Gigaprojects: Delivering Strategic, Massive Transformation

Gigaprojects aren’t hard to spot: deep complexity, massive stakeholder groups, wildly ambitious scopes and a major boost to national economies. We discuss two gigaprojects with: 

Ryan Banas, project director for the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel expansion project and VP at HNTB in Norfolk, Virginia, USA; and Chris Hall, district engineer at the Virginia Department of Transportation in Hampton, Virginia, USA: Banas and Hall discuss how their teams prepared for the years-long bridge and tunnel project, how they keep teams aligned across multiple hand-offs, and the clever ways they engage stakeholders—including community members affected by construction.  

Mohammed Almutlaq, project management office VP at the Royal Commission for AlUla in Riyadh: Almutlaq shares how teams are turning the historical site of AlUla into an archaeological tourism destination. He discusses how the PMO keeps teams across portfolios aligned to a singular strategy, ways teams best communicate and keep track of progress across projects, and builds flexibility into projects through solid change management practices.

Key themes

01:42 Managing a multibillion-dollar infrastructure overhaul in Virginia

04:42 How teams collaborate to tackle years-long projects

07:41 Good practices for hand-offs across the project life cycle

10:12 Keeping the community informed—and building buy-in for the long haul

15:44 Transforming the ancient city of AlUla into a tourism hub

18:18 How a PMO keeps multiple teams aligned to one strategic vision

21:19 Building adaptability into projects with change management

25:06 Top challenges: continuous value delivery and retaining the right talent  over long timelines 

Transcript

Transcript

CHRIS HALL

When you’re on something of this size and scope and magnitude, we need to appreciate just the experience that we’re getting from being on this project at this time. And have the opportunity and the privilege to be part of something that’s going to serve the public beyond our time here on Earth. So that’s pretty darn cool.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

There are projects. Big projects. Really big projects. And then spectacles called gigaprojects. Think decades-long timelines, billion-dollar budgets, massive teams and monumental technical challenges. 

So let’s get lost in… the gigazone.

In today’s fast-paced and complex business landscape, project professionals lead the way, delivering value while tackling critical challenges and embracing innovative ways of working. On Projectified®, we bring you insights from the project management community to help you thrive in this evolving world of work through real-world stories and strategies, inspiring you to advance your career and make a positive impact.

This is Projectified. I’m Steve Hendershot.

The signs that a project is entering “giga” territory are pretty clear: deep complexity, massive stakeholder groups, wildly ambitious scopes and an impact so potentially significant that it can substantially transform an entire region or even country.

To lead these mammoth efforts, project professionals need to keep a singular vision across multiple stakeholders and teams while always keeping the outcome—for their organization and the surrounding community and society—top of mind. 

As we take a deep dive on two gigaprojects, the leaders of these initiatives explain what’s needed to deliver success and value. 

First, we’re joined by two leaders from the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel expansion project, an infrastructure overhaul that crosses multiple communities along the United States’ eastern seaboard. Chris Hall is the district engineer for the Virginia Department of Transportation, or VDOT, in Hampton, Virginia, and Ryan Banas is a vice president at civil engineering firm HNTB and project director for the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel expansion. Ryan is based in Norfolk, Virginia. 

MUSICAL TRANSITION

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Chris, tell me why the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, or HRBT, expansion is such a massive initiative for the area. Why is this gigaproject worth the undertaking?

CHRIS HALL

So, HRBT is one of four major crossings of the James River; one of those crossings being an actual ferry up in the upper part of the district.

Our region is bisected by water, and so these crossings are very important to the economic vitality of our region, access to the world’s largest Navy base in Norfolk Naval Station and all the other military presence. There’s a significance in terms of national security and the transit of folks back and forth to our various DOD (Department of Defense) facilities in the area, as well as just the connectivity of the community. 

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Ryan, can you give us an outline of the project? What’s in the pipeline in terms of deliverables?

RYAN BANAS

It is an absolutely massive undertaking. From end to end, the HRBT expansion project is 10 miles in length. We are constructing two new bored tunnels beneath the James River in the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay using a 46-foot diameter tunnel boring machine that we affectionately refer to as Mary. Our tunnel boring machine was fabricated in southwest Germany, specifically built for the geology here of Hampton Roads. Our tunnel boring machine is the second largest ever used in North America. 

