ATS-IPL successfully demonstrated organizing engineering offices on an international project into a single virtual office can benefit project, customers, and employees. For several International projects, the total design, detail engineering and configuration services for Automation project requirements were led by the ATS-IPL in Chennai, India, where more staffing was available and labor rates were considerably lower.
In the traditional approach, there can be a number of challenges, with large engineering hours plus equipment. While the ATS-IPL had lower hourly costs than the International “front offices” experience with previous projects had shown there tended to be issues due to delayed responses to quality of inputs and difficulty in managing work load surges due to late inputs and changes by the client that resulted in rework, increases in costs greater than forecasted, reduced customer satisfaction, etc.
In the traditional approach, there can be a number of challenges, with large engineering hours plus equipment. While the ATS-IPL had lower hourly costs than the International “front offices” experience with previous projects had shown there tended to be issues due to delayed responses to quality of inputs and difficulty in managing work load surges due to late inputs and changes by the client that resulted in rework, increases in costs greater than forecasted, reduced customer satisfaction, etc.
ATS-IPL intent is to project a project execution model that fully utilized the back office and would allow it to be competitive, to be able to deliver value to customers (quality on time), to be consistent across engineering centers and across projects, and to be profitable.
The “one team” model is built around the idea of organizing an engineering task as if there were no separate front office and back office teams, integrating both as if they were located in the same place. With today’s wealth of communication method, such an approach is not only feasible, it has been shown to work and to provide many advantages.
This model to set up the project organization without regard to geography. People are assigned based on their strengths, not on their locations, with carefully defined responsibilities. Key people, who in the past might have been called on only part-time, now multitask. This “unified approach” will greatly reduce overheads/ costs, improve productivity and project quality, manage schedule objectives, and increase profitability.
Implementing this “unified approach” was not without its challenges as ATS-IPL was moving into unexplored territory and there were obstacles for leadership and individual team members alike.
The challenges for the leadership began with deciding how to effectively structure the teams and their tasks and assign clearly defined roles. Then came establishing workable communication patterns; dealing with conflict identification and resolution; ensuring timely decision-making, team building, common mission, and goal settings; and recognizing and overcoming cross-cultural differences.
Challenges for the individual team members included overcoming communication barriers, dealing with multiple reporting relationships, and adjusting for significant time zone differences.
The overall project has benefited in several ways. If the project had been done in the traditional way, the hourly rate for engineering would have been about 35% to 50% higher, but this was reduced by virtue of combining the two offices. More specifically, the elimination of work packs and the labor to manage them saved as much as 25% in overhead.
All this falls directly to the bottom line for the customer, with greater gross profits, and for front office, with improved productivity due to less movement of people; improved motivation and feelings of ownership; and better utilization of people, who no longer have to wait for work pack clarification and answers to queries. The ability to retain employees and use them full-time also helps. And, because the team is responsible for the quality of the overall project rather than just that of individual work packs, project quality has improved.
The “one team” model is built around the idea of organizing an engineering task as if there were no separate front office and back office teams, integrating both as if they were located in the same place. With today’s wealth of communication method, such an approach is not only feasible, it has been shown to work and to provide many advantages.
This model to set up the project organization without regard to geography. People are assigned based on their strengths, not on their locations, with carefully defined responsibilities. Key people, who in the past might have been called on only part-time, now multitask. This “unified approach” will greatly reduce overheads/ costs, improve productivity and project quality, manage schedule objectives, and increase profitability.
Implementing this “unified approach” was not without its challenges as ATS-IPL was moving into unexplored territory and there were obstacles for leadership and individual team members alike.
The challenges for the leadership began with deciding how to effectively structure the teams and their tasks and assign clearly defined roles. Then came establishing workable communication patterns; dealing with conflict identification and resolution; ensuring timely decision-making, team building, common mission, and goal settings; and recognizing and overcoming cross-cultural differences.
Challenges for the individual team members included overcoming communication barriers, dealing with multiple reporting relationships, and adjusting for significant time zone differences.
The overall project has benefited in several ways. If the project had been done in the traditional way, the hourly rate for engineering would have been about 35% to 50% higher, but this was reduced by virtue of combining the two offices. More specifically, the elimination of work packs and the labor to manage them saved as much as 25% in overhead.
All this falls directly to the bottom line for the customer, with greater gross profits, and for front office, with improved productivity due to less movement of people; improved motivation and feelings of ownership; and better utilization of people, who no longer have to wait for work pack clarification and answers to queries. The ability to retain employees and use them full-time also helps. And, because the team is responsible for the quality of the overall project rather than just that of individual work packs, project quality has improved.
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