Management of Designs for a Major Motorway Project

3rd Scientific Conference on Project Management, “Clustering in Construction Project Management”, 24-25 September, 2004, Thessaloniki, Greece.

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MANAGEMENT OF DESIGNS FOR A MAJOR MOTORWAY PROJECT

S. Lambropoulos, D. Konstantinidis, F. Antoniou Egnatia Odos A.E., Thessaloniki, Greece

E-mail: [email protected]

ABSTRACT: This paper is a case study on methods employed by the client organization Egnatia Odos A.E. for the successful management and acceleration of the design procedures, required for the construction of the 680 km long Egnatia Motorway project in Greece. A substantial number of national and international design firms have been employed from feasibility phase to definitive design phase to carry out and check the essential design studies for construction of Egnatia Motorway and its vertical axes. As a result, a vast number of contracts were required to be awarded, managed and closed out within a relatively short period, in order to meet funding targets set by the European Union. Keywords – Design Management, Management Structure.

1. INTRODUCTION

Egnatia Motorway is one of the largest civil engineering projects currently under construction in Europe connecting the major cities in Northern Greece, serving five ports and linking six airports. Its main axis is 680 km long and stretches from the port of Igoumenitsa on the Ionian Sea to the town of Kipi at the Greek-Turkish border. Egnatia Motorway is one of the original fourteen priority projects of the European Union and constitutes part of the Trans - European Network for Transport. Its main axis is linked via nine ‘vertical axes’ to other countries in Southeast Europe and connects the Trans - European road network with the Middle East, providing the European Market with access to the East (European Commission, 2001). In Greece this motorway is expected to enhance the cohesion of the regions through which it crosses.

The idea of constructing a major motorway in Northern Greece emerged in the 1970’s, when the first design contracts for reconnaissance and preliminary highway studies were awarded. The 94 km (out of a total 680 km) of the motorway, that were designed and constructed before 1994 by the Greek Ministry of Environment, Physical Planning and Public Works (MEPPPW), were financed purely by government funds, which at that time was both limited and erratic.

The effect of the European Union Community Support Fund on the infrastructure planning philosophy in Greece was significant because, for the first time in its history, the Greek government was allowed the agility to make long term plans for the construction of necessary infrastructure projects as funding could be secured. The €4.6 billion required to construct the remaining 586 km of the main axis is provided from the 2nd and 3rd European Union Community Support Fund, national funds, the European Investment Bank, the Trans-European Network Community Budget as well as the Regional Operational Programmes for Epirus, Macedonia and Thrace. The successful management of such complicated projects as Egnatia Motorway, in order to meet funding targets, necessitated the structuring of new, flexible and modern managing units. For this reason, Egnatia Odos A.E. (EOAE) was established in September 1995, and in February 1997 the responsibility for managing the design, construction, operation and maintenance of the Motorway was officially transferred to EOAE by the Greek MEPPPW, who is the single shareholder of the company. In the nine years of its existence, the management of EOAE has succeeded in amalgamating the science of engineering and the art of management to produce a structural organization capable of realizing a state-of-the-art motorway project that will accelerate significantly the development of Northern Greece, link peripheral regions to the heart of the European Union and open Europe to the neighbouring countries (European Commission, 2002).

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Egnatia Motorway has been designed as a dual two-lane motorway with 50 interchanges, 646 bridges, 138 single bore tunnels and 1210 culverts along its length. Design issues are considered to be the key to the success of the Project, because design and tendering procedures have to be completed at unprecedented speed in order to ensure that funding targets are met.

This paper presents the implementation of modern management techniques within the EOAE Design Department. The purpose of this case study is to present the benefits obtained from the design management techniques and innovations employed for accelerating the design procedures, while staying within time, cost and quality constraints.

