Minutes of the Thirdmanagement Committee Meeting

COST Action TU1003

MEGAPROJECTS

The Effective Design and Delivery of Megaproject in the European Union

Minutes of the ThirdManagement Committee Meeting

Tuesday 2 May 2012

Slovak University of Technology, Bratislava, Slovakia

ATTENDEES:

Members
Prof. / Abreu E Silva / Joao / (MC member)
Prof. / Adlbrecht / Gerald / (MC member)
Dr / Alfalla-Luque / Rafaela / (MC member)
Prof. / Baltov / Milen / (MC member)
Prof. / Brookes / Naomi / (MC chair)
Mr / Hanocq / Philippe / (MC member)
Prof. / Ivanicka / Koloman / (MC member)
Prof. / Kazimierz / Banasik / (MC member)
Dr / Korytarova / Jana / (MC member)
Prof. / Lo Storto / Corrado / (MC member)
Dr / Mancini / Mauro / (MC member)
Prof. / Martinsuo / Miia / (MC member)
Dr / Medina-Lopez / Carmen / (MC member)
Dr / Mourik / Ruth / (MC member)
Prof. / Njaa / Ove / (MC member)
Prof. / Pau / Louis-Francois / (MC member)
Prof. / Radjukovic / Mladen / (MC member)
Prof. / Spang / Konrad / (MC member)
Dr / Spirkova / Daniela / (MC member)
Dr / Triantafyllopoulos / Nikolaos / (MC member)
Prof. / Trpevski / Strahinja / (MC member)
Substitute Members
Mr / Wansdronk / Rene
Ms / Hampl / Nina
Observers
Dr / Giorgio / Locatelli
Mrs / King / Sarah
Dr / Vit / Hromadka

Apologies: George Chen, Marcus Enoch, Roland Gareis, Rene Henschel, Agnieszka Lukasiewicz, Ruth Mourik, Kjell Harald Olsen, Lilyana Pavlova, Athena Roumboutsos, Hakan Westerlund, Rolf Wuestenhagen, Gabriele Grimm.

1.0Review of Minutes Of Last Meeting

1.1)NB welcomed everyone to the meeting and the meeting agenda was adopted unanimously

1.2)The last sentence on Item 4.0 should read Thierry Goger also gave feedback on the recent domain conference.

1.3)There were no other comments on minutes of the MC meeting on 8 September 2012at Leeds University (UK)

Agreed The minutes were a true record

2.0Matters Arising

2.1)Candidates for the role of Dissemination Co-ordinator are required. NB outlined the job description. No nominations were received by attendees.

Action:NB to follow up.

2.2)NB described the arrangements following the authorisation given to her by the MC following from her email dated for delegated financial decisions. These entail the delegation of approval of individual activities to the ‘core’ team comprising the Action Chair and the three working group leaders. Using this mechanism, the decisions outlined in Annex A of this report had been taken.

Agreed: The MC ratified the decisions contained in Annex A.

Agreed: The MC approved the continuation of this authorisation procedure for Year 2 of the Action operation.

3.0COST Office report

3.1)The COST Office sent no specific items to raise at this meeting

3.2)The deadline for compiling and submitting the Monitoring Report to the COST office is 25 May.

Action: Working group leaders to submit progress reports by 12-05-12

3.3)NB called for ideas for improving COST Actions from MC members to put forward at the COST Domain Committee Review Meeting on 4-5 July in Reyjkavik.

Action: All MC members to send as they feel appropriate

4.0Working Group Reports

4.1)Cross-Sectoral Working Group:

George Chen has resigned as leader due to ill health. Milen Baltov had been nominated as the new leader by the working group was officially appointed following approval of the appointment by the MC.

Agreed: Milen Baltov is now the Working Group Leader of the Cross-Sectoral Working Group

MB reported that the group had been challenged by dealing with the diversity of its members and their work. Some interesting viewpoints and analyses had emerged and although not all the cases had been finalised they were all strong enough to progress.

The next CS WG meeting will be in Edinburgh or Liege

4.2)Energy:

MM reported to need to speed up on thoughts from the team during the remainder of the workshops.

The next Energy WG meeting will be in Milan in early July.

4.3)Transport:

JA reported good progress and with further work the group would have material suitable to publish.

The next Transport WG meeting will be in Croatia.

4.4)NB thanked GC, MM and JO for their work as WG leaders so far, and MB for taking up the Cross Sectoral WG leadership role.

5.0Review of Draft Annual Monitoring Report

5.1)A draft of this Annual Monitoring Report was presented to the meeting ad is contained in Annex B of these minutes. The report needs to be submitted to COST by 25 May. WG progress reports are required to complete this overall report and should be sent to NB by 12 May. The report should comprise a document outlining group members, meetings to-date the case studies and the cross-case themes developed for further analysis.

