Yesterday at the APM Conference there was a talk from Dr Martin Barnes CBE on How to Make Relationships Work and Why it Matters. In part of the presentation, Dr Barnes played tribute to a super project manager Joseph Locke. This super project manager was named this because it was believed that Joseph Locke was a project manager who consistently delivered on time and within budget throughout his career. Dr Barnes asked the audience how many people had heard of Joseph Locke but only three people did. One of them being me.
The only reason I had heard the name before was because he was the imposing statue in my childhood local park; little did I know that the statue we used to look at each week was a project manager and many years later I would work in that field too. Naturally I’m intrigued and there’s a few websites that feature Joseph’s biography; essentially he was a railway project manager. Born in 1805 in Sheffield, he was brought up in my hometown of Barnsley in Yorkshire.
Locke later became an apprentice with Stephenson, he went on to build the “Lancaster & Carlisle line, 1843-6; parts of the East Lancashire R 1846 7; Scottish Central 1845; Caledonian Railway (Carlisle Glasgow and Edinburgh) 1848; Scottish Midland and Aberdeen Railways; Greenock docks; and a line from Mantes to Caen and Cherbourg, 1852″
A very busy project manager and railway engineer!
His speciality was building railways with no tunnels, choosing to cut deep sides through landscapes ensuring the lines today can operate at high speed. “An example of this is no tunnels between Birmingham and Glasgow”.
So what made him a super project manager?
“Locke’s particular skill was as an organizer. He closely controlled contractors and expenditure and, unlike many contemporaries, completed his lines on time and within estimates”
A solid reputation in the marketplace that included competitor and other infamous engineer of the time, Brunel; an engineer managing large capital works projects that had to be opened in time. There is a fascinating book on Locke (available open source, first written in 1862) here’s an insight to Locke’s commercial characteristics as a PM:
“That Mr. Locke was signally inflexible as an engineer, crooked contractors found out to their utter discomfiture, and even straightforward contractors to their occasional loss. But he was the company’s engineer, and the most trusted servant of the shareholders. He came to his conclusions in the formation of estimates not till after patient, yet deep-sighted investigation. Guided by the light of his reports, contractors had pledged themselves to do such and
such work for such and such payment ; and such work and no less should be done for such payment and no more. If they had miscalculated, it was their affair, not his. He had no power to absolve them from their obligations. It was his office to see that they performed them.
Don’t you just love the image of Locke in his office, managing a project which featured “crooked” contractors, holding them to their contractual obligations – if their estimates were wrong, on their heads be it!
The biography features so many fascinating examples of project delivery that are still relevant today. On the subject of the government overspending on projects; “Everything is undertaken in the most expensive way when the public is the paymaster. When a cheque has to be drawn upon the Treasury, every resource is tried to make the amount as large as possible.” Sound familiar?
On project selection; “The report of these gentlemen was industriously circulated among the directors of the company, and might have been adopted had not Mr. Robert Stephenson and Mr. Locke stepped in at the critical moment, and shown the insanity of the project.” Insane projects! Love it!
Before he died Locke donated the park (my local park) to the folk of Barnsley; I’ll be sure to look him up the next time I’m in town
Source: The Life of Joseph Locke PDF; The Steam Index; Grace’s Guide
Image – Nick Dalton
It’s good to learn from great people. Seeing what they did well and not so well can help us improve our performance as project managers. When doing this though I always try to be concious of the context – projects are different.