Brexit: a classic case of poor project management

Ann Bentley DEC 2018 BW CUTOUT

The prime minister’s handling of Brexit bears uncanny parallels to poor management of construction projects – so what can we all learn from this?

Back in the day – the end of January – when we still had some hope that Brexit might proceed in a reasonably orderly fashion, Suzannah Nichol, chief executive of Build UK challenged three current and former Building columnists – James Wates, Diana Montgomery and me – to predict where the UK would be at a minute past midnight on 30 March.

It’s fair to say that none of us predicted the MPs vote to potentially take control of the Brexit process … However, as I write this in the final week of political theatre before 29 March, it looks like James Wates was the closest with his prediction that we would have an extension of time. But speculation that we would have left the EU without a deal or that there would be an eleventh hour deal are, it seems, still possible.

 

With Theresa May as the Brexit PM (project manager), we seem to have adhered very closely to the infamous seven stages of bad project management. 

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