Action: NB to send a report template to WG Leaders and WG Leaders to complete

5.2)NB outlined the content of the draft report and thanked those who had sent related publications and research grant applications. To complete the report information from Cost Interaction forms is needed. NB requested submission of completed forms as a matter of urgency.

Action: All MC members to complete and send to NB

5.4)Agreed The MC ratified the submission of the Annual Monitoring Report by NB to the COST Office subject to addition of working group progress reports and any extra material provided by MC members on publications, research applications etc.

6.0Action Budget Review

6.1)The budget status as at 2 May 2012 given below was presented to the meeting:

Budget / Actual
Meetings / 67840 / 75449.66*
STSM / 15000 / 3000*
Web & Comms / 2000 / 6384.5
Other / 160 / 0
Total / 85000 / 84834.16

* Includes a forecast figure

6.2)NB explained that the overspend on meetings was due to the increase in number of MC members during the year. There had also been an over spend on the website but NB explained this was due to needing to outsource specialist web services for building of the site which had not been envisaged at budget planning stage.

7.0Draft Work plan and Action Budget July 2012 – June 2013 & Location of Meetings

7.1)NB presented to the meeting a Draft Work Plan and Action Budget for approval by the MC prior to submission to the COST office. ( The Draft Work Plan and Action Budget are contained in Annex C of the document.)NB put this in context by presenting a phased plan for the remainder of the action up to May 2015 and a schematic plan for the activities for the next year of the Action’s operation.(See below)

7.2)LFP queried if training schools can be operated with less than fifteen people.

Action NB to investigate

7.3)MM and LFP queried how the cross-case themes would be ratified given the importance that they have for the rest of the Action. NB highlighted the role of the virtual exercise of all MC members in October 2012, the ESR ‘Think Tank in November 2012, the CORE team meeting in December 2012 and the final ratification of themes at the next MC meeting in January 2012.

7.5)NB presented a breakdown of budget figures for the next financial year which totalled 117,350 euro. She requested 15% of the budget be allocated to admin support as the previous year.

7.6)Agreed.The Work Plan and Action Budget (including the administrative allowance) was agreed by the MC subject to clarification of numbers of participants in training schools.

7.7)The MC accepted the very kind offer of Joao Abreu to host the next MC meeting and whole Action workshop in Lisbon, Portugal in January 2013.

Action: NB to doodle dates and to disseminate the final choice.

7.8))The following MC meeting at the start of 2014 will be a Whole Action Conference with invitations extended to external stakeholders. It was agreed that the meeting should be planned to synchronise with other conferences to achieve the best outcome. NB called for thoughts on dates and local hosting. ALL

8.0STSM Status

8.1)NB reported that little had been spent on STSMs to date so the number of STSMs will need to increase during the remainder of the Action with earlier planning. There is scope for short notice STSMs to be funded (the actual amount of funds available will be known once all the expenses for this meeting have been processed).

Action:All to consider.

8.2)The current approved STSMs are by Tomas Urbanovsky who will study nuclear newbuild in the UK and Jonas Wennstrom who will study HSR investments in Germany. Both STSMs have a budget of 1500 euro each.

Agreed: The MC ratified these awards.

9.0Publications, Dissemination And Outreach Activities

9.1)A special issue the Organisation, Technology and Management in Construction Journal on Megaproject Management is being coordinated by Action members and a number of embers had also contributed papers. NB called for suggestions for further publication opportunities.

Action All MC members to consider

9.2)MR advised that the 2013 IPMA World Congress will be held in Croatia in October 2013. He suggested that the Actionshould participate fully in this event.

ActionNB to coordinate MEGAPROJECT’s participation in this event.

9.3)MiM reported on disseminationopportunities at the EUROMA 2013conference which is open for track proposal and symposium suggestions contributions until 19June 2012. MiM also highlighted the IRNOP conference in Norway in June 2013.

Action MC members to consider how they may contribute to these events and NB to coordinate.

9.4) NB thanked those who had submittedinformation on their publications, research proposals and other outreach activities for their work to date.

10.0 Requestsfor New Members

10.1)NB advised that new participants of working groups should act as informal members of the group until the end of the first phase of the Action (December 2012) after which the working groups can be restructured and new members formally appointed.

10.2) There are currently no new membership requests under consideration.

11.0 Promotion of Gender Balance and of Early Stage Researchers (ESR)

11.1)The current gender representation within the MEGAPROJECT Action is 33% female and 67% male MC members. Whilst the Action is within its first year of operation it is difficult to promote MC membership balance as membership is open to all who apply.

