- Recognise that decisions made upfront have outsized influence on long-term outcomes.
This research reinforces a powerful idea that the impact depends on how intentionally we navigate the front-end.
Click here to read the full article: lnkd.in/gruwGfnQ
What this means for project leaders
- Treat the front-end as a strategic dialogue, not a checklist.
- Create room for imagination and iteration, not just analysis.
- Engage stakeholders early to co‑create a shared understanding of the future.
The front-end becomes a space for:
- Exploring multiple future scenarios
- Challenging assumptions
- Building shared meaning across stakeholders
- Making informed choices about which future to pursue
In an era defined by uncertainty, complexity, and rapid change, organisations can’t rely on linear planning alone.
They highlight how the early phase of a project isn’t just about scoping or planning. It’s a creative, strategic, and deeply social process where teams imagine possible futures, negotiate what’s desirable, and align around what’s achievable.
Research Spotlight: "Future-making in the front-end of projects"
A recent publication from Dr Joseph Harrison and Professor Jennifer Whyte at the International Journal of Project Management.
Nanjiang's PhD is supported by CSIRO's Data61 Next Generation Graduates Program in collaboration with Laing O'Rourke, through close involvement of Dr Rowan Braham.
This integrated “risk intelligence” approach aims to enable risk models that are more adaptive, explainable, and transferable across complex project environments.
Click the link to read the full article: lnkd.in/gPduF9HG
To address these limitations, they propose a forward looking research agenda that integrates data and knowledge through evidence based structures such as knowledge graphs, dynamic project representations like digital twins, and temporally aware modelling frameworks.
Exploring these two paradigms they provide a synthesis of how risk is currently modelled in engineering and infrastructure projects and suggest a direction to shift toward more integrated and dynamic approaches.
and (ii) knowledge-driven methods, which encode expert judgment, causal reasoning, and semantic structures to provide transparency and contextual understanding but can be labor-intensive and difficult to transfer across projects.
They explore two dominant paradigms in risk analysis: (i) data-driven methods, which identify risk through statistical patterns in historical data and offers scalability and predictive power but often lack interpretability and adaptability;
A recent publication from our PhD candidate Nanjiang Chen, and his supervisors Dr Neda Madi, PhD, Associate Professor Nader Naderpajouh, and our former Post Doctoral Fellow Dr Wei Ting Hong.
Research Spotlight: "From divergent paradigms to integrated risk intelligence: synthesizing data- and knowledge-driven approaches in complex projects"
Following the defence, please join us for a short celebration in the foyer outside the boardroom.
This research has been supervised by Associate Professor Petr Matous and Dr JIN XUE at the School of Project