Large-scale project management

A forum on the total management of large-scale projects was organised within the Management & Design Division of the IEE,* with the objective of providing an interchange of ideas among engineers actively engaged in this field, at superior levels of responsibility. Part 1 of this record of the forum is a summary of the introductory address by Vice Admiral Sir Lindsay Bryson, who traced the history of project management in the defence procurement sphere, leading to the recent trend towards placing management responsibility with a prime contractor in industry, taking as an example the Sting Ray torpedo project. The participants in the forum comprised some thirty invited members from the fields of industry, research and development, the public sector, and the armed services. They were invited to discuss a number of problem areas, and their views and experience have been collated and summarised in Part 2. This is intended to serve as a primer and checklist to assist those who are required to engage in such projects. It is proposed to initiate a further study of how project experience may be recorded, and to develop a recommended code of practice.