In addition, though, to those two massive tunnels and the amazing work Mary has to do beneath the bay, we’re also rehabilitating more than 20 bridges on the project and completely replacing five structures. In addition to those mile-and-a-half tunnels and all of the bridges, we are widening eight-and-a-half miles of interstate. With that widening comes improvements from sound walls, minimizing the noise impact on our local communities. We’re also increasing our ability to manage traffic through automated traffic management systems, improving drainage, ensuring that the new storm water runoff that we’re creating has an appropriate place to go. 

But we are also ensuring that we are a safe evacuation route. We are in an area that is very concerned with hurricanes and wind events and high-water events. So ensuring that we are an evacuation route for our communities to get inland, should we ever need to, is also extremely important for us here on the project.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

You’re already familiar with projects that are multi-year in scope, but this is on another level entirely. So just tell me what you did to prepare, and then just what’s asked of you in terms of skills, leadership, strategy. In terms of scaling this up to this unimaginable level, what’s tested you the most?

CHRIS HALL

We do this probably every 50 to 60 years, [that] we’re attempting something this large. Just the institutional knowledge that you have in the organization. How do you manage that? How do you scale up to something this large is a challenge. My predecessor, who was really pivotal on the planning for this project, I know [was] reaching out to other organizations across the country, other projects of this scale that were underway, to understand what their oversight organization looked like, and then taking that information back and tailoring that to our needs here in the region. 

But certainly, as I like to remind Ryan, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Kind of standing on the backs of folks who did the planning for this and put the procurement together. I would say, too, I think our partners with the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, they have been underway with a similar project. There was some tremendous lessons learned in real-time from our partners. 

STEVE HENDERSHOT

That’s a great segue to dive into the teamwork that’s required for this project. What does that look like?  

RYAN BANAS

VDOT, they brought on some employees specifically for this project with certain levels or types of expertise. The biggest traits that they brought were collaboration. 

When we started the project, we relied heavily on our design management team. Our project controls team reported up through a project manager. Our construction team kind of sat off to the side because at that time, the construction professionals that we had were really here as subject matter experts. But as we have grown in just the last two-and-a-half years that I’ve been on the project, we’re a construction-dominant organization right now. And we have seen that massive shift where our design management team has taken a much smaller role. Right now we are in the mining process, but as mining comes to completion, we are then moving into building construction here on the islands for all of the tunnel support buildings, the ventilation buildings. 

I think the biggest lesson that I’ve pulled from my time here on the project—and my time working in major projects over my career—is the willingness and ability to adapt and change. There are challenges in those shifts. You take folks that may have had a more prominent role because of their skillset, because of their specificity, their specialty, and now they’re moved over to the side. And it’s not that they’re any less important. They’re just not the focus of the day. But we’ve had an amazing team that has put all of that pride, bravado aside and said, “What can we do best for the project?” And we have been able to adapt multiple times over, and we will have to continue to do that. 

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Let’s get into that handoff piece. Obviously, with a project this large, you’re going to have several handoffs from team to team throughout the life cycle. How do you make that handoff go smoothly? 

CHRIS HALL

At the district level, we’re looking at more of those larger pieces. There’s other projects to the north and south of this project that have to be connected and synchronized. There’s just an enormous amount of weekly and monthly coordination that’s done between Ryan’s staff and our staff here in the district to make sure that all those pieces stay on track. Not to mention just the day-to-day, making sure operationally the network is not impacted by what Ryan and his team are doing with the expansion project. 

RYAN BANAS

Our team is always kind of on their toes because there’s always a new, unique challenge coming in that, to be quite honest, many folks, whether it’s within VDOT or our own team, haven’t experienced before.

So I think that the true definition of synergy here—whether it’s the project, the team that we have, the skill sets that they bring, the different backgrounds—we’ve just been so fortunate to have an environment and to have a circumstance where folks are I think as comfortable as we’re ever going to get with a good, steady rhythm of change. And maybe that’s why we’re good at it. Because it’s always changing, always adapting. 