2. STRUCTURAL ORGANIZATION

Once the project was chosen as one of the first Trans – European Network for Transport priority projects, the resulting urgency for completion within funding targets of this colossal, technically difficult and high cost project, required a suitable organizational structure to be created with the capacity to improve on the traditional management methods employed by the Greek MEPPPW. To ensure that the transition from public works to private sector management techniques was attained, Kellog-Brown and Root were appointed as project management consultants in 1995. Their initial staff of 37 was integrated into EOAE’s organizational structure to provide guidance on the development of working procedures and transfer of technology within all departments in the Project Directorate, including design, construction, project management and project services.

As all healthy developing companies, the basic organizational structure of EOAE has evolved through its life. Today, the company is split into three Directorates; Operation and Maintenance, Support Service and Project (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Organizational structure of EOAE

The first two Directorates are organized as a hierarchy with functional departments that specialize in a particular type of work. On the other hand, due to the need to balance a dual focus between project completion and state of the art design (Kuprenas, 2003a) and the requirement for strong technical assistance across many design disciplines (El-Najdawi and Liberatore, 1997), the Project Directorate has been set up as a matrix organization made up of three Project Management Departments each referring to a geographical area and two functional departments, i.e. Design and Construction Management. The Project Directorate was set up as a matrix organization in order to manage a portfolio of projects, which altogether make up the Egnatia Motorway Project, in such a way so as to coordinate interfaces and prioritize resources between them (Turner and Muller, 2003). Therefore, the three Project Management Departments refer to a geographical breakdown of the Egnatia Motorway and its vertical axes. Each project manager reports directly to the Project Director and General Manager and has the main responsibility and accountability to achieve time, cost and quality targets for project completion.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

GENERAL MANAGER Legal Service

Operations & Maintenance

Directorate

Support Service

Directorate

Project

Directorate

Project Manager Consultant

Project Management

Department

East and Central

Macedonia and Thrace

Project Management

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West Macedonia

Project Management

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Epirus

Construction

Management

Department

Network Management

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Network Support

Department

Finances Department

Human Resources and

Management Support

Contracts & Project Service

Department

Exploitation

Department Design

Department

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222560147_Implementation_and_performance_of_a_matrix_organization_structure?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-5e9dbc99-2dff-4716-ad10-b5af101615ff&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI2NDk3MjA4OTtBUzoxMzMxMzMyMTEwMTcyMTZAMTQwODc1MjgzOTA2Mg==

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222402297_On_the_Nature_of_the_Project_as_a_Temporary_Organisation?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-5e9dbc99-2dff-4716-ad10-b5af101615ff&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI2NDk3MjA4OTtBUzoxMzMxMzMyMTEwMTcyMTZAMTQwODc1MjgzOTA2Mg==


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The Design Department, in order to ensure that state of the art design is maintained throughout all sections of the project, is made up of eight functional units (disciplines) specialising in building, hydraulics, highway, electromechanical / telematics, structural, tunnel, geotechnical and environmental design (Fig. 2). Each unit provides services to all three Regional Project Management Departments.

The management structure within the Project Directorate ensures that rapid decision making is achieved by developing lines of communication that are the shortest possible between all levels and that people with the most knowledge are available at the source of the problem and have decision making authority and responsibility.

Fig. 2. Organizational structure of the EOAE design department

3. TRADITIONAL DESIGN MANAGEMENT PROCEDURES

The classical management method for public works in Greece was based on the use of the MEPPPW’s internal resources and in some cases the development of special services were set up to manage specific projects using, once again, internal resources. Within the Greek Public Works Law the functions of the Managing Service and the Superior Authority are defined. The Managing Service controls the execution of contracts prepared and awarded by the Superior Authority, but has no power to change, or vary the contracts. The Superior Authority retains all power to award and change contracts in terms of scope, time and cost. It was the Superior Authority, which in the case of the Egnatia Motorway Project was the central office of the MEPPPW that was responsible for awarding design contracts. The procedure for award employed, was according to the Greek Law 716/77 and therefore, was immensely time consuming and in most cases based on an ill-defined scope of work. In addition, the legal method of calculating the design fee was such that the exact value of the design fee could not be defined at the outset, but was directly related to the resulting construction cost of the road section designed. The lack of official design guidelines, led designers to work with different standards based on their own experience, which in some cases even affected the cross-section of the Motorway. Limited public service staff carried out the review procedure. Little co-ordination efforts were made between services and no project information system was available to facilitate work management within the design departments.

