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The link between project management and sustainability is relatively new. More projects today are driven by sustainability goals than ever before. The need for sustainability as a critical factor for project success is clear. However, the question is what the stakeholders involved in the project think of it. The main objective of this research is to investigate whether stakeholders’ perspectives on sustainability can give a positive contribution to project management practices. Additionally, the research will try to fill the gap in the literature.

This thesis focuses on the competitive dialogue (CD) procedure and its added value compared to traditional tendering within the Dutch building industry. The added value is analyzed in terms of innovation, effectiveness and efficiency. Furthermore, this study aims to find the critical success factors (CSFs) related to the added value.

Large infrastructure projects in the Netherlands are often subject to discussion due to large time and cost overruns. Project management instruments are developed by the projects for the efficient management of time, cost and scope. These collections of methods, tools and approaches are often modified and further developed when projects face problems and situations that are not encountered before. When projects find solutions for problems in the complex world of large infrastructure problems, other projects might benefit from these developments as well. However, the literature study in this thesis shows that projects often re-invent the wheel instead of learning from other projects. Therefore, the main research question in this master thesis is to what degree the large infrastructure projects in the Netherlands share and implement knowledge about their developed instruments, and what might be the possible barriers that disturb this process of inter-project learning. First, a literature study is performed where all topics in the area of organizational learning, knowledge management, inter-project learning and learning barriers are explored. The findings of this study are used to develop a framework that can be used to describe the knowledge activities that are performed by the projects in the process of inter-project learning and the barriers that prevent that projects learn from each other. This framework connects learning processes inside projects with learning processes between different projects. The framework identifies four steps of knowledge activities: creation of knowledge, evaluation of knowledge, sharing of knowledge and implementation of knowledge. The barriers are present in the framework between the ‘share’ and the ‘implement’ steps and are grouped in four categories: social, organizational, project-related and knowledge- related. The developed framework is used in case studies where 14 large infrastructure projects in the Netherlands are researched. Project managers and operational project managers (managers projectbeheersing) of these projects are interviewed in order to find out which instruments are developed in the projects, how the projects deal with the knowledge activities in the four steps of the framework and what the possible barriers to learning are. The findings show that the two barriers that are identified most are the uniqueness of projects that makes it difficult to implement knowledge from a project with a different context and the lack of a higher level knowledge management system, that establishes knowledge connections between the different projects in a structured way. The main conclusions that can be drawn from this research are that all kinds of project management instruments are developed and that the projects are willing to share these developments with other projects. However, they are not able to see which knowledge is required in the other projects. A recommendation is to let the functional organizations use a higher level knowledge management system. People or a department from the functional organization that are on a higher level above the individual projects, should fulfill the role of ‘knowledge broker’. By having contact with the projects on a regular basis, they keep an overview of the knowledge supply and the knowledge demand. With this system, projects that can learn from each other are connected in a structured way, based on the overview of created knowledge in one project and the problems that are faced in the other project. Inter-project learning would also be more effective when more knowledge is transferred between projects that are in the same project phase, instead of only transferring knowledge between new projects and projects that are already in a later phase or are even completed. Knowledge transfers between projects that are in the same phase are more effective because direct interaction is possible, even as sharing of tasks and mutual adjustment.

Heerema Marine Contractors' (HMC) former Project Risk Management (PRM) method was until recently supported by a specialized risk team. The risk team facilitated the PRM activities, i.e. risk assessment workshops and review moments during the projects. The risk team also performed a quantitative risk analysis on all projects. Such an analysis provides insight into the project risk, i.e. the combined effect of the identified risk events. The Board of Directors abandoned the risk team after three years of service. The abandonment was associated with two adjustments: (a) the project manager received the full responsibility for all PRM activities and (b) the quantitative risk analysis disappeared. Since then there has been an ongoing discussion about the Board of Directors' decision to abandon the risk team. This raises the research questions 'Which aspects of HMC's current project risk management method show room for improvement?' and 'What is the usefulness of quantitative risk analysis in HMC's project risk management?'

