Project Brief
The launch of a mobility system for a city is comprised of many smaller projects. However, the entire effort was approached as one strategic process. It came to fruition following years-long lobbying efforts, the municipal proposal bid process, the subsequent interview process, and a lengthy contract negotiation period. With a compressed schedule for political reasons, a two-fold process, ultimately duplicating the workload, would have to take place to launch the system twice across the city’s downtown.
Initiating Phase
Initiating this project was relatively simple as most of the details that would otherwise be in a project charter are contained within the proposal, and the resulting contract was worked through in the previous months. Identifying stakeholders, including internal departments, city departments, vendors, contractors, partner organizations, and local staff, comprised much of the work in this process group.
Planning Phase
In planning for a project of this scale, with tight contract schedules put forward by clients not often aligning with reality, a shortened execution period is needed, requiring a careful but quick planning period. Fortunately, this contract evolved from an existing agreement I had with a neighboring city and the related project completed three years previous. Paired with lessons learned on other similar projects I was able to take a few shortcuts with some elements of the work breakdown structure.
Just some of the projects within this larger project include:
- Station siting public engagement
- Station engineering and permitting
- Operations coordination and deployment
- Website planning and development
- Promotional videography and photography
- System launch PR & marketing
Executing Phase
Two major challenges took place within the project’s execution period that required quick reaction and a pivot on stakeholders, schedule, and work focus.
First, an engineer and his team backed out at the last minute, causing a small inconvenience. Finding a replacement with a week’s worth of billable time available immediately was tough but had little impact on the schedule.
The second problem proved to be far more challenging. A significant equipment delay put our schedule, tied to the launch of the first ferry-based transportation system in the region, in jeopardy. With this, the client was not able to be flexible, and understandably so. Fortunately, we were alerted of the problem just early enough to be able to react. By chance, we would have a small amount of inventory available elsewhere in the country, but it did not match the system specs of the delayed product. However, bike share at the time was branded specifically to the region of its operation, and this inventory conflicted. With some clever marketing and cooperation by the city client, as well as significant internal company stakeholder coordination, we were able to ship this used inventory launching a demo system within our deadline.
Project Outcome
Despite the equipment delay, and with the additional work of essentially a second system launch, the project was able to be completed a few weeks behind schedule, still meeting the joint launch timeline of regional bike share and the Cross Bay Ferry system on November 4, 2016. The final, delayed product was deployed a few months later on February 4, 2017 with a large group ride into “Localtopia,” an annual festival celebrating all things local in St. Petersburg.
Recognizing the client as a partner, not just for the rollout period but for years after, it was vital for me to be upfront with challenges as soon as we were made aware. The client relationship remained positive throughout as we were able to quickly put a proposed solution in place alongside the presentation of the problem. The increased press and marketing tied to launching two systems, the demo and full system, earned us more coverage and a quicker adoption in ridership than has historically happened in other cities.