4. EOAE DESIGN MANAGEMENT PROCESS

The general alignment of Egnatia Motorway had been laid out by the MEPPPW prior to hand over to EOAE in February 1997. Various sections, especially in the East Region had been designed and construction was underway before EOAE took over, while 94 km had been completed. While keeping to the general alignment and following detailed reviews of the designs handed over by the Ministry, EOAE completed the definitive designs for many sections, but in quite a few cases the designs had to be revisited due to lack of proper geotechnical investigations and evaluations and/or availability of new information. In the region of Epirus, nearly 60 km of the original MEPPPW designed motorway were realigned to cater for dual,

Design M a n a g e r

Buildings

Unit

Highways

Unit

E&M / Telematics

Unit

Structures

Unit

Hydraulics

Unit

Tunnels

Unit

Environment and Green

Unit

Geotechnical

Unit

Head

Coordinator

of West Region

Alternate Manager

for the Vertical Axes

Head

Coordinator

of Vertical Axes

Secretariat

Alternate Manager

for the Main Axis


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instead of single, carriageway construction in order to achieve the required safety standards during operation along lengths of consecutive tunnels, where escape tunnels must be provided and to meet the new traffic loading prediction. Other sections have been realigned in order to achieve more cost effective solutions due to extensive geotechnical problems along the original alignment or restrictions enforced by environmental and archaeological issues.

Throughout its nine year life, EOAE's design department’s engineering staff was responsible for managing over 900 design contracts of total value over 190 M€ and carrying out over 12000 technical reviews. As seen in Fig. 3, the structures, tunnels and geotechnical units produced over half these reviews. These figures alone demonstrate the necessity for developing acceleration methods for the award, design and checking procedure and building a flexible organizational structure that employs modern management methods that have been proven to increase the probability of design success (Savido et al. 1990, Jaselskis and Ashley 1991, Anderson and Tucker, 1994).

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Fig. 3. Number of technical reviews carried out by EOAE design department

4.1 Organizational Structure of the Design Department

The Design Department, the largest in the company, is the Managing Service for all design and check consultancy contracts and consists of 59 members of staff within eight disciplines; architecture, highways, hydraulics, geotechnics, structures, tunnels, electrical & mechanical/telematics, and environmental engineering. Engineers in each unit (discipline) are called upon to play a dual role, that of a technical reviewer and contract supervisor carrying out technical reviews of design submissions and running the daily management of the design contracts, which includes the organization of design meetings, progress reporting, tools that have been shown to be effective in reducing design phase costs (Kuprenas, 2003b). Each supervisor has a desk officer to assist him in the day-to-day management of his contract. All units have a functional responsibility to ensure that a unified technical base is maintained and that all available information can be exchanged for each project, while each unit head refers to the Regional Head Coordinator, relevant Alternate Design Manager and the Design Manager. The unit heads, as line managers, have the obligation to provide technical direction to their functional staff and to keep them updated in the latest technical accomplishments, by transfer of knowledge and encouraging participation in national as well as international committees, conferences and seminars. The design process has been successful as there is a good relationship between the project managers and line managers (Unit Heads), who directly assign resources to the projects and because the functional employees within each unit have the ability to report horizontally to their line managers at the same time that they report vertically to one or more project managers (Kerzner, 1998).