This research has been performed with the organisation of NedTrain. NedTrain is an organisation which is responsible for the maintenance on the rolling stock of the Dutch railway system. In 2006 they have implemented project portfolio management in their organisation however they struggle to manage it properly. For that reason they want to assess and improve their project portfolio management. This can be realized by using maturity models which is an instrument to criticise the project portfolio management of an organisation. The objective of this research is to compare project portfolio management maturity models to the scientific literature. It will link the aspects described in maturity models with the topics described in the scientific literature to identify the theoretical gap, to identify the practical use of the maturity models and to provide improvement measures for NedTrain’s project portfolio management. Eventually the goal is to develop a framework which can criticise all the aspects of project portfolio management for an organisation. Based on the objective the following research question is formulated: “How useful are maturity models to diagnose and give recommendations on the project portfolio management of an organisation?” The question will be answered using the case study research approach. The first step in this research is performing a literature review on project portfolio management. The focus of this review is on project portfolio management in general, the bottlenecks most organisations encounter and the best practices of project portfolio management. According to the literature, organisations encounter problems in several areas of project portfolio management. The most important problem areas are project management activities, information management and resource management. These problem areas will be used in the comparison between the literature and the maturity models. The second step in this research is selecting a maturity model which can assist in defining, measuring and improving NedTrain’s project portfolio management. In this study several maturity models are tested on their suitability using selection criteria. Based on the criteria the model that is most suitable for this study is the Portfolio, Programme and Project Management Maturity Model (P3M3). The P3M3 model consists of several process perspectives including: management control, risk management, resource management, etc. The process perspectives are compared to the problem areas described in the literature, to enrich the P3M3 model and ensure it covers all the topics of project portfolio management. The comparison revealed that ‘project management activities’ and ‘information management’ are not described in the P3M3 model but are relevant according to the literature. This identifies there are gaps in the P3M3 model and so the topics are added to the model. Eventually a modified and improved P3M3 model is used to determine the maturity of NedTrain’s project portfolio management and to provide improvement measures. The next step in this research is the use of the modified P3M3 model to determine the current situation of NedTrain’s project portfolio management. The assessment is performed by several experienced employees of NedTrain including the project portfolio manager and the manager of fleet services. The different perspectives on the answers were discussed with the involved employees to deliberate on the final outcome and to generate practical recommendations. Eventually the assessment illustrates that benefits management, risk management and resource management are the most underdeveloped process perspectives in NedTrain’s project portfolio management. These underdeveloped process perspectives are reviewed against the literature. This indicates that portfolio resource management is to some extent already acknowledged in the scientific literature, but research on portfolio benefits management and risk management is not yet performed, since the review on these topics had no result. Therefore it is recommended that both topics will be reviewed in further researches. In this study several recommendations are given on the underdeveloped process perspectives. The most important recommendations on NedTrain’s project portfolio management are: - Start at the top and make sure the senior management supports project portfolio management; - The base of project portfolio management is a well defined project management process, make sure project management is mature enough. The specific recommendations on the three underdeveloped processes in NedTrain’s project portfolio management are for NedTrain’s benefits management: - Create a framework to centrally manage and track the delivery of portfolio benefits. This framework should have explicit statements on how benefits enabled by initiatives actually contribute to business value and strategic objectives. For NedTrain’s risk management: - Make sure the risk analysis will not only be conducted in the early stage of a project but also further in the project, it should become a constant management process. And for NedTrain’s resource management: - There should become policies and processes describing how portfolio resources are acquired, managed and deployed. Based on the results obtained from the assessment it can be concluded that the modified P3M3 model provides an impressive list of bottlenecks and improvement measures for the organisation. Although further research needs to be performed on the modified P3M3 model, it will be very useful tool for organisations to provide a first impression on the maturity of their project portfolio management.