11.2)24% of the participants in the Action are ESRs.

12.0 Non-COST Country Participations

12.1)NB is currently investigating interest from Brazil.

Action:NB to investigate

13.0Web News

13.1)Feedback on the website to be would be greatly appreciated

Action: All MC members to send responses through to SK

Sarah King May 2012

Annex A: Decisions given delegated financial approval by the CORE team since the last Management Committee Meeting.

Decision:
One-day Energy Working Group Meeting held in Milano (LHS: Mauro Mancini)
Two-day Cross-Sectoral Working Group Meeting held in Burgas (LHS: Milen Baltov)
Two-day Transport Working Group Meeting held in Athens (LHS: Athena Romboutsis)
Increase in Budget to pay for Web-site Work

Annex B: Annual Monitoring Report

COST

Domain Committee "Transport and Urban Development"

COSTActionTU1003

Start Date (start date of the Action)

MEGAPROJECT: The Effective Design and Delivery of Megaprojects in the EU

MONITORING

PROGRESS REPORT

Reporting Period: from 16/05/2011

to 25/05/2012

This Report is presented to the relevant Domain Committee.

It contains three parts:

I. Management Report prepared by the COST Office/Grant Holder

II. Scientific Report prepared by the Chair of the Management Committee of the Action

III. Previous versions of the Scientific Report; i.e., part II of past reporting periods

The report is a “cumulative” report, i.e. it is updated annually and covers the entire period of the Action.

Confidentiality: the documents will be made available to the public via the COST Action web page except for chapter II.D.Self evaluation.

Based on the monitoring results, the COST Office will decide on the following year’s budget allocation.

I. Management Report prepared by the COST Office/Grant Holder

I.A. COST Action Fact Sheet

Please See the Annex A at the End of the Report for Details not provided here

• COST Actionnumber - title
• Domain name

• Action details:

CSO Approval:(day/month/year) / End date:(day/month/year)
Entry into force:(day/month/year) / Extension:(day/month/year)

• Objectives (from DB as in About COST)

• Parties: list of countries and date of acceptance

Austria (date) / Greece (date) / Poland (date)
Belgium (date) / Hungary (date) / Portugal (date)
Bulgaria (date) / Iceland (date) / Romania (date)
Croatia (date) / Ireland (date) / Serbia (date)
Cyprus (date) / Israel (date) / Slovakia (date)
Czech Rep. (date) / Italy (date) / Slovenia (date)
Denmark (date) / Latvia (date) / Spain (date)
Estonia (date) / Lithuania (date) / Sweden (date)
Finland (date) / Luxembourg (date) / Switzerland (date)
FYR of Macedonia (date) / Malta (date) / Turkey (date)
France (date) / Netherlands (date) / United Kingdom (date)
Germany (date) / Norway (date)

• Intentions toaccept: list of countries and date

• Other participants:
  (Institution Name, Country, Town)

Chair: (name, institution, address, phone, e-mail)
/ DC Rapporteur: (name, institution, address, phone, e-mail)
Science Officer:(name, e-mail) / Administrative Officer:(name, e-mail)

• Action Web site: . Grant Holder Representative(name, e-mail)

• Working Groups (list of WGs and names and affiliations of participants)

TRANSPORT

Joao Abreu e Silva

Agnieszka Lukasiewicz

Mladen Radujkovic

Rafaela Alfalla-Luque

Carmen Medina-Lopez

Athena Roumboutsos

Konrad Spang

Hakan Westerlund

(ECR: Prince Boateng)

ENERGY

Nina Hempl

Ruth Mourik

Mauro Mancini

Naomi Brookes

Kolomon Ivanicka

Daniela Spirikova

Gerald Adlbrecht

(ECR:Giorgio Locatelli

Tomas Urbanovsky)

CROSS-SECTOR

Milen Baltov

George Chen

Claudia Wenninger

Rene Wansdronk

Phillipe Hanocq

Ove Njaa

Corrado Lo Storto

(ECR:Daniela

Yourdanova)

I.B. Management Committee member list

Name / Country / E-mail

I.C. Overview activities and expenditure

(year) Budget
Total Action Budget:
Remaining Action Commitment:
Meetings
Meeting Type / Date / Place / Cost / Total
Transport Working Group / 6/2/12-7/2/12 / Athens / 5639.57 / 13246.7
Energy
Working
Group / 27/2/12 / Milan / 3032.16
Cross-Sector
Working
Group / 9/2/12 – 10/2/12 / Burgas / 4574.97
STSM
Beneficiary / Date / Place / Cost / Total
Tomas Urbanovsky / TBD / UK / 1500 / 3000
Jonas
Wennstrom / TBD / Germany / 1500
Workshops
Title / Date / Place / Cost / Total
1st whole action & MC / 7/9/11 – 9/9/11 / Leeds / 24702.96 / 61342.96
2nd whole action & MC / 2/5/12 – 3/5/12 / Bratislava / 36640
General Support Grants
Beneficiary / Date / Cost / Total
0
Schools
Title / Date / Place / Cost / Total
0
Dissemination
Title / Date / Place / Cost / Total
Web-site & initial portfolio / 6384.5
Others
Action Total : / 83974.16