4.2 Design Guidelines and Standardization

An early requirement for the design department was the production of a design standards manual incorporating the latest standard details and design specifications. To this end,


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standardised Design Guidelines, the OSMEO were created. This two-volume document (1000 pages) contains among others information on criteria, specifications, design stages, deliverables per stage for all types of designs relevant to construction of the project. The OSMEO is a standardised and controlled document under constant review. Up to date, there have been three revisions of this document, which has also been used as a basis for developing national design guidelines. The application of OSMEO permits maintenance of uniform standards throughout all designs, as compliance of designs with OSMEO is obligatory and any deviation there from must be justified and approved. In addition to OSMEO, another standardised document, the OSAT was developed, which contains the design and construction requirements for environmental protection and restoration. This document is the first of its kind nationwide and was developed in order to set guidelines for all environmental issues at the time when the first environmental protection laws came into force.

Throughout the entire length of Egnatia Motorway, more than 1000 culverts of less than 6 m spans and numerous retaining walls are being constructed. Even though these structures do not present significant technical difficulty, they are key to maintaining good progress during construction as their completion is always at the top of the overall construction schedules. In order to accelerate the design procedure of such structures, standard culvert designs and retaining wall designs were created. These standard designs have greatly reduced the required design and review time, as the adaptation of the standard design to local conditions is the only requirement and checking of this adaptation is carried out by the Construction Manager on-site, allowing the approval procedure to be completed quickly and detailed drawings for construction to be readily available.

The OSMEO and OSAT design guidelines and the standard designs for culverts and retaining walls permitted a systematic approach to defining detailed Scopes of Works for designers, which simplified the approval procedures, as all engineering staff were trained to review submissions based on the requirements defined in the Scopes of Work and the guidelines.

4.3 Award procedures

Having defined the requirements that would lead to acceleration in the approval procedures, innovations were made to accelerate the award procedures. Two award procedures are employed to procure design contracts; international competitions and closed competitions depending on the contract value. For contract values greater than €200.000, international open competitions based on the Council Directive 92/50/EEC (1992) are carried out. For smaller value contracts and based on article 6 of the Greek Law 1418/84, EOAE is justified in proceeding to the direct award of the necessary design contracts to technically capable design firms. Nevertheless, in order to enhance competitiveness small closed competitions between three or more qualified design firms are carried out.

Due to the strict time schedules in order to meet targets set and funding constraints, international competitions were held for a series of call up contracts for all eight disciplines to minimize the time required for contract award for both the above procedures. In this way, following one major competition for each discipline, required design activities are assigned to those designers with relevant call up contracts via work instructions, thus saving a significant amount of time and allowing instant responses in case of emergency.

Irrespective of the method of award, EOAE was the first public client organization in Greece to award design contracts based on lump sum design fees. According the Greek law the design fee is calculated in most cases as a percentage of the construction cost of the particular element being designed. As a result, an incentive was developed for designers to produce designs of more expensive structures rather than the most cost efficient. For this reason the policies employed for calculating design fees is based upon methods of estimating the final construction cost prior to award of design, thereby calculating a fixed lump sum design fee at the time of award.


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4.4 Accelerating Geotechnical Investigation Procedures

The initial stage of the design of a section of the motorway includes the execution of complete geotechnical investigations and evaluations of the results for the determination of the required ground parameters for the design of the foundations of structures, the definition of gradients for cut and fill slopes, the determination of the quality of pavement foundations and the definition of the attributes of any required borrow materials. Therefore, an essential part of the design procedure is the planning, execution, supervision and evaluation of geotechnical investigations carried out by geotechnical contractors. This stage of the design process had proven to be significantly time consuming in the early years due to delays in the availability of drilling rigs as a result of lengthy contractual procedures, bad weather conditions or lack of proper supervision. To improve on this situation, a system was developed by which the drilling of boreholes and lab testing is carried out by geotechnical contractors based on programmes designed and supervised by geotechnical designers.