The field of Project management has evolved considerably over the last decade. With globalization and the ever increasing complexity of IT projects, project management has become ever more critical for IT consultancy firms and software service/product suppliers. Based on a survey conducted by Sogeti, only 30% of the IT projects undertaken by multiple firms were classified as ‘successful’. What factors do really influence the success of an IT project, is a critical question that has been raised over and over again due to the huge financial losses, alarming rate of unsuccessful projects and failure to establish ultimate goals. Some of the commonly identified factors that influence IT project success are Customer Satisfaction, Internal process, Financial, and perception alignment of the key actors involved in the project. One of the critical success factors for project success is explicit business case. In this research the impact of using an explicit vendor business case over an IT project success is investigated. The word ‘’explicit business case ‘’ refers to a business case which is well formulated, documented and is regularly updated throughout the project life cycle. Furthermore, a vendor business case is a document prepared on the basis of the information shared by the customer. Although vendor business case is built for guiding the vendor, but it’s initiated by the customer. What makes vendor business case special is, it includes the benefits and goals for vendor for taking the project but also includes the key value drivers from the customer’s business case, as customer satisfaction is an important element for the overall success from vendor’s perspective. Considering the vastness of the field of project management, and ensuring that the research is carried out within the established scope, only key aspects of project management relevant to the field of IT projects have been considered. Broadly classifying the success of a project can be measured from two angles; i.e. from the standpoint of a customer and that of a vendor. The research focuses on the success definition and evaluation from the vendor perspective. In the current research undertaken, Sogeti Netherlands B.V. has been chosen as a research partner, which is an established IT vendor with a diverse range of ongoing projects in its portfolio. The above scoping of the research led to a refined subject question as follows - How could the use of an explicit business case affect the IT project success? Note: The business case and success measures are from vendor’s standpoint To initiate the research, an analytical framework was developed to answer the primary research question. The analytical framework encapsulates two different angles; the static and the dynamic. Static angle represents the extent of information exchanged (between customer and vendor) at a given point in time. On the other hand, dynamic format represents a situation when the information exchange is continuous between customer and vendor, and also within the actors (Bid manager, Contract manager and Project manager) involved from the vendor side. A detailed literature review was conducted to build an understanding of the outcomes from similar performed researches in the past. The literature indicates that capturing the vital information and addressing the key issues at the onset of a project is important to the success of the project. Previously conducted researches also established a positive relation between business case and project success but the relation between explicit vendor business case and IT project success perceived from vendor perspective, has not been addressed. Another important finding from the literature review indicated lack of proper communication between key project actors as a key factor responsible for project failure. On basis of the above mentioned findings drawn from the literature review and the analytical framework, a research methodology was designed. This primarily involved qualitative approach of sampling certain projects and investigating all related details. Five different projects (at Sogeti), at various stages in the project life cycle, dealing with different IT technologies and varied project sizes were chosen. All key related managers were selected for personal interviews. Based on the primary research question, a detailed questionnaire was designed to be used for the interviews. The data collection was further refined to capture important aspects of business case usage in IT project management practices at Sogeti, which were identified as critical in addressing the research question. The data received from the interviews were thoroughly analyzed, and one of the approaches used in the analysis was measurement of coherence between different answers. To compare and merge the answers gathered from the interviews, different ranges (high, medium and low) measuring the coherence were developed and introduced. These ranges correspond to the level of coherence of answers given by various actors associated with the project. During the analysis, it was found that, answers give by actors were not completely coherent which can affects the project success. It was also seen that managers follow different strategies in the decision making tradeoff. After analyzing the interview data it can be concluded that with the use of an explicit vendor business case, the coherence in the answers found between the actors can be improved which may also affect IT project success positively. Although various different factors play a role in project success, not only the explicit vendor business case, but framing, maintaining and using an explicit vendor business case throughout the entire project life cycle would increase coherence of project drivers. It was also concluded that having an explicit vendor business case may curtail the ambiguity of decision making on issues related to the tradeoff made by the actors involved from the vendor’s side and increase the overall IT project success. The above mentioned conclusions were further translated into recommendations. One the important recommendations is, it is recommended to use an explicit vendor business case to curtail the subjectivity (in perception and decision making) of the actors (Bid manager, contract manager and project manager) during the complete life cycle of the project. The research findings contribute to the importance of having an explicit vendor business case throughout a project management life cycle and creating an environment which ensures transparent and dynamic information handover among the key actors. The research also aims to contribute positively to the IT project success.