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Any specific good practices on how to ensure micro-team to micro-team or phase to phase continuity? 

CHRIS HALL

There’s always got to be a good overlap when it comes to managing the transition of phases within the project. I think it’s just, as a leader, being able to step back and think through that well ahead of time so you can start positioning people, maybe looking at transitioning processes, communications expectations. You have got to be in a position where you’re constantly looking up and out at the next series of challenges.  

RYAN BANAS

I think our success in those transitions has come from the personal ownership people have taken. Maybe it’s the complexity. Maybe it’s the magnitude. People have personal ownership, so when they do pass on the baton to the next person or look to transition, they want to see success for that next person. And I think that they are very diligent in making sure that next person is set up for success, whether that’s through detailed record keeping, being thorough, sitting down in advance and talking through what that transition plan may be, what it might look like.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

What about the external stakeholders? How have you thought about messaging to the communities?

CHRIS HALL

I’ll tell you, this is one of the lessons learned for me. I’ve been in this job for about eight years now, and with this project, the amount of investment and thought we put into communications, that’s something that the more you invest in it, the better off you’re going to be.

The most important stakeholders are the people that drive on these roads every day. And if we’re not telling them what’s going on, they’re going to make up their own minds on what they think is going on. I don’t think we can overemphasize the importance of strong, well-planned, professional, consistent communication. 

We have significantly ramped up that effort. I think really throughout the evolution of this project, the team has done really, really well. And our decision to repurpose an old Norfolk visitor center and engage the public and other entities to come in and learn about the project, learn about opportunities in the transportation area in terms of profession and skills and trade craft, how tunneling has been so important to this region, it’s project advocacy, right? I mean, it’s turning our folks that are frustrated about being in a congested corridor on their daily commute into an advocate for the project. And that’s a very, very difficult task. 

RYAN BANAS

I will say that when I came to this project two-and-a-half years ago, I thought that VDOT was absolutely crazy. I got here and they said, “Ryan, you’re going to go give a presentation.” And I said very quickly, “Hey, I’m an engineer. We have a magazine. What are you doing? We’ve done enough.”

I had no appreciation for the genius that somebody else had discovered long before my arrival. Every project that we perform, whether it’s sidewalks in front of a neighborhood or we’re paving the interstate, there’s something cool about that. There’s a statistic. There is a fact. And let’s be honest, when folks get together, and they talk about our projects, usually they’re complaining. But if we can give them what I like to call the cool factor. Well, what’s cool about this? What can we tell them? And the HRBT is the biggest font of interesting facts and figures and feats that I will ever experience in my career. 

We do welcome center open hours, and a lot of our staff are resistant when we ask them to go volunteer. And then they do, and they say, “Oh my gosh. I do this every day, and it’s ho-hum to me. But they thought that was so cool about the bridges and how we built that.” There’s something awe-inspiring about that. 

CHRIS HALL

When we take people down into the TBM (tunnel boring machine) for a tour, I think it’s 100% of folks come out, and they say, “That is the coolest thing I have ever seen.” These are not all engineers, right? There’s finance people. There’s politicians. There’s teachers. Every one of those folks that we either bring onto the project for a tour or we have in the visitor center, or we touch on an outreach, becomes an advocate for the project. That is a force multiplier.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Imagine somewhere in the world, doesn’t need to be transportation or construction, but let’s say a veteran project leader who knows what they’re doing, but they’ve just signed onto a project that is three or four x the scope of anything they’ve done before. What’s your one piece of advice?

CHRIS HALL

I think one of the things that is often overlooked is what we just talked about, and that is engagement, engagement, engagement. So often the things that derail these large projects and cause friction is that interaction with the public. At my level, that ability to ensure confidence for our organization and the integrity in our organization and what we’re delivering, all starts with making sure that we communicate often and accurately to the public that we serve.

The last thing that I would say is, always recognize where you’re at and the time that you’re in, and take time to appreciate it. When you’re on something of this size and scope and magnitude, we need to appreciate just the experience that we’re getting from being on this project at this time. And have the opportunity and the privilege to be part of something that’s going to serve the public beyond our time here on Earth. So that’s pretty darn cool.