To date, 160 contracts have been awarded to geotechnical call up contractors, who were instructed to carry out over 400 investigation programmes at relatively short notice, thus eliminating the required time for contract award procedures. A work instruction to a call up geotechnical contractors is issued as soon as a programme of geotechnical investigation is submitted by a geotechnical designer and approved by the design department. The geotechnical designer is then responsible for supervising the on-site work, informing the design department supervisor of any delay, evaluating the results and defining the relevant ground parameters to be used in the definitive designs of the motorway.

4.5 Design approval procedure

The reviews of submitted designs carried out by the Design Department’s staff or external design managers ensure that the OSMEO Guidelines are adhered to, the relevant codes of practice are employed and sound engineering principles are implemented with durability, future maintenance and whole life cost in mind. These reviews take into consideration the comments submitted by both independent design checkers employed for the detailed checking of structures and tunnels, as well as comments on constructability submitted by the construction management teams. In all cases, final approval of construction drawings is given by the Design Department and relevant Regional Project Managers.

The concept of independent design checking in Greece is in its childhood, as it has only been implemented since the early 1990’s originally for the Major Transport Projects in the Prefecture of Attica (1990-95) and then for the designs of the Patra, Athens, Thessaloniki, motorway. Previously, all checks of designs for public work projects were carried out by Public Services staff. EOAE strongly supported this concept and employed national and international design firms following international competition to carry out detailed checking of bridge, non-standard culvert and tunnel designs. These companies have sufficient experience commensurate with the work to be checked and are required, among others, to evaluate design assumptions, calculations, computer model simulations and detailed construction drawings.

Each detailed design to be implemented for construction is also reviewed by the Construction Manager with respect to constructability, actual site conditions, cost and time implications and compliance with the technical conditions of the construction contract.

4.6 Outsourcing and External Experts

As the scope of work for EOAE expanded from the management of the main axis to include the design management of its vertical axes and in order not to overburden the design department, it became necessary to outsource the technical and contractual management of the vertical axes designs. As a result, External Design Managers (EDM) were employed for the necessary management, technical reviews and preparation of tender documents. The EDM’s have completed over 1400 reviews to date. As the workload for the main axis diminishes,


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design review and management responsibilities for the vertical axes is gradually returning to in-house engineers.

Finally, a number of complex engineering difficulties due in most cases to geological – geotechnical situations have been overcome by seeking the advice of European and other International experts, who have provided their expertise and technical know-how both in terms of design and construction, thus supporting technological transfer to domestic engineers.

4.7 Project Information System – Document Management

Among project management requirements is the implementation of methodologies for planning, scheduling and control. Though computers cannot replace attributes such as leadership abilities, communication skills and motivation, they can support many aspects of project management due to their capability to store, retrieve and process large quantities of data (Shtub et al., 1994). The Project Services department has developed project information systems as tools for strategic management of the project, by which time-schedules and budgets of design and construction contracts are monitored. In terms of design management two such tools have been developed. The first is a Project Information System by which all design contracts are registered with details including designer, contract duration, budget, and relevant geographical sections. This PIS System also includes such details for all design and geotechnical investigation call-up contracts including details for each work instruction issued and payments made. The PIS system is linked to Primavera Project Planner in which time schedules for every design contract are set up based on milestones delivery dates defined in the contract. All design schedules are linked together in the Master Schedule and are updated on a regular basis. These systems provide clear, reliable and justified information to all management levels within the company, while allowing departures from the schedule to be spotted and remedied quickly.

Another significant information management system that has been developed to support resource management in the Design Department is the design submissions management system that is carried out by the Document Control Department. An electronic Document Management System has been developed to monitor the daily approval process. The software employed in this process is Expedition developed by Primavera Systems Inc. The Project Managers, the Design Manager and Unit Heads are informed of every submission allowing planning of the work to be efficiently achieved. On a weekly basis, the Project Managers and the Design Manager are informed by Document Control of those submissions for which the review is outstanding. At any time the review/approval status of each study is controlled and delays in approval are avoided.

