22nd June – Dr Tim Brady (CENTRIM, University of Brighton) and Liz Lee-Kelly
(Cranfield University)
Title: Business as unusual: coping with the 'wicked' problem of planning transport needs for
the 2012 Olympics
Abstract: This seminar presents some findings from a case study of a complex collaborative
planning process – managing the transport network in London during the 2012 Olympic
Games. Collaborative planning aims to coordinate distributed efforts by enabling network
organisations to orient and align their plans towards each other so as to produce a coherent
overall strategy for any particular project. In such situations it is common to find
stakeholders’ understanding of the issue leads to silo-thinking and a failure to develop a
shared understanding of the issues. The full 2012 Olympics transport programme is a
massive effort costing nearly £7 billion, and consists of two main parts – an major
infrastructure development programme with numerous individual projects and an operational
programme stream which is trying to plan for the movement of people within and across
London during the Games period. Although the infrastructure programme is large and
complex it can be considered as a ‘tame’ problem (Rittel and Webber, 1973) since the
objective is clear and it is also clear when the overall objective has been achieved. In
contrast, planners for the operational transport programme face a ‘wicked’ problem (Rittel
and Webber,1973) where there is less clarity about how to solve the problem and you will
only know if it is solved after the event. In the presentation we show how Transport for
London, the body responsible for transport in the capital, has taken an approach based on
the development and use of different kinds of visualisation tools as boundary objects to
enable stakeholders at multiple levels to develop a shared understanding of the issues to
help them address their “wicked’ problem.
Bios: Dr Tim Brady is a Principal Research Fellow at CENTRIM (the Centre for Research on
Innovation Management), University of Brighton. He was Deputy Director of the Complex
Product Systems (CoPS) Innovation Centre (funded by the UK Economic and Social
Research Council) and a member of the Rethinking Project Management Network (funded
by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council). He was co-chair of the
project track at the 2004 EURAM Conference at St Andrews and organiser of the 2007
IRNOP research conference in Brighton. His current research and teaching interests include
learning and capability building in project-based firms and the role of projects and
programmes in delivering strategic organisational change. He has published in journals such
as Sloan Management Review, Organization Studies, Industrial and Corporate Change,
Research Policy, R&D Management, the International Journal of Innovation Management,
and the International Journal of Project Management.
Dr Liz Lee-Kelley is Programme Director of Cranfield’s flagship MSc in Programme and
Project Management. Her early career was in financial services working in the UK and the
Channel Islands before spending five years in the Middle East. On her return to the UK, Liz
became Company Secretary and Finance Manager for a subsidiary of Asea Brown Boveri
before she was headhunted to join the business turnaround team of a specialist engineering
firm as Finance director with special responsibility for its Special Projects Division. Projects
under her stewardship have included mine clearance of the British sector in Kuwait; design,
build and installation of an under-car recognition system for the Channel Tunnel; specially
designed mobile laundry units for the Saudi MoD, and design and build of mini remote
vehicles for nuclear decommissioning in the US. In 1992 Liz was awarded the Freedom of
the City of London.
Since leaving industry, Liz has built her reputation as as a skilled international lecturer who
can teach across boundaries and bring people successfully together in a learning
environment through analysing the human dimension in Project and Programme
Management. She is a member of Cranfield’s International Centre for Programme
Management and also serves as an editorial board member for various journals in her areas
of interest. Liz's research publications are centred on three themes: (1) Team Relational
Dynamics, Innovation and Learning, (2) E-Business Applications and (3) E-Government. Her
current research interest is focused on understanding the human dimension in projects and
information management systems, in particular, and on trust and intra-group identification in
temporary and distributed teams.