II. Scientific Reportprepared by the Chair of the Management Committee of the Action, describing results achieved during the Action operation in this period, in no more than 3 pages (the report is “cumulative”). All items listed in Sections A, B, and C, below, must be addressed.

Additional documentation such as extended scientific reports, proceedings of workshops, seminars or conferences may be provided separately as an annex to this report, and should be referenced in the report.

II.A. Innovative networking

• Innovative knowledge resulting from COST networking through the Action. (Specific examples of Results vs. Objectives)
• Significant scientific breakthroughs as part of the COST Action. (Specific examples)
• Tangible medium term socio-economic impacts achieved or expected. (Specific examples)
• Spin off of new EC RTD Framework Programme proposals/projects. (List)
• Spin off of new National Programme proposals/projects. (List)

II.B. Inter-disciplinary networking

• Additional knowledge obtained from working with other disciplines within the COST framework. (Specific examples)
• Evaluation of whether the level of inter-disciplinarity is sufficient to potentially provide scientific impacts. (Specific examples)
• Evaluation of whether the level of inter-disciplinarity is sufficient to potentially provide socio-economic impacts. (Specific examples)

II.C. New networking

• Additional new members joining the Action during its life.
• Total number of individual participants involved in the Action work. (Number of participants. Give % of female and of Early Stage Researcher participants)
• Involvement of Early Stage Researchers in the Action, in particular with respect to STSMs, networking activities, and Training Schools. In addition, justification should be provided if less than 4 STSMs were carried out during the year.
• Involvement of researchers from outside of COST Countries. (Number of participants from non-COST Countries approved by the CSO. Give % of such participants from countries with reciprocal agreements. Specify their contribution)
• Advancement and promotion of scientific knowledge through publications and other outreach activities. (Number of publications and other outreach activities that resulted from COST networking through the Action. Complete list should be given in an annex)
• Activities and projects with COST network colleagues.
• The capacity of the Action members to raise research funds.

II.D. Self evaluation

Indicate in no more than 1 page what, in the opinion of the MC, were the main successes, drawbacks (if any) and the key difficulties encountered (if any).

III. Previous scientific report(s)

Part II of past periods’ reports are to be found here.

MEGAPROJECT COST Action Scientific Report

IIA: Innovative Networking

The innovative networking undertaken by the MEGAPROJECT Cost Action has resulted in the achievements of all of the objectives that it has set itself in its first year of operation. Table 1 shows the objectives for the first year of operation and the achievement of those objectives.

OBJECTIVE / ACHIEVEMENT OF OBJECTIVE
I - An accessible library of meta-data on European cross-sectoral megaproject cases. / Objective Achieved
The MEGAPROJECT portfolio of cases is now available at Annex B of this document outlines all of the MEGAPROJECT cases
II - Initial reports by each working group on emergent themes for megaproject performance. / Objective Achieved
Following on from the second Whole Action Workshop in Bratislava each working group has produced an interim report on their cases and emergent themes. These are attached in Annex B of this report.
III - -A special journal issue encapsulating the emergent themes for initial case examination and the methodological challenges in creating these.emergent themes. / Objective Achieved
A special issue of the Organization, Technology and Management in Construction Journal( entitled “Megaproject Management” is being produced for November 2012. The issue is edited by Action members and an Action ESR and a wide variety of submissions have been received by Action members.
IV - Web-site established and key stakeholders identified and in receipt of their first communication. / Objective Achieved
The Action website can be found at A database of Action stakeholders has been created and an initial communication has been sent to all of those identified.

The generation of this portfolio of MEGAPROJECT cases is very significant. Very few large scale empirical studies of infrastructural megaprojects have been undertaken. The dataset is also unusual in the level of detail of its composition. A unique ‘data template’ approach has been formulated to insure that similar data is captured across cases and to ease the identification of cross sectoral themes. A sample of a case generated by the template is given in Annex D of this document. It is very early in project to make a significant impact on stakeholders as the generation of new knowledge is just coming to fruition. However, the Action, as outlined above, has already identified its stakeholder audience and has made an initial communication with them. In addition, new networking is leading to a number of interesting scientific outcomes and research opportunities and these are enumerated in Section IIC.