A micro view of the project planning process

The objective was to make a descriptive study of the decision making process in the early stages ofproject planning as it actually takesplace. Data weregathered from 27 managers affiliated with large owners in the USA. Interviewees were questioned about the degree of involvement of client, project manager, project manager’s team, and design engineers, in the technical dejnition, organization and systems, and schedule of the project – once at the conceptual planning stage and again at the engineering design stage. Involvement was assessed also in terms of intensity, relative efforts invested by the parties in the phases of the decision making process, and by type of contract. Other variables studied included extent of disagreement among the parties, degree of interruption during the planning process and sources of uncertainty hindering the decision making process.