RYAN BANAS

My two words of advice are be humble and be kind. I think that in these situations, I know myself, and I’m guilty of this to this day, and it’s something I have to remind myself of. We walk into the room thinking that we have to come up with the answer, when very often the people that we work with already have it, and they just need to be given the opportunity to express it. That they have the confidence to do it. So I think being humble, listening first as a leader is the thing I struggle with to this day the most, but I think is probably the most impactful. 

And then being kind, in that appreciating the circumstance that people are coming from, whether it’s within our own staff, within our contractor. Everybody is trying to do their very best. Appreciating where they’re coming from, put yourself in their shoes, whether it’s from a business perspective, a contractual perspective, a roles and responsibilities perspective. That people are out here trying to do their very best. 

MUSICAL TRANSITION 

STEVE HENDERSHOT

The transformation and conservation of the ancient city of AlUla in Saudi Arabia is a gigaproject with a timeline spanning more than a decade, but that’s nothing compared with the city’s 7,000-year history. Mohammed Almutlaq, project management office VP at the Royal Commission for AlUla, or RCU, based in Riyadh, spoke with Projectified’s Hannah LaBelle about the project that aims to turn the area into a global destination for tourism. 

MUSICAL TRANSITION

HANNAH LABELLE 

Mohammed, let’s get to the discussion. So specifically about AlUla, this is a massive undertaking—transforming this heritage site into a center for culture and tourism. You have multiple districts, heritage sites, cultural assets, green spaces. Tell us a little bit about the long-term plan. Why was this project launched, and where are things at today? 

MOHAMMED ALMUTLAQ 

So, as part of the kingdom’s Vision 2030, we see a lot of potential in AlUla. AlUla has great cultural assets and beautiful landscapes where we believe that we can develop it and make it a global destination for tourism, culture, art and heritage.

We have portfolios related to tourism. We make sure that we have the right visitor experience, and we have the required hospitality assets to serve our visitors and residents as well. All of these are programs, [and] each program, it has a number of projects. Each project is trying to deliver certain deliverables to achieve in realizing the program benefits. 

We have portfolios related to the art, culture, nature and wildlife, the economic and social development, county services. We have already concluded our phase one of the development, where we targeted to have a luxury brand, which we have successfully completed. Now we have achieved more than 250,000 visitors by the end of phase one 2023. We have put the required bases for tourism. We have opened, actually, our heritage sites, and now make them available for visits after we have put the required infrastructure and experiences, securities, preservation, etc.

HANNAH LABELLE 

This is a large scope, [with] complex, years-long timelines. Given the complexity, given the scope, how are you as a PMO leader really looking to keep all of these different project teams and all of the different stakeholders that are involved aligned to this overall vision? 

MOHAMMED ALMUTLAQ 

I think this is our biggest challenge in the PMO, to make sure that we are adding value to the organization by implementing the project management practice, which we believe is essential for the success of the overall projects. We started by, number one, making sure that we understand our strategy. We make sure that we have a clear strategy that our teams actually digest, understand and try to build the right structure to execute and deliver the strategy.

We came up with eight strategic portfolios focused on the main pillar as per our strategy. Underneath each of these portfolios, we developed and formed the long-term programs. We are also making sure that we have a clear set of benefits under each program, so whatever we are doing through these programs is actually making progress and achieving whatever targets we have set. And we have the sufficient time to adjust and add or amend or remove whatever projects that we believe are not working for us. In addition to that, [we have] set of governance on all levels, on project levels, on program levels, on portfolio levels. Making sure that we are producing the reporting at the right time to the right stakeholder. Being detailed where we need to be. That set of ecosystems and governance and setup is actually what is helping us to make sure that we are achieving these goals.  

HANNAH LABELLE 

What do you find is the best way to handle all of this different communication? Because you’re obviously sharing information through multiple levels of folks involved in the project. 

MOHAMMED ALMUTLAQ 

We make sure that the top-down communication is communicated clearly with our team. So sometimes strategic directions are actually important resolutions coming from the board, or executive committees, or the leadership in RCU, CEOs, chief, etc.