Project management has always been an interesting topic and has received much attention, not only because of the method but also in its application. It has been observed that in literature ‘mega-projects’ receive much attention while little is written about small projects. There can be several reasons for this, but it is believe that this is mainly due to the idea that the project management practices can be used for any project, occasionally leaving some prescribed project activities out or by using a scaled version of the activity when applied to small projects. The developed project management bodies of knowledge provide guidelines for project execution. These guidelines are referred to as ‘traditional’ project management practices, as they are focusing on planning and controlling the project. Traditional project management approaches are based on a predictable, fixed and relative simple model with little focus on behavioral and complexity aspects. Nowadays, environments are much more dynamic compared to the environment where the traditional project management approach was developed. Adaptive project management can be seen as a derivative of traditional project management but is less focused on tasks and activities but more on a strategy-based management approach to achieve maximal benefit of the project. Adaptive project management is of importance for the smaller projects, because the project management approaches can be too cumbersome for this kind of projects. Adaptive project management is not in conflict with traditional project management, but it ensures that the activities used are made fit for purpose towards the project. Royal Dutch Shell has developed a project manual for downstream projects with expenditures over USD 100 million. This manual is also used for the smaller projects at the refinery of Shell Pernis but the question is whether this improves or hinders the efficient execution of small projects. The goal of this thesis is to investigate and contribute to knowledge on project management for small projects and to provide recommendations for the current situation for small projects at Shell Pernis. To reach this goal, a qualitative research study at Shell Pernis was carried out. The research started with exploratory interviews as there was little specific knowledge on the topic available. These exploratory interviews led to the identification of four themes: project classification, fit for purpose execution, project team and front end development. These themes refer to possible improvement areas for the execution of small projects. Literature review was provided to define the themes in more detail and to compare the project management approach of Shell (called Opportunity Realization Manual - ORM) with the information found in literature. The following step was to identify possible issues that were not apparent from the literature study and comparison with the ORM. This is done via surveys, in-depth interviews and project data. The data is analyzed and ranked to find the most important issues that influence fit for purpose execution of small projects. Improving these issues is likely to increase fit for purpose execution. Fit for purpose is used to describe that sufficient and efficient effort must be undertaken in order to reach a goal successfully. The top six issues that were identified are: 1. Difficult cooperation between stakeholders 2. Unclear tasks and responsibilities of team members 3. Different performance indicators per stakeholder group 4. The usage of the same project structure for every project 5. The lack of a good and complete scope definition 6. The business model of the engineering contractor and the communication with Shell In order to prevent these issues from occurring, the following minimal requirements are identified in order to enable fit for purpose execution of small projects: • Project team formation and integration • Focus on contracting and procurement • Stakeholder management • Usage of a project assurance plan • Scheduling (including ‘the way forward’ of a project) • Opportunity framing for proper scope development (including lessons learned) • Risk management

Nine out of ten infrastructure projects fall victim to cost escalation (Flyvbjerg, 2004) and delays. This paper investigates the role of scope changes and the practice of scope management on project cost and planning.

In high-tech industries, projects play a central role in the development of new products and processes. Since these projects can be quite complex, it would be useful to look at where complexity in projects comes from and how these complexities influence these projects. The research project described in this thesis aims to increase the understanding of this topic in a company in the semiconductor industry, NXP Semiconductors. Products that are produced in the semiconductor industry play an increasingly important role in our lives. Products ranging from mobile telephones to cars to lighting are all equipped with semiconductor products and the performance of these products is steadily increasing with time. Therefore, the development of these products and the processes, which are needed to produce the products, are becoming more complex. The research project To describe the complexities that are encountered in the process engineering industry, a framework (the TOE framework, where TOE stands for Technical, Organizational and External) was developed earlier. The TOE framework consists of 47 elements (which are categorized into the three aforementioned categories) that describe aspects that can contribute to a project’s complexity. To understand the complexities that are encountered in the semiconductor industry, this research project has applied the TOE framework to this industry. The goal of this research project is twofold: firstly, it aims to understand where complexities in projects in the semiconductor industry come from; secondly, it would be useful for the company if the company would be able to