Unravelling Complexities in Engineering Projects

Plant Engineering Companies are project-driven and have been dealing with complexity and uncertainty for decades. As complexity and uncertainty tend to impact efficiency, such companies have difficulties in coping with strong pressures for lower prices and delivery times. It is argued that one approach to increase efficiency in these companies is to improve the synchronisation between complexities and uncertainties in a company’s project portfolio with the correlated organisational designs. A first step to achieve such synchronisation is to identify and to make sense of the complexity and uncertainty of the company’s project portfolio. This paper regards this need by proposing a perspective to unravel engineering project complexity, by developing the concept of patterns of complexity, and the minimum manageable context of complexities within a project. Furthermore, the paper proposes a measurement system to assess the patterns of complexity based on the intensity of complexities. This model can be used to forecast potential complexities in a certain project, functioning as a risk management tool, as well as to measure complexity post factum, where the model allows the company to rethink its actions and processes, and, by these means, reach the desired efficiency and efficacy.