Chaos and Control in the Project Deep State

A project is like a state. There are laws, both governmental and contractual, that the Contractor and Client must adhere to. There are also free market elements working within the project, and for the project – subcontractors and distributors looking to ply their trades and sell their wares. Additionally, there is a sprawling bureaucratic machine working to keep the wheels of the project moving.

The Client functions like the electorate, voting in, and sometimes voting out, the Contractor, or the administration. The Project’s length is the elected term, and the Client’s elected officials are there every step of the way to hold the ambitious Contractor to account. Even before the project contract is awarded, prospective Contractors submit their proposals and bids – or rather, they campaign for the work of the project.

Once the administration has been awarded, and the mandate, granted, the Project Manager is appointed as the Prime Minister, while the Construction Manager, or Superintendent, is appointed as the highest-ranking General. These are the leaders of the project – the state – for the duration of the construction term and they, in their respective ways, are responsible for the project’s completion. The General, for the construction itself, and the Project Manager, for the contract in all its fine print.

Each leader appoints their managers and lieutenants, who in turn appoint their specialists and support staff. The Client has their counterparts to these high-ranking officials, middle managers, and specialists. There are meetings – or, press briefings – where the electorate gets to ask tough questions and confirm that the budgeted work is being carried out as planned. In some cases, there are construction, and thus contractual changes that require near-immediate notification to the client – to the public. Depending on the change, the contract price may be increased – money will be printed, and the bureaucratic machine, expanded. It is through these variegations of complexity that Project leaders must navigate to complete the project – to deliver on their mandate.

Some states may function like seasoned democratic machines, while others may present as such, but may instead work under the auspices of martial law. Either way, like any state, there is a spectrum of democracy and there are those you see, and those you don’t. Sometimes it’s difficult to know exactly where the influence lies.

This brings me to the context of my letter. I am writing to you anonymously to protect my identity. You see, I am one of the machines you barely notice. And for my sake, I need to keep it that way.

Call me Ishmael. I am one of the silent project lobbyists you’ve never heard of.

The Project Controller

Projects are completed by the construction professionals and technicians who do the required physical work. There’s no mystery here. Their work is tangible, and their workmanship is one with the project itself - the mandate being delivered. There are day-to-day decisions I’ve never considered and am not even privy to in my position as the kind of project lobbyist I am. But what I do see is the financial impact of the work. The bird’s eye view, so to speak, if a bird worked with spreadsheets all day and shopped for boats discretely.

I see everything and nothing at the same time. My bunker is hidden away within the “Commercial” department; a title sounding as confusing as it does innocuous. Most people I talk to think I work in advertising.

My plan exactly.

Sometimes the information I carry is so volatile to the client-facing polity that I must steal away from the construction site in the middle of the night and vanish into the east for weeks at a time, bringing only my laptop, company credit cards, and cyanide molar. When I am on-site, the common conception is that I am “bean counting”, or “making coffee” – just doing something so boring and non-mission critical that it’s not even worth asking what I am up to. If there is one thing that I have learned though from my experience so far, it’s this:

In a world where unbridled truth can be caustic, it must be hidden by nerdy demeanors and the perception of boredom.

Words to live by.

The truth, I must admit, is more diabolical than it seems.

The Mission

Hiding in plain sight, I investigate project spending and earnings. Payroll, receipts, commitments, quantitative progress – if you are a cost, a quantity, or an element of revenue, I will find you, so, come out, come out, wherever you are. And depending on what I find, I will put together my reports…

My earned value reports.

In backroom meetings, I publish my findings for the “Commercial” Manager – the minister of Finance, and the Project Manager – the Prime Minister. Often delicately, but more often, coldly, I make predictions…

My predictions of how much profit we will earn, and whether we will have a surplus or a bust.

Sometimes, I come with glad tidings. Others, like a Roman Vulcan raining red.

In a way, I am a silent arbiter of layoffs, a facilitator of temporary unemployment, and early decommitment of Subcontract value. They say the truth shall set you free; well in my case, a negative budget variance for your department just might. You will be free to travel home, and away from project payroll and accounts payable.

But it is not like I have any mandated say in Project decision-making. As an element of the Project's deep state, I work my initiatives through a subliminal language that only controllers pretend to understand.

Cost codes.

Every cost and element of revenue that enters the sphere of materiality must be bucketed in the part of the budget it belongs to. Earned value metrics work as plot devices that allow me to formulate the project’s financial narrative in a way that the polity can understand and can thereafter deliver diplomatically to the electorate. And this kind of narrative must read like the Arts and Culture section of Grandpa's news report, rather than a thriller novel by candlelight fit for an abandoned house in northern Quebec. Surprises big enough could spark a revolt, or inspire a coup, or topple an administration. And as for me? Well, I mentioned the molar…

I know what you’re wondering – is there anything we can do to increase the levels of transparency associated with this part of the state we don't see? Sadly, it’s been tried before, and it never works, as we controllers just create new cost codes and disappear into the east, only to reappear on another project sometime later.

The point is that every project has people like this, hiding in plain sight, and there’s nothing you can do to stop them. They are one of the necessary machinations of project management, for better or worse.

There are, however, some things to watch for when looking for members of the project’s financial deep state:

1. They work in vaguely named departments, like “Commercial”, or “Project Controls”
2. They spend most of their day making coffee and shopping for minivans
3. They have three monitors, and perhaps even a sit-stand desk
4. They often are wearing headphones and taking Teams Meetings in hushed tones
5. They appear on the construction site with rare irregularity, without notice, and apparently clueless and bumbling in their work boots and crooked hard hats.

Don't be deceived.

These people can be dangerous in their apparent boredom and aloofness. If you find them, stay as far away from them as possible, and don’t ever try to decipher their screens.

I must go now but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I only am escaped alone to tell thee.