understand which complexities could play a role in a future project and this could be used to come with the right measures to cope with these complexities. The main research question that this research project aims to answer is: What benefits does the application of the TOE framework provide for projects at NXP? This question is answered by doing a combination of desk research and case studies on projects in the company. In the desk research phase, the current practice related to development projects at NXP is investigated and a tool is described that calculates the design complexity of a new product design: Numetrics. Case studies To understand what complexities play a role in NXP projects, 16 projects have been investigated. The projects that are studied are from a wide variety of departments within NXP, but all projects (except for one) involve development of a new product or process. From each project, one person (the project manager) was interviewed. During the interviews, these project managers were asked to explain what the project entailed, which complexities were encountered during the projects, what influence these complexities had on the project and how the project managers coped with the complexities. The project managers were asked to indicate too which degree the complexities in the TOE were applicable to the project and if any complexities were missing in the framework. The complexities in the TOE framework that scored highest on the TOE scoring list are: - Involvement of different technical disciplines - Technical risks - High project schedule drive - Level of competition These high scoring complexities reflect the image that development projects in the semiconductor industry require multidisciplinary teams, that technical risks are often high (since it is not always known whether certain solutions will provide the required functionality), that there is high drive to develop new products quickly and that there is a high level of competition on the market. Next to the complexities that are directly related to the TOE framework, interviewees were also asked to share their views and experiences with the Numetrics system. A number of observations and recommendations with respect to this system are presented in this thesis. Adaptation and application of TOE From the original TOE framework, five elements were considered to be not applicable to the projects by the interviewees. These elements are not present the adapted version of the TOE framework for use at NXP. The interviewees also indicated that a number of complexities were missing or not precisely enough described in the TOE framework. In total 13 elements are added to the existing framework (4 technical, 5 organizational and 4 external elements). These adaptations lead to a new version of the TOE framework, that is modified to meet the situation at NXP. A preliminary version of a score chart is made, on which a project manager can indicate which complexities could be present in a project that is under planning. However, further research would be needed to successfully implement the application of TOE in practice. A possible way of applying TOE would be to use a similar approach that is taken by Numetrics – a tool that is currently being used at NXP to assess the design complexity of product developments. Since the relevance of Numetrics is limited to product development projects, the TOE approach would have an added value by also addressing other types of projects, such as process developments. Next to the version of TOE that is adapted to meet the needs of NXP, a suggestion is made for the inclusion of four new elements, which were the result of the case studies that were performed in this research project. Conclusions The research project shows that the possible application of the TOE framework could have benefits for NXP. As the case studies show, complexities can have a large influence on the project’s execution and success. Therefore, a tool that can assess the complexity and sources of complexity of multiple types of (development) projects would be of value to the company. Recommendations Towards the company, a number of recommendations are given. Firstly, although the BCaM framework is of much value to the company, one of the outcomes of the interviews was that the time between gates can be quite long. This can have a negative effect on the focus in the project team and including more steps into the system would increase the focus in the team. Secondly, we believe that the implementation of TOE in the planning phase of projects can add value by giving the project manager insight into the types of complexities that are expected to be encountered in the project under planning.

Project Portfolio Management (PPM) has the potential to bring considerable benefits to organisations. Although PPM should improve project success, not all project management based working organisations have fully adopted PPM as part of their way of working. The question that arises here is ‘why?’. The concept of PPM Adoption has not received much academic attention so far. A positive link between PPM Adoption and portfolio success has been found by a few authors, but the circumstances under which PPM should be adopted is yet considered a research gap. This research aims to address this research gap by determining how PPM Adoption is influenced. This study aims to answer the research question ‐ How is the adoption by organisational bodies of Project Portfolio Management influenced? ‐ This question is split into three sub‐questions focussing respectively on a deeper study into the process of PPM Adoption, the identification and validation of factors that influence PPM Adoption, and how and under which circumstances each of these factors influences PPM Adoption. This research project is divided into (1) an explorative phase, comprising literature study and 8 expert interviews, enabling the construction of a conceptual model, and (2) a validation phase following a multiple‐case holistic