Internationul Journul of Prqject Manqwnewt 1994 12 (4) 209-2 I 1

20th century management of 2nd century rubbish

Richard Kemp York Archaeological Trust, Piccudilly Housr, 55 PiccadilJv, York YOI IPL, UK

The York Archaeological Trust, UK, has experienced a metamorphosis. In the course of 20 years, it has changed from being a small, highly focused, regional organisation with a monopoly to excavate within the city of York to being one of the largest archaeological contractors in the UK, with a broader base, working within a free, competitive archaeological market. The paper outlines where things were going wrong in the 198Os, when there was no system of project management. It describes some early forays into single project management, and then explains a system of project management that was designed to cope with these changes, and how this system was applied to all work. The paper explains how the system allows the trust to control new projects, track existing ones, and maintain the flexibility to react to new work, while not losing sight of established priorities. The paper concludes with the example of the Blake Street Roman pottery publication project, a backlog inherited from early days that had floundered for a number of years as a result of weak and ineffective decision making. The paper shows how the new system enabled this important academic work to be published to the normal exceptional high standards of presentation, several months ahead of schedule, at a saving of 25%.

Keywords: project coordination. archaeology, management

York Archaeological Trust: background

The York Archaeological Trust started in 1972 as a tiny team with an erratic income, occupying a borrowed room. and it has grown in 20 years to become one of the largest archaeological units in the country. By the early 1990s the trust had a staff of 60, and it had set up the world-famous Jorvik Viking Centre, which is one of the most accessible of archaeological experiences. However, as the trust evolved and grew, it inevitably became more diverse and less focused. Simultaneously, it also found itself in a new archaeological world. In the course of the late 1980s. a shift in UK Government policy meant that developers became responsible for providing resources to fund archaeological investigation in advance of their own developments. This meant that archaeology was suddenly part of the building industry, and those involved had to submit competitive tenders, and bid against rivals who had until recently been colleagues.

The trust, like many other regional archaeologi- cal units, lost its traditional ‘monopoly’ to carry out

This paper was the second prize winner in the Sir Monty Finn&on Awards for Project Management 1994 (sponsored by IBM and 7% Ohssrwr).

0263-7863:'94:040209 03 8, 1994 Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd

archaeological work in its home base of York. Instead, it was but one archaeological contractor, albeit a large, multitalented, highly qualified and competent one.

For both financial and academic reasons, therefore, the trust found itself wanting to do three different things at the same time:

Win and carry out external archaeological contracts (excavating sites, conserving objects, studying arte- facts etc.). Sustain its own internal programme of research and publications in order to bring to the academic world the results of excavations and research done over the previous 20 years. Sustain its worldwide reputation for the public presentation of heritage, especially archaeology.

Since the three activities were of equal importance to the trust, but they all used the same staff. there were increasing numbers of conflicts and internal clashes of priorities. Decision making was loose and scattered, rather than centralised, and staff and resources were constantly swapped between conflicting projects, causing waste, disenchantment. and frustration at all levels.

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Deadlines were rarely met, estimates were amateurish or meaningless, and generally the organisation creaked under the strain of trying to do too much. What was produced was always of high quality, but there was too little of it, when compared with the trust’s size, and it was often produced late.

The trust eventually recognised the problems, and in 1991 it set up a policy review committee. Among its most important recommendations were that a central decision making board of management should be set up, and that a trust-wide system of formal project should also be set up.

management

Early forays into project management

I am a field archaeologist who began project manage- ment with my own excavations for the trust in 1986. I recognised then the need to keep tight control on resources, and to have a set of tasks that were clearly defined, ordered and timetabled. When my excavations ended and the research phase of the work began, the programme was even more structured, with some 200 different tasks being scheduled together. This ran quite successfully, but it was dogged by the fact that. at the time, the rest of the trust was not being run in a similarly structured way, and there was little or no coordination of the staff and resources being shared between my project and the muIt~tude of other activities being carried out by the trust.

During this time, I discovered the benefits of project- management software, and obtained a copy of Super- Project Expert (Computer Associates). I used this software for a number of the more urgent or problematic projects being carried out by the trust (‘Project Hitman’ was probably the best description of the task at that stage), and I got some results. However, because the rest of the organisation was not being managed in the same way, there was still no coordination of projects or resources, with the result that there was still waste, bad feeling, frustration and, above all, and most seriously, customer dissatisfaction. I thus recog- nised that the only way to finally sort out the organisation’s habit of chasing its tail was to have one strong decision-making body, and a rigorously applied, highly structured system of project coordination. The policy review committee and board of management agreed.

First work programme

In September 1992, I began to define ongoing projects, and identified 43, which were being carried out by about 30 staff (most of the staff worked on most of the projects). It was accepted that these ongoing projects should form the basis of a new work programme, and each was broken down into tasks with estimates, a task order, relative priorities etc. After constant going back and forth and refinement of the schedule with all the staff and managers concerned, a work programme that reflected reality and was, for the first time ever, properly costed began to emerge. This was the baseline, the agreed situation as of 9 September 1992.

Decision-making procedure for new projects

After the first 43 projects had been accepted, all the subsequent projects that came in or were conceived had to be formally submitted to the project coordinator, and added as a ‘what-if?’ to the work programme. The effects of this work on the existing work programme could then be accurately assessed, and, if the new work was an external contract with a tight deadline, a decision could be made about how best to approach the new project. The management could decide, for instance, to turn down the work, bring in new staff, work the project another way, or delay less important internal projects. If the new work was nonurgent, or the timetable was in the trust’s hands (as those for many external artefact re- search and conservation projects are). the trust could accurately generate deadlines that reflected reality rather than inaccurately guess delivery dates.

