How can System Engineering Improve Supplier Management in Megaprojects?

Megaprojects are frequently delivered with very poor project management performance. Poor performance consists of cost and time escalation, poor outcome quality and shortfall benefits. This is due to several reasons such as intrinsic complexity, biased forecasts, conscious misinformation about costs and benefits, poor stakeholder management. Concerning project stakeholders there are three main criticalities: (1) opportunistic behaviour; (2) lack of skills and know-how; and (3) poor communication and coordination. Systems Engineering (SE) is both a technical and managerial approach to manage complex projects, in particular megaprojects. SE can enable project managers to properly manage stakeholders optimizing the trade-off between a short project planning and a detailed holistic stakeholder analysis. The purpose of this paper is to present a framework enabling managers: (1) to select and manage suppliers in order to enforce supplier coordination and to prevent opportunistic behaviour; and (2) to decide how to involve suppliers in different projects, present or future, considering past projects performance.