design case study approach with 15 relatively small case studies with a 1,5 hour interview per case at their core, in various organisations in The Netherlands. The studied organisations can roughly be divided into one third (semi‐) governmental, one third financial services and one third industry, technology and/or professional services. PPM is an ambiguous term. The definition used in this report stresses the aim of PPM for selecting and prioritising projects in the portfolio. Through literature study and explorative expert interviews it has been determined that PPM Adoption is not a choice between taking up and not taking up PPM. It rather is the movement along a spectrum between the extremes of intuitive and highly formalised project selection and prioritisation. Through study of literature on adoption of innovations and on PPM and its benefits, complemented by the explorative expert interviews, nine factors have been identified that influence PPM Adoption. These factors are categorised as conditions for and drivers of PPM Adoption. The conditions are Portfolio complexity; Organisational culture; PPM Gap size (inverse); and Relative resource scarcity. The drivers are Alternative organisational priorities (inverse); Desire for better information transparency; Need for better predictability of company results; Desire for project success rate improvement; and Desire for portfolio rationalisation. Based on mainly cross‐case synthesis, considering multiple aspects of the collected data about these nine factors (conditions and drivers), conclusions have been derived about the influence of these nine factors on PPM Adoption. Besides the frequencies of these factors, also the phase of the interview in which the factor was mentioned and the additional comments by the interviewees have been included in the determination of an overall interviewee‐ and factor‐specific judgement of the overall influence of this factor on each case’s PPM Adoption. Quantification of these judgements provides overall per‐factor indications of their average influence on PPM Adoption and its standard deviation. Bringing all these components together, the following conclusions have been drawn about the individual factors. Of the four conditional factors, only ‘relative resource scarcity’ has been found to form an important condition for PPM Adoption. Of the driving factors, ‘desire for information transparency’ is an important driver for PPM Adoption, regardless of circumstances. Also ‘desire for portfolio rationalisation’ is frequently a driver, but often tacitly. This means that organisations are not aware of this desire, until they discover that this desire is fulfilled by PPM Adoption, which is then obviously driven by other factors. The influence of ‘need for better predictability of company results’ can be influential, but this is strongly dependent on circumstances, like how the organisational body hierarchically reports to another entity. The ‘desire for project success rate improvement’ can be a reason for adopting PPM, but conversely PPM is not always adopted to answer this desire. This study contributes to the extant body of literature by contributing to the bridging of the research gap in influences on PPM Adoption. Among its principal contributions are a conceptual model for researching the influences on PPM Adoption, a consideration of influencing factors that potentially provide wider application in the research on adoption of other organisational innovations, and ‐ more generally ‐ the contribution of empirical evidence to the extant body of literature on PPM through 15 case studies in organisational bodies that practice PPM. The managerial implications of this research comprise the perspective on PPM Adoption as movement along a continuum, rather than a one‐shot action, and the understanding that PPM is often adopted reactively, in response to an emerging issue like a growing scarcity of resources, while proactive adoption of PPM allows enjoyment of many more benefits than solely the reduction of organisational pain.

The conclusions of this research are based on a combination of the literature on the subject of business cases and projects and of 50 responses (of which 26 complete), primarily by members of two professional organisations, to a questionnaire that was created for this research. The respondents have indicated to blame many budget and time overruns to unexpected events. At the same time they rated the importance of a risk analysis in a business case quite low, while a risk analysis could acknowledge the possible occurrence of such events - thereby already diminishing their effect on the project. This research also found many time-related issues, but it is proposed to solve these issues outside of the business case (e.g. communication), as it is not meant to present how a project should be executed. This research proposes to update the business case when large changes in the outside-world occur, to be followed by a new decision moment. This is proposed because (1) testing project decisions against an out-of-date business case is more difficult than when it contains current data; (2) large changes in the outside world may imply that the project does no longer represent added value to the business and it may be decided that it should be postponed or discontinued. Benefit and cost estimations within business cases are frequently (intentionally) inaccurate, which leads to false investment decisions. Understanding the opportunistic behaviour and taking the inaccuracy into account are first steps to solve the issue. Other steps that increase the value of the document are: applying discounting of future benefits and costs; monetising non-financial benefits or creating a cost-effectiveness analysis and including ex-post measurement strategies of anticipated (non-financial) benefits that will enable easier project evaluation. This research found no evidence in the dataset that the business case aided in achieving project management success.

