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This is an important distinction and needs to be reinforced to ensure oversight professionals focus their efforts on their primary function verses that of the project management team. This is particularly important when oversight staff are also experienced project management professionals. Owners should invest in keeping staff aligned to the oversight mental model. Although throughout the project lifecycle project managers and supervisors also perform some oversight of their programs, this oversight is collateral to their primary duties. Project execution, albeit important, is not the core business of the owner-oversight organization. To be effective, owner-oversight professionals need to cultivate a mental model distinctly different from the project management team. The project management team is in the core business of project execution.
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Oversight process by like professionals professional#
Then the oversight professional should invoke the STOP WORK protocol, which will be discussed in another article.
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The obvious exception being when allowing the work to continue could endanger personnel or major equipment. This means, in general, owner-oversight personnel should not insert themselves into the project’s framework by directing or redirecting supervisors, workers, or project team leadership. Personnel who do so are out-of-role and undermine the project management team's authority, which, as discussed earlier, can result in the owners facing additional liability, avoidable change orders, and litigation. Most importantly, oversight professionals must remember that they are not agents of the project. Owner-oversight exists outside the project organization's agency and is independent and not governed by the project's program of processes, procedures, policies, and protocols except as bound by mutual agreement. It was the project team’s responsibility to determine the method of investigation and the criteria to continue the evolution. In the example above, although John’s instincts were right, he substituted his oversight role for that of a technician instead of requiring the project team, with all of its resources, to investigate his concern and hopefully prove or disprove it. In doing so, John substituted his judgment for what should have been the project team’s responsibility.