspect as well. It’s no longer just “get in there, build it as quickly as you can with the minimum engineering and materials and get out,” because in a public-private partnership there is what we refer to “skin in the game”. They are design builders and need to ensure that their architects and engineers are not overbuilding but it’s equally important that they’re not under-engineering or under-designing the facility because they will be responsible in carrying the risk of ensuring that facility is effectively managed over that thirty-year operating period so it puts a lot more on us with these international firms to recognize how important the relationships are with all of the various stakeholders both public and private in designing, developing, and delivering these massive infrastructure projects.
Santosh: So, in those kinds of scenarios where apparently the stakes are pretty high, have you observed a lack of alignment because of these different experiences that have come together, like you’re saying, the baggage which people are bringing in, have you actually seen an actual breakdown in alignment?
Tom: There’s a couple examples and I won’t list any names specifically but there were a couple of projects. A large healthcare project in eastern Canada and then a very large hydroelectric project in the Atlantic that were both involving international firms. The consequences of what entailed I believe were lawsuits in excess of $500 million in each case. Many lessons learned. I believe some of them are still in court today but I do believe that if they had the right people with a good understanding of core values and effective communication with all stakeholders they could’ve resolved many of the unfortunate issues that have come about of the results of those two particular projects.
Santosh: So you actually feel that if there were some perhaps additional effort or formality of a communication framework and alignment that a lot of that loss could have been avoided?
Tom: I think, again it comes down to people and effective communication at all levels and very much cross functional and a combination of horizontal & vertical. It is these projects, these large infrastructure projects that are incredibly complex, involving numerous contractors and subcontractors and owner representatives. In a healthcare environment your clinicians, your physicians, your various departments and team etc. all of them need to be carefully and effectively managed in ensuring that the appropriate information, including understanding what the design principles are, the guiding principles are of the project and ensuring that everyone is aligned in essentially rowing and steering in the same direction. Absolutely critical.
Santosh: So if we were to drill down a little bit on this in terms of tactical detail how have you seen goals being tracked to completion and what have you seen work well or what are some challenges you’ve observed about tracking goals to completion?
Tom: I think it’s a huge gap and I don’t believe quite frankly that they have been effectively managed from a combination of both the development and then the monitor and manage and then, of course, the tweaking of them if necessary as the projects evolve. I think we’re lacking in that area significantly and I think it’s a huge opportunity for all organizations to actually effectively engage and take ownership of the benefits from that for organizations, their staff, their performance and the reputation of the company. The ability to both retain staff and of course attract new staff even to the point where the opportunity for companies to obtain more work through better performance exemplified by providing tools such as these from my perspective as a chief project officer representing owners on these large infrastructure projects, these are the type of programs and systems in a compliance-based management that I’m looking for when we go out through request for qualifications and through our RP processes to award these large projects to our private sector partners.
Santosh: So, if you were to look at that ability to track a goal to completion assuming it’s been defined and you assimilate learning after that period of work is done, and if you were to look across some of the projects that you’ve been involved in on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being really, really well done and 1 being nothing at all, where do you see these large infrastructure projects sitting in terms of the ability to track goals to completion and assimilate learning from that goal setting exercise?