Nowadays, in an environment of globalisation, intense competition and rising research costs, Collaborative Research Projects (CRP) are essential means of sustaining technological growth. Collaborative research activities are increasingly applied across research-based and business-based organizations and are becoming an efficient way to achieve mutual outcomes. However, collaboration engages a broad sample of organizations often differs in culture, in values or project interests. Furthermore, the fact that CRP are being performed in an unclear innovative environment adds extra difficulties to be managed. Uniresearch BV is a firm that coordinates EU Research Projects and has developed its own techniques and methods to manage the execution of Collaborative Research Projects. With the aim to acquire a deeper and explorative insight into the methods and tools used to execute Collaborative Research Projects (CRP); the central research question to this study is: How can the management of the project execution be improved in Collaborative Research Projects? To answer this question several research approaches have been performed in this study. The main research approach adapted was conducting interviews of organizations, managing Collaborative Research Projects. The first part of the interview attempts to find what is considered as Project Management Success in CRP, the second seeks to pinpoint what the methods are used to monitor and control CRP, how do they contribute to achieve PMS, and how do they change across projects. The purpose of the last part is to identify which factors affect Project Management Success. Moreover, two questionnaires are part of the methodology used in this research. One questionnaire has been performed to Uniresearch BV employees in order to obtain a definition of Project Management Success. The other one to the most frequent users of Uniresearch BV web based management tool, with the intention of obtaining a better view of the standard tools used on CRP. This study has identified the usability of the final outcome and accomplishing the main objectives of the project as the main indicators of Project Management Success (PMS) in Collaborative Research Projects. In order to obtain a higher degree of PMS, this study has found two paths: through improving the methods and tools to monitor and control CRP, and identifying the relevant factors that affect the execution of the project and therefore the Project Management Success. Regarding the methods and tools to monitor and control, the findings show that in every project new methods have to be developed and adapted to the project. Consequently the interviewees claim that more integrated, standard and formal procedures are needed. Since they consider that Collaborative Research Projects is uncertain and this connotes a lack of knowledge about accomplishing the defined goals, formality provides more organization, policies and adherence to routine operations. They also agreed that the tools developed should be user friendly. Even though it has been found that the methods and tools used to monitor and control Collaborative Research Projects are not currently used in every kind of project, the findings show that risk management deserves more consideration in complex projects, like Collaborative Research Projects. Looking at the factors influencing the execution of the project, this research has identified that Communication, Trust & Commitment are crucial in achieving Project Management Success. Furthermore, a connection between these two factors has been observed during the research. As a conclusion, improving the level of communication means to improve the degree of trust & commitment between managers and partners. Apart from these two important factors, other factors have been found in this study. The results reflect that the project Set Up including the planning and the responsibilities of the partners must be well defined in order to execute the project in a good order and to ensure Project Management Success. Furthermore, the Partner Selection is another important aspect that has been found; the respondents of the interview consider that is relevant to select a partner with past experience or with proper skills to add to the project. The last factor identified is the managerial skills of the project manager. The respondents found that adequate personnel who apply the methods and tools properly make a difference in achieving Project Management Success. A pattern across the interviewed organizations has been identified. As a result, the differences between groups of projects have been examined over five categories: partner homogeneity, reporting frequency, communication frequency, methods to establish trust and commitment and managerial skills. Although the conclusions extracted from this analysis might not be proved, the differences demonstrated are undeniable. Private Research Projects, managed by private companies, report higher values in all the five categories and therefore it is expected to have better levels of management success. On the other hand, Research EU Projects registered lower level of partner homogeneity, which means higher project complexity but controversially, their methods are more flexible and less explicit. A set of recommendations to Uniresearch BV has been formulated based on the previous conclusions. First the methods currently in use to manage Collaborative Research projects should be further examined. Then, if it is required, the firm should implement more formal methods to establish communication with partners, as communication plans. Moreover, considering the importance of Trust & Commitment, it is essential to ensure explicit and described methods to enhance Trust & Commitment. Another recommendation might be effective when the company participates in the first stages of Collaborative Research Projects. Finally, it is important to describe in detail the tasks and project responsibilities and to choose carefully the partners to be involved. Although this research has its limitations, as the imprecise selection of the interview sample or the lack of detail collecting data, this study has achieved its aim of examining the methods and the influencing factors on the execution of CRP, providing conclusions and recommendations on how the management of CRP can be improved. Further research can be conducted to analyze in a quantitative approach whether the factors are affecting the Project Management success in each type of Collaborative Research Projects. Moreover, it is also suggested to study each type of CRP separately to identify which factors are more relevant in each group.

In the construction industry, the design and construct (D&C) project delivery method is being used more often. Smaller public parties are becoming aware of the benefits of this approach. However, these benefits are not always reached in practice as both public and private parties deviate from their new roles. Especially the public party is blamed for not fulfilling its role in the D&C process. This research has created a framework of success factors that should lead to a successful D&C project. The research shows that public clients have difficulty with fulfilling their role as they want to keep control on the design and are not used to their new role. Furthermore, conflicting interest and expectations between the client and contractor are a burden on fulfilling the success factors. These deviations are, however, understandable. The public client has a representative role and has to take into account the desires and interests of a lot of stakeholders. The current literature on D&C projects needs to be improved by taking into account the role of the public party. Future research should be focused on increasing the amount of analyzed D&C projects. Furthermore, more attention should be given to the role of the private party.