Colliers Project Leaders has been working with the City of Prince George to look at ways to improve how the City starts, manages, and ends major projects that it takes on.
The organization finished up phase one of their process, where they combed through over 400 documents by the City, compared Prince George to other cities like Red Deer, Nanaimo, Kamloops, Thunder Bay, and Kelowna, and interviewed 45 staff members.
They shared their findings during Monday’s City Council Meeting, and Arun Narayanan with Colliers says there are many areas the City can improve.
“So the first and foremost point a more structured approach is required when it comes to project planning, delivery, and oversight. And also coordination and communication with internal land stakeholders, and that is completely lacking, and it can be addressed,” said Narayanan.
Narayanan said Phase 2 will include building a council policy, an operating manual, and training.
Councillor Cori Ramsay said this move is all part of issues they recognized in the past.
“I will say this project initially came about because of various issues with capital projects, mainly the parkade. We did recognize there were issues with the delegated authority, and we did fix that.”
Narayanan said a Capital Project Management Framework will need to be implemented that will give staff clear administrative responsibilities and ownership for program delivery.
Capital planning will need to be aligned with construction timelines so that the planning processes have good input.
Better procurement processes, annual planning, and project options analysis will need to be had with the construction industry.
Narayanan also noted that there are not enough experienced project managers for the City and that a software program used by the City, ChangePoint, needed to be used more fully.
Nine areas of Prince George’s management were benchmarked out of a 0-5 rating, with 5 being the best, but 3 being what Colliers wants to aim for:
- Governance- 1
- Framework, Policy, and Processes- 1
- Planning- 2
- Procurement- 2
- Capability and Capacity- 1
- Communication and Reporting- 2
- Project Controls- 1
- Project Closure- 1
- Systems and Data- 2
Many of the other cities averaged in the two to three range, with some reaching into four.
“It’s absolutely embarrassing where we are compared to peer municipalities. It’s not mind-boggling, but it’s understandable, and that’s really unfortunate,” said Councillor Brian Skakun.
A policy was then put forth to help make City management more effective at governing and controlling capital projects, which Council voted to pass.