How susceptible is the CEO’s reputation to poor performance across the project portfolio? What impact can delivery failures have on the executive board, and what are the challenges they face to introducing greater accountability?

These are the central questions behind Oracle's research report In the Firing Line, which examines how a lack of operational visibility, allied to the inherent risks that accompany any large capital investment, can have a direct impact on bottom line results – and by extension the career prospects of senior executives.

Mixing real world examples with practical advice, the report also details the capabilities needed by boards to increase their confidence in the overall health of the portfolio, and maintain the strategic agility to redeploy assets in response to any unexpected emergencies without impacting business as normal.

Introduction

What are the primary measurements for rating CEO performance? For corporate boards, business analysts, investors, and the trade press the metrics they deploy are relatively binary in nature; what is being done to generate earnings, and what is being done to build and sustain high performance?

By John Chaney, co-founder, Dexter + Chaney

Once collaboration becomes reality, construction productivity will significantly improve, as project information will be easily available to all participants.

Two things can be said of economic downturns in the construction industry. First, a recovery that follows has roughly the same duration as the downturn itself, and brings the industry close to the level of growth it experienced prior to the downturn.

Second, the pressures of more competition for less business change how contractors do business. Previously, contractors that embraced new technologies and ways of getting work done emerged stronger from recessions.

For example, during the recession and recovery of the early 1980s, new approaches emerged in preconstruction (e.g., value engineering) and live construction (e.g., slip forming).

What these and other process and productivity improvements have in common is that they were caused in large part by the pressures of difficult environments.

So, how is construction productivity changing in response to the recent recession, and what new processes and technologies are the agents of change?

The FMI/CMAA 11th Annual Owners Survey was conducted in an atmosphere of considerable disagreement over whether the national economy is recovering and if so, how quickly. A major federal infusion of stimulus funding in 2009-2010 was meant to soften the impact of the recession, as well as accelerate the recovery through investment in infrastructure and other resources.