JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Integrated procurement and project management needs to be actively adopted by South Africa’s private and public sectors to ensure optimal return on investment, job creation, skills development, and improved service delivery, ECS Associates said on Friday in announcing its agreement with Anglo American Platinum to provide project management support to assist the platinum group metals mining company with the delivery of its extensive capital project pipeline.

The agreement allows for staged implementation through a gated process from concept to execution and close-out.

ECS has been tasked with deploying its Collaborative Project Strategies© – based on lessons learned from a variety of projects in South Africa and around the world – in an integrated manner with Anglo Platinum.

In business since 1993, ECS provides consulting services to the engineering and construction industry, with its service offering focused on strategic advice, dispute resolution, and training on the new engineering contract (NEC) platform.

The collaborative approach is described as heralding a new integrated procurement and project management approach to assure predictable project outcomes.

To deliver a successful end product, ECS emphasised the need for each project to be strategically aligned, properly planned, optimally staffed, correctly budgeted, and have a measurable baseline agreed before work begins.

“Once a project commences, underpinned with the right culture of all involved, tight control of scope, quality and costs must be central to the project, with regular, objective and accurate reporting against the baseline,” ECS stated in a release to Engineering News & Mining Weekly.

The company expressed the view that South Africa has the opportunity to learn from the ineffective recent project delivery outcomes in weighing out collaborative models  – and that this can be done while training many people in new skills and uplifting local communities.

Collaborative Project Strategies© developed by ECS and underpinned by NEC is said to provide for effective procurement framework options and project implementation models, with better and more predictable project outcomes creating tangible benefits for all stakeholders.

“Investing in a collaborative approach early in the process of procurement and project implementation can save time and reduce potential risks later in the project, which may otherwise result in considerable negative consequences,” said ECS MD Mile Sofijanic.

“Applying collaborative principles, such as relationship management, proactive communications, aligned business objectives, information and knowledge sharing, and value creation, help to enable early development of this collaborative environment, prior to commencing formal project implementation. Doing so sets the tone for a more aligned and proactive working approach for predictable and successful contract delivery,” Sofijanic added.

Collaborative Project Strategies© coupled with bespoke Agile Project Delivery solutions aim to assist in the delivery of optimum project outcomes and the unlocking of on-going, value-adding initiatives.