Tom: I think it’s really an evolution through time. I think we’ve improved as time’s gone on for many of the reasons we’ve discussed previously. I don’t believe that we are effectively managing and monitoring many of these objectives and goals as well as we could today because I think we’re still searching for the right tools, but I think, beyond that, there’s an educational component, an awareness component that is missing as well so if individuals at the C-suite level are not familiar with many of the issues that we have talked about today they’re not going to be aware of the need to implement something at this level and I think that’s probably the most important key issue right now so back to your question, I think there’s a massive gap right now. I also find that the politics can play a role in this. A lot of times we only like to promote the positive aspects of what we’ve accomplished and unfortunately that really is the wrong approach. I mean, we learn more from our mistakes many times than we do through the positive work that we’ve conducted, so lessons learned. It’s absolutely critical that we share all and not to point fingers but, you and I know there’s an old analogy out there today; why would I want to let you go after you’ve cost a firm a million or two million dollars? We’ve just spent a million or two million on those mistakes as a company so we need to constantly evaluate our performance and ensure our goals and objectives have been implemented and aligned within a particular project, and from that, I would hope that we’d also then be able to share those lessons learned, those insights, those nuggets that have been created through the evolution of a project with other organizations in order to ensure that they themselves are not possibly making some of the same mistakes or making those critical management decisions that lead them down that road. Again, the ability to seek out and identify what those issues are has also been lacking. I know there’s some focus on the development of that as we speak based on our learning over the last twenty to thirty years, if not longer, but I do believe we’re still at a point in time where there is so much more that could be done and it will need to be done with individuals that are aware of what these issues are in order for them to be able to develop the appropriate processes, tools, programs, initiatives to support which I believe would be a very positive ability for a project to become more positive and more contributory towards the effective development of projects moving forward.
Santosh: So, if we were to look at it and we can do this kind of in a rapid-fire way again, but let’s look at four different activities, right? There’s goal setting, then there’s communicating through the organization, tracking to closure, and then lessons learned, as you put it. If you were to close your eyes and do a current state on a scale of 1 to 10 for goal setting in the projects that you’ve seen for healthcare infrastructure, what would you say it’s current state is?
Tom: I would say, on a scale of 1 to 10, it’s probably pushing about a 7.
Santosh: What about communicating out to different levels?
Tom: This is where it’s interesting. As you ask these questions, I think it’s going to decrease so I would say that the goal setting itself initially is probably about a 7, the communicating out, I would say is dropping to about a 5.
Santosh: And tracking to closure?
Tom: I would drop that to about a 2.
Santosh: Interesting. And lessons learned, even lower?
Tom: I would lower it to a 1, if not even less. To me that’s where the frustration lies. Individuals need to clearly and better understand the benefits from that and I know in healthcare, we are working towards close-to-occupancy evaluation and it’s something that we will go out and spend billions of dollars on these new designs but we’re not following up to ensure that these new designs and processes are meeting the needs of our clinicians and patient-staff safety. It’s a huge area that needs to be focused on obviously those close-to-occupancy evaluations will be based on your original strategic objectives, your goals, your guiding principles, design guidelines, and obviously direct consultation with the individuals that are going to be working and delivering care in these hospitals. It’s something that has been clearly lacking in Canada and I actually think that the government in the United States has put some requirements in to benefit that because they themselves recognize that it was lacking so it’s a huge area where I believe we could clearly show some benefits, and from that, build on those lessons learned to ensure that projects going forward are being not only more effectively managed but more successful to the delivery of whatever that particular service or industry might be.
Santosh: You’re a pretty tough grader, Tom, because the highest grade you gave there was a C- and then there was a series of F’s and then the last two categories are not even showing up for the test.
Tom: I’ll be honest with you, Santosh, I have seen a project and again I wasn’t a part of it but directly involved in. I heard a lot of things about projects but there was a complete lessons learned done but the issues that they identified were so negative that the report disappeared. Now somebody has put a lot of time and teams have put a lot of time and effort into developing that report but the benefits we could have all gained from that are massive. A lot of people take these projects very personally and I of course feel the same but this reinventing the wheel or making/creating the same issues over and over has got to go. We’ve got to reduce that and I think that the only way we can is by sharing through that information and aligning it as you had outlined with the original objectives around strategic objectives and goals, development of them, the communication of them, the managing of them, and, of course, then the lessons learned from it. Those four principles are so critical to the long-term future of any large infrastructure project and should be shared within your colleagues and your network in a particular area. We’re so well connected internationally these days through the internet that I can keep an eye on a project in Australia or over in Denmark or Abu Dhabi or wherever it might be and they feel the same so my colleagues today are not just in a state or province my colleagues can be anywhere in the world delivering effective design and care and they need to be very much kept abreast of our learning and lessons learned, as I should be from theirs as well.
