Textbook: International Project Management By: Kathrin Koster

Mini Case 6.2: How to communicate with the Scandinavian customer? A Scandinavian customer had placed an order regarding dozens of trains with a multinational corporation. Apart from 120 employees on the contractor's different sites, 48 major suppliers were involved. This meant a lot of information needed to be passed between the different stakeholders. The project language was English. To avoid misunderstandings, misinterpretations and dysfunctional information flows, it was decided that the entire official communication between the customer and the contractor had to be conducted via the project managers on both sides. Over the four years' project duration, 1,300 letters were sent from the contractor to the customer, and 600 documents from the customer to the contractor. In addition, there were informal information exchanges between the various persons in charge on the operative levels between the customer and the contractor. In order to continuously maintain an efficient information flow as well as a de-escalation forum, the leading teams of both sides regularly met on a monthly basis. On the customer side were the: Project manager, Technical Manager, Deputy Project Manager, Safety & Security Manager, and Commercial Manager. On the contractor side were the: Overall Project Manager, Commercial Project Manager, Technical Manager, Safety & Security Manager, Production Manager. These persons met once a month to update each other. They went through the open issues list making sure that they were both on the same side talking about the same things. Those face-to-face meetings were mandatory, even if there were no pressing problems.

Task in International Project Management and Professional Responsibilities:

Identify how the customer was integrated in the project. Assess the underlying co- ordination and communication mechanisms