Life is a project

We were sitting at our usual spot along the Bosphorus last weekend, tulip shaped glasses of tea warming our hands, when a massive oil tanker drifted slowly across the horizon. I pointed to it and told my colleagues: that ship might be carrying oil from Tengiz the vast field on Kazakhstan's Caspian shore where I worked as a planning engineer from 2007. A distant freight train echoed across the water. That too, I said, could be hauling machinery bound for those same oil fields, three thousand kilometres away.

At my Project Management training programmes, students occasionally raise an interesting question: Why is Safety Management not specifically categorized as a separate Project Management Knowledge Area or Performance Domain?

At my Project Management training programmes, students occasionally raise an interesting question: Why is Safety Management not specifically categorized as a separate Project Management Knowledge Area or Performance Domain?

In project management, we often talk about schedules, risks, costs, and contracts. Yet, behind all these structured elements lies something far more human judgment, integrity, and timing. A project is not just a system. A project is a life.

In large infrastructure projects, we often discuss progress in terms of percentages. We have a set of typical KPIs. Concrete poured. Cables laid. Variations approved. We measure everything carefully and report upward with confidence. Yet sometimes the real tension inside a project does not come from a delayed drawing or a disputed variation. It comes from something much smaller.

In large infrastructure projects, we often discuss progress in terms of percentages. We have a set of typical KPIs. Concrete poured. Cables laid. Variations approved. We measure everything carefully and report upward with confidence. Yet sometimes the real tension inside a project does not come from a delayed drawing or a disputed variation. It comes from something much smaller.

When I first stepped into the world of engineering as a fresh graduate, there was a phrase I heard often: “Doing everything makes you a master of nothing.” Back then, I was brimming with ambition. I wanted to learn IT, earn a master’s in food science, dabble in journalism, and somehow juggle all that while working fulltime as a site engineer on construction projects. I spent weekends teaching AutoCAD to make extra money.

This story is also related to the project that I mentioned in my previous column. I have had many experiences working in difficult project environments with a large and complex set of stakeholders. Project life is not always easy. We do not always get well-trained, well-mannered, educated, or amicable stakeholders to deal with.

Today, I’m taking you back twenty years, to a story that’s still fresh in my memory. At the time, we were involved in a large-scale flood control and environmental improvement project in a coastal region just south of Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital.

Welcome to the first article in my column series Life is a Project, where I hope to share stories drawn from over 25 years of real-world project experience. From buildings, infrastructure and transport to software and digital transformation, my journey has spanned continents, across Sri Lanka, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.