Tight control of all new projects is now maintained, and all new proposals have to be assessed, and the estimated effects reported to the trust’s board of man- agement, before any new work can be started. Since all new projects are also costed, this gives a measure of their relative importance when their desirability is assessed. Thus the board not only has responsibility for imple- menting new projects, but also for defining and redefin- ing priorities using information that is both recent and reliable.

Keeping up with progress

As work proceeded, a system of fortnight~y timesheets was introduced to allow the feeding in of ‘actuals’ for comparison against estimates. The work programme was thus rolling, and fluctuations, overspends, inaccurate estimates, resource inefficiencies, underachievement or redeployment, incorrect assignments etc. could be dis- passionately monitored with regularity and clarity.

The board is kept informed of project progress by a monthly executive summary, which summarises on a single sheet of paper at exactly what stage each of the trust’s 100 or so projects is, where slippages have occurred, and where action is necessary. At an oper- ational level, a monthly cost-time summary of every task for every project is issued.

This summary forms the basis for a comprehensive project-chasing meeting at which departmental man- agers can review progress, and anticipate, and thereby avoid, problems before they occur.

Benefits

More than a year later. the benefits are substantial and increasing, and the system is being used by the trust to keep track of current projects, and by departments as a predictive tool to review stafhng levels, an accounting facility, a records system etc. Staff are more satisfied knowing where they stand with their work programmes, departmental managers feel better equipped to manage, and the board of management is in control of what is done and how it is done, and it is now con~dent that complete control is in its hands. A number of projects

bear witness to the improvements that have been wrought, one of which forms the basis of the case study below.

Case study in success

When the City Garage in Blake Street, York, was up for redevelopment in the 1970s the York Archaeological Trust obtained support from the city and the UK Government (who in those days used to give grants towards excavations) to enable archaeological work to go ahead in advance of the (then) inevitable destruction of archaeological evidence that would result from the construction of the proposed new shopping complex. The site was located in the middle of the Roman Legionary Fortress, and, therefore, when the digging started, the inevitable Roman structures were uncovered and were duly investigated. Records of the structures were made, and important evidence about the construc- tion, use and eventual end of the use of these structures was noted. Samples of soil, boxes of pottery, and finds from the different layers were all carefully kept, the site was effectively emptied of its archaeology, and the shopping complex was constructed.

The records (and the Roman legionaries’ rubbish!) then remained locked away for a number of years until the trust appointed an expert in Roman pottery studies. He looked at the assemblage of dusty pots, and began making sense of them. He made a comprehensive cata- logue of each pot type, made comparative observations, found out when and where the pots were made and how they arrived in York and how they were used, and then wrote an extensive academic text over the course of a year or so.

The next stage was to be the editing and graphics work that was necessary to turn this complete but basically raw text into a publication, but that was where progress floundered. Other work was added into the editorial and graphics schedules, and, although the editing of the Blake Street Roman pottery volume was nearly started several times, the work never actually began. This oc- curred in the middle of the period of maximum indeci- sion and internal conflict at the trust. Two years went by and the author became increasingly unhappy and jaded. Not only was his book not published, but the research described in it was becoming out of date. Pottery studies evolve, and his work was already two years out of date rather than being the state of the art research that it could have been if published rapidly. Dissatisfaction on the one hand and waste of resources on the other resulted from the trust trying to do too many other things and not having clear priorities. There was no central coordination.

The Blake Street Roman pottery publication project was the tenth project of the 43 original projects put into the project-management system. An editor was assigned to the project, a priority was given to the work, a

20th century management of’2nd century rubbish: R Kemp

baseline for when work could realistically be expected was set, and the project began. It was due to be completed by 12 August 1994, and to cost the trust &48 838 to produce.

Work commenced on time. The allocated staff worked solidly on the project and nothing else, protected by the new system. Through regular monthly progress meet- ings, with timesheet information and coordination be- tween the author and the departments concerned, the manuscript made steady progress through the system alongside the other 100 or so current projects. It was published and went on sale 10 months earlier than scheduled (in November 1993), as a saving of fl 1 955, with the usual high standard of presentation and content of the trust’s products.

The author is now working on Roman pottery from all the other York sites, knowing that, if he delivers text to the publication team on time, it will be published a matter of months later. The author and the publication team are happier, and the management are content. Client satisfaction is assured, and the trust’s reputation is enhanced externally.

This last point is an important one. English Heritage is still a major source of archaeological grants in the UK, and, as with all areas of UK Government expenditure, it requires that its money must be used as effectively as possible. The boosting of the confidence of the organisation that comes from it being able to demonstrate that it has a complete grip on all of its projects and the component tasks has led to an enhancement of the trust’s reputation within English Heritage.

The Blake Street Roman pottery book was a great success. Not all of the trust’s 100 current projects will be as successful. However, with several good results behind it. and with close examination being undertaken of any that are less than perfect, the trust will become more accurate in its estimation and more subtle in its timescale predictions, and thereby enhance its reputation as a flexible, efficient organisation that delivers on schedule and to budget.

Intemrrtional Journal of Project Management 1994 Volume 12 Number 4 211