4.8 Quality Assurance

As part of the overall Quality Assurance System implemented, a series of 9 Operational Procedures and 5 Work Instructions govern the design management process within the Project Directorate. Both internal and external audits are carried out in order to verify the effectiveness of the Quality Assurance System. On a regular basis, internal auditors carry out audits within the Project Directorate while technical audits of the Design Department have been carried out by an independent International Consultancy firm.

5. CONCLUSIONS

The methods developed for design management, including techniques and innovations for accelerating design procedures to meet limited time constraints, are presented and the efficiency of these procedures, some of which are introduced in public works in Greece for the first time, has proven to be very satisfactory. This is justified by the fact that a number of these methods are in the process of being adopted nationwide by Public Works Authorities and no


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failures have occurred during construction due to design shortcomings. The benefits resulting from their application can be summarised as follows:

The implementation of a matrix organizational structure within the Project Directorate has promoted the development of a strong functional Design Department with state-of-the-art technical know-how, which supports the Project Management Departments not only in the design phase but also in the case of construction complications.

The introduction of call up contracts for all disciplines of the Design Department have significantly reduced the time required to assign design work to competent designers.

The award of call up contracts to geotechnical investigation contractors and the requirement for geotechnical designers to supervise borehole drilling and testing have significantly reduced geotechnical design time, which are at the top of the design time schedule.

The implementation of the EOAE’s design guidelines, the OSMEO and the OSAT, as well as the standardisation of culverts and retaining walls have promoted uniformity in design performance and significantly reduced the review time required.

The employment of external consultants to carry out technical reviews, independent checking and management of designs resulted in optimised productivity of human resources.

The project information system, in combination with Primavera Project Planner and the electronic Document Management System, provide immediate access to design information and facilitates effective planning of the works.

The Quality Assurance System employed ensures that the quality of the designs ultimately implemented meet state-of-the-art standards.

6. REFERENCES

Anderson, S. D. and Tucker, R. L., 1994, Improving project management of design, Journal of Management in Engineering, 1994, Vol. 10, No 4, pp 35-44.

Council of the European Communities, 1992, Council Directive 92/50/EEC, Official Journal L 209, 1992.

El-Najdawi, M. K. and Liberatore, M. J.,1997, Matrix management effectiveness: an update for research and engineering organizations, Project Management Journal, 1997, Vol. 28, No 1, pp 25-31.

European Commission, 2001, White Paper - European Transport Policy for 2010: Time to Decide, Luxembourg: European Communities, 2001.

European Commission, 2002, Trans-European Transport Network TEN-T Priority Projects, Luxembourg: European Communities, 2002.

Jaselskis, E. J. and Ashley, D. B., 1991, Optimal allocation of project management resources for achieving success, Journal of Construction Engineering Management, 1991, Vol. 117, No 2, pp 321-340.

Kerzner, H., 1998, Project Management – A Systems approach to planning, scheduling and controlling, New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1998.

Kuprenas, J. A., 2003a, Implementation and performance of a matrix organization structure, International Journal of Project Management, 2003, 21, pp 51-62.

Kuprenas, J. A., 2003b, Project management actions to improve design phase cost performance, Journal of Management in Engineering, 2003, Vol. 19, No 1, pp 25-32.

Savido, V., Grobler, F., Parfitt, K. Coyle, M., Guvenis, M. and Coyle, M., 1990, Critical success factors for construction projects, Journal of Construction Engineering Management, 1990, Vol. 118, No 1, pp 94-111.

Shtub, A., Bard, J. F. and Globerson, S., 1994, Project Management – Engineering, Technology and Implementation, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall Inc, 1994.

Turner, J. R. and Muller, R., 2003, On the nature of the project as a temporary organization, International Journal of Project Management, 2003, 21, pp 1-8.

Documents

Management of Designs for a Major Motorway Project