The relationship between the owner’s project team and the consultant’s project team

Ever since Norwich-born John Taylor concluded that a mining concern should be managed and developed in a rational fashion with an eye on the long term,1 mine management has been transformed. This process started, roughly, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and has progressed steadily. Until that time, the prevailing attitude among shareholders was to grab the maximum annual profit with barely a thought for the next year. Taylor established a model whereby a single team of professional managers could take on the directing of numerous mines, geographically dispersed. This model gave rise to the ‘consulting engineer’ and was widely adopted by the mining corporates until the latter part of the twentieth century. The head office consulting engineer’s department was and still is the mainstay of centralized management that is so prevalent today. What had also emerged was the trend towards functional specialization in the corporate management structures. So much so that, as functional departments grew bigger, their boundaries became impervious and their focus myopic. Self-service and self-indulgence were substituted for competitive advantage and client expectations. To make matters worse, the era of management consultants dawned upon the mining corporate houses. During the last half of the twentieth century these consultants recommended, for various reasons, that senior managers should not hold a particular office for too long. Thus it became popular for senior managers to rotate offices every three to four years. While this system added to the experience and acuity of the managers, it also had a downside. As the tenure of office of senior managers gets shorter and shorter, it is only natural that managers increasingly look for short-term glory even though this may not be in the best interests of the organization.2 In a great many projects senior managers have a vested interest in underestimating the capital and time required to bring a project to full-scale production. When the chickens come home to roost, some five to six years later, that particular manager has moved on to another position and can no longer be held accountable. READ, H.W. The relationship between the owner’s project team and the consultant’s project team. International Platinum Conference ‘Platinum Adding Value’, The South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, 2004.