Santosh: Right. There’s clearly some tangible benefits that these large projects can realize in moving those 2’s and 3’s, even up to a 4 or a 5 or a 6 or a 7, right? And what I’m thinking is that there are so many goal setting frameworks and real wisdom out there but there just doesn’t seem to be enough adoption awareness. I’m curious to hear more about how you feel about the lack of education or awareness and what leaders and project managers really need to actively implement for a mature, goal-setting framework in their teams?
Tom: I think the first thing is the awareness and if you don’t know the right questions to ask and understand where you are today, it’s very hard for anybody to recognize what they need to do to go forward. So, without question, that for me would be the most important issue is somehow educating and sharing the values from the development of what we’ve described today. I do think that the other issue, of course, is we have a lot of folks retiring in all levels and we have individuals that are being moved into positions today with very little experience for that particular area just because of lack of people. Again, they need to be clearly educated and supported in order for them to better understand what those issues are and some of the solutions or options available to them in their organization to more effectively manage these large infrastructure projects. The other thing I find is a lot of times in these industries, you have the raison d’etre of that organization. What they’re focusing on, whether you’re in airports or you’re in banking or if you’re in healthcare your goal and your focus largely is on the delivery of whatever that service might be. It’s not on designing and building the infrastructure that is required to more effectively deliver what it is that you’re delivering. So there’s that huge component there where there is a potential gap in not having the right individuals part of your organization that understand the integration of infrastructure into that particular service delivery model that you’re involved with, and that in itself is a huge potential gap that could have a huge impact on your ability to more effectively deliver the services that you are delivering within the industry that the organization works in. There’s a number of components that I think are missing that somehow we need to close those gaps to ensure that the individuals at the C-suite level are aware of those gaps and that they have the right tools and the right understanding and the right processes in play to close those gaps in order to ensure success, not only for the development of that particular piece of infrastructure, but also through that piece of infrastructure the delivery of the programs and services that they are responsible for delivering.
Santosh: Absolutely. So, lastly, Tom what advice would you have for leaders of such large infrastructure projects?
Tom: I think it’s imperative that they keep an open mind. I think they need to consult with organizations such as your own. I think they need to be very much cognizant of the new technologies that are out there today that will be able to provide the appropriate and right processes. Look at various programs and services to tighten up these gaps and remove some of these gaps and actually help them and all of their C-suite representatives and then from that the many, many different individuals that are directly associated with the delivery of that particular organization’s services towards the effective delivery of an infrastructure project. It’s imperative that they keep an open mind and they recognize that we’re constantly in a continuous learning environment and that things are moving very quickly and technology especially. The design and development of new software systems from my perspective, has grown just geometrically in the last seven or eight years and it’s actually I think increasing more quickly now than it was seven to ten years ago. Some of us are seeing what those benefits are, are recognizing where those gaps were, and understanding and recognizing that technology will enable us to close those gaps and if you don’t do that, if you don’t embrace the new processes and technology and systems I believe that you potentially, your organization and even industry in some regards could become redundant and to me it’s not a fact of a need it’s a necessity to ensure that you engage the right individuals with a clear understanding of what those opportunities and benefits would be in order to ensure success for your organization and then, I guess from my perspective, ensure the success of the particular infrastructure project that you’re focusing on.
Santosh: Tom, it’s been an absolute pleasure to speak with you this morning. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and practical experience. I’ve definitely learned a lot and I’m sure our audience will also find several helpful pearls in this conversation. Thank you so much.
Tom: Always a pleasure, Santosh. Thank you.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Construction Goals Podcast. I’d love to hear about your experience with goals and strategic planning, or answering questions you may have after listening to the show. You can e-mail me at santosh@goalcheck.in, or visit www.GoalCheck.in to submit any feedback or questions. I look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks for listening!
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Construction Goals Podcast. I’d love to hear about your experience with goals and strategic planning, or answering questions you may have after listening to the show. You can e-mail me at santosh@goalcheck.in, or visit www.GoalCheck.in to submit any feedback or questions. I look forward to hearing from you.
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