Developing and retaining human capital

in a project-based organisation:

An historical example, and

personal reflections

COMMENTARY

By Alan Stretton, PhD (Hon)

Auckland, New Zealand

INTRODUCTION

This article has been partly prompted by a contribution in this journal by Hugo Minney, entitled “Wellbeing in project teams: Boosting productivity and profitability through human-centric approaches” (Minney 2025). Minney focuses on the importance of the human element in project success and provides abundant evidence of the substantial cost of neglecting the wellbeing of the people working on projects, and of the considerable benefits of specifically providing for their improved wellbeing – together with some facilitation guidelines.

This kind of focus on the importance of the people in the project team is all too often neglected in the project management literature. In contrasting mode, Minney’s concluding section is entitled, “The project manager as a steward of human capital”, which seems to me to neatly encapsulate his emphasis on the key importance of the project team members. My own interpretation is a comparative one – instead of tacitly viewing its people as costs to the project, it is much more realistic and beneficial for project management to view them as capital investments in project success.

This perspective is also particularly appropriate for leaders and managers of project-based organisations which provide project management services to external customers. However, such human wellbeing approaches were only rarely practiced in the context of the Australian building and construction industries in my experience in the last half of the 20^th century. Indeed, I believe they are still relatively rarely adopted.

I happened to spend over a quarter of a century with an organisation which very conspicuously went against that prevailing ethos. That organisation, Civil & Civic (C&C), and its parent company, Lend Lease Corporation (LLC), were very much concerned with the wellbeing of all their employees, both short-term, and particularly longer-term. The first two direct employee-related initiatives described below were developed before I joined C&C, and I draw heavily on the book by Clark 2002 “Finding a common interest: The story of Dick Dusseldorp and Lend Lease”, in discussing their initiation. However, I was heavily involved in the third key initiative undertaken by LLC/C&C and will draw on my on my personal notes and recollections in discussing this very important initiative.

The context of this article is historical, relating to the building and construction industry in Australia in the late 1950s through the 1980s. I will endeavour to outline the overall industrial relations scene at the time, and then describe some of the initiatives undertaken by C&C/LLC to provide levels of security and longer-term incentives for all its people – initiatives which were far in advance of industry practices at the time.

More…

To read entire paper, click here

How to cite this paper: Stretton, A. (2026). Developing and retaining human capital in a project-based organisation: An historical example, and personal reflections, commentary; PM World Journal, Volume XV, Issue II, February. Available online at https://pmworldjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/pmwj161-Feb2026-Stretton-Developing-and-retaining-human-capital.pdf

About the Author

Alan Stretton, PhD     

Life Fellow, AIPM (Australia)
Auckland, New Zealand

Alan Stretton is one of the pioneers of modern project management.  In 2006 he retired from a position as Adjunct Professor of Project Management in the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Australia, which he joined in 1988 to develop and deliver a Master of Project Management program.   Prior to joining UTS, Mr. Stretton worked in the building and construction industries in Australia, New Zealand and the USA for some 38 years, which included the project management of construction, R&D, introduction of information and control systems, internal management education programs and organizational change projects.  Alan has degrees in Civil Engineering (BE, Tasmania) and Mathematics (MA, Oxford), and an honorary PhD in strategy, programme and project management (ESC, Lille, France).  Alan was Chairman of the Standards (PMBOK) Committee of the Project Management Institute (PMI®) from late 1989 to early 1992.  He held a similar position with the Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM) and was elected a Life Fellow of AIPM in 1996.  He was a member of the Core Working Group in the development of the Australian National Competency Standards for Project Management.  He has published 280+ professional articles and papers.  Alan can be contacted at alanailene@bigpond.com .

To see more works by Alan Stretton, visit his author showcase in the PM World Library at http://pmworldlibrary.net/authors/alan-stretton/.