We communicate this through our portfolio directors team. Each portfolio director is actually responsible to make sure that all of these programs are actually working in alignment with each other. Each group actually has their own way of communication. Some of them prefer to have periodic meetings. Some of them prefer to have written communication by emails and other tools. Some prefer to be face-to-face. Some of them actually prefer to be online.  

HANNAH LABELLE 

You talked about the flexibility and agility, being able to make those pivots as priorities change. So how do you, as a PMO leader, look at building that into all of the different projects across your portfolios? 

MOHAMMED ALMUTLAQ 

Change management is part of our methodology as a project management practice. We have a process for a change. We can adopt the change as needed, but I believe the most important thing is to make sure that we do the proper assessment for this change: why it’s happened, why it’s needed, what was the logic, how we can prevent this change from happening again in different areas. How we can use it as a lesson learned—that we needed to change maybe because we did not consider some of the stakeholders in our plan to be engaged or involved. That’s why it’s become now a lesson learned in new projects. So the change itself, we will be able to deal with it through our processes, but what matters is actually to learn from this change and reflect [it] across the PMO in general.

HANNAH LABELLE 

Has technology played a role at all in helping you kind of manage this complexity across all of the different projects that are happening at different times and within these different phases? 

MOHAMMED ALMUTLAQ 

We have a project management system. We have logged in all of our projects in the Royal Commission for AlUla, and we are tracking them through that system. All programs, all portfolios, all of our reports, even the escalation path is actually part of the system. So without the system, we will not be able to access this large number of projects and be able to have the information when needed. All of our risks, actions, corrective actions for our issues is logged in that system, and our center of excellence team is actually monitoring requirements, and they do their health check from time to time. 

HANNAH LABELLE 

How do you kind of balance the near-term delivery milestones within each of these phases with these longer-term outcomes, especially thinking about public perception, environmental performance, community trust, these different things that come with such a large project? 

MOHAMMED ALMUTLAQ 

I believe it’s very important that, first, we make sure we have the buy-in from the community and our stakeholders on what we are aiming to achieve. Our master plans, our objectives, our target economic impact that everyone will benefit from. We make sure that the people believe in this.

At the same time, long-time planning without a clear outcome and resolutions, the people will not be satisfied. So that’s why early wins remain critical. People can see the impact of this season. The number of visitors started to increase, a lot of people started to come into AlUla, and still, it’s just early activation. People started to see the economic impact on the destination. They see how jobs are actually created, and other success is being seen by the community and by the wider stakeholders. So this is actually balancing between the long-term objectives, which we are all now working to achieve them, and the early wins that we can show the people that, yes, there is potential and work with them to believe in this bigger vision.

HANNAH LABELLE 

In the years that you’ve been working on AlUla, what has been the biggest project management challenge for you personally? 

MOHAMMED ALMUTLAQ 

Building the capacity, the framework while you are trying to deliver and make progress and achievements at the same time was a big challenge. We cannot wait until we complete and finalize everything and have the full team and have the full framework and the full processes before we make any progress. So balancing between these two, that we build as we go and we try to continuously increase and improve our team while we are delivering and making progress on ground, was a big challenge for us.

In addition to that is actually having the right talent capability, attracting the right talent for us because we have this diversity in terms of industry. We have tourism, culture, wildlife, county services, sports and others. So you need different people from different backgrounds that can come and help you deliver these projects. That was a challenge for us, and we have successfully been able to build a very strong team during the past years who actually drove most of these projects and initiatives and have helped the organization and AlUla to realize its objective. Now my main challenge is actually to retain and maintain this team, making sure that we have the right culture and environment that enable them to grow and continue the momentum.

I am so excited that we are making an impact on ground. Now the Royal Commission of AlUla, with its team, with its ecosystem, with the community working together to make it happen. And to see actually these heritage sites are being preserved, this beautiful, natural landscape is actually restored. AlUla as a destination is now able to show all the visitors our culture and the community, who has actually become specialized in tourism.  

HANNAH LABELLE 

Mohammed, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. 

MOHAMMED ALMUTLAQ 

Thank you so much, Hannah. Really a pleasure to be with you here. 

STEVE HENDERSHOT

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