Significant Events (Voyager, Chenab Bridge, Sports Cross-Overs),
Good News (Zepher Project), Not Sure News (Heathrow Third Runway,
East Coast Mainline Upgrade, Turner & Townsend),
Bad News (Project Delays, Oil & Gas, UK Supreme Court,
Offshore Wind Projects, Horizon Inquiry),
Politics (General Election, New Zero Economy),
Closing Remarks (Smells of Times Past, Rewilding Successes),
and Wolves in Paris
REPORT
By Miles Shepherd
Executive Advisor & International Correspondent
Salisbury, England, UK
INTRODUCTION
It is high summer here and strange to report, it is actually sunny! Apart from the usual social events we delight in, we have seen a critical multi-party project hurtle along and by the time you read this, we will have a new Government. Cynics might claim there is no difference between the main protagonists but let’s hope they are wrong and we get some sort of effective group running the country.
There are other major events of the past month to relate but before I get on to those, I’d like to mention a new section. Before my international Imps departed for cooler climes, they spotted a number of international projects and I will pass these on in the opening line up.
Meanwhile, back in Britain, we have news of a project related take over, some good news on the re-wilding front, an unusual research project and some downright bad news, all balanced out by a few stories that defy categorisation – so on with the significant events as seen from Shepherd Towers.
SIGNIFICANT EVENTS ROUND UP
Voyager. The first item is of stellar importance, or at least from interstellar space. I’m reporting this as I doubt that others will and it is too significant to be allowed to pass unreported. You might have noticed that one of NASA’s space vehicles, Voyager 1, has been out of contact with its home station since November last year. Well, it is now back online, sending its regular reports on plasma waves, magnetic fields and various particles through its four instruments. The space probe is more than 15 billion miles from Earth so sorting out problems involves sending commands that take almost 23 hours to reach the probe. After several months of work, engineers managed to restore basic communications on the health and status of its engineering systems.
The graphic, from The Times, shows the progress and highlights of the Voyager probes. The fault that struck in November was traced to a chip in the flight data subsystem (FDS). The FDS is responsible for packaging the science and engineering data before it’s sent to Earth. Mission controllers could tell the spacecraft was still receiving their commands and otherwise operating normally. The hardware fault was unrepairable, so NASA’s engineers devised a workaround to place the affected code elsewhere in the FDS memory no single location is large enough to hold the section of code in its entirety. They also needed to adjust those code sections to ensure, for example, that they all still function as a whole. Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the FDS memory needed to be updated as well. Voyager 1’s three computers were top of the range when Voyager was launched in 1977, but have about as much memory as a modern car key fob. “While Voyager 1 is back to conducting science, additional minor work is needed,” Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement. Sadly, as its supply of nuclear fuel runs down, further glitches are expected.
Chenab Bridge. And so to India, where a spectacular rail project nears completion. Phase I of the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link (USBRL) project covered the 118 km long Qazigund-Baramulla section, was inaugurated in October 2009. Subsequent phases saw the inauguration of the 18 km long Banihal-Qazigund section in June 2013 and the 25 km long Udhampur-Katra section in July 2014. The 48.1 km long Banihal-Sangaldan section, was inaugurated by PM Narendra Modi on February 20, 2024.
More…
To read entire report, click here
How to cite this report: Shepherd, M. (2024). UK Project Management Roundup, report, PM World Journal, Vol. XIII, Issue II, February. Available online at https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/pmwj143-Jul2024-Shepherd-UK-Management-round-up-report.pdf
About the Author
Miles Shepherd
Salisbury, UK
Miles Shepherd is an executive editorial advisor and international correspondent for PM World Journal in the United Kingdom. He is also managing director for MS Projects Ltd, a consulting company supporting various UK and overseas Government agencies, nuclear industry organisations and other businesses. Miles has over 30 years’ experience on a variety of projects in UK, Eastern Europe and Russia. His PM experience includes defence, major IT projects, decommissioning of nuclear reactors, nuclear security, rail and business projects for the UK Government and EU. His consulting work has taken him to Japan, Taiwan, USA and Russia. Past Chair and Fellow of the Association for Project Management (APM), Miles is also past president and chair and a Fellow of the International Project Management Association (IPMA). He was, for seven years, a Director for PMI’s Global Accreditation Centre and is immediate past Chair of the ISO committee developing new international standards for Project Management and for Program/Portfolio Management. He is currently Chairman of the British Standards Institute project management committee. He was involved in setting up APM’s team developing guidelines for project management oversight and governance. Miles is based in Salisbury, England and can be contacted at miles.shepherd@msp-ltd.co.uk.
To view other works by Miles Shepherd, visit his author showcase in the PM World Library at http://pmworldlibrary.net/authors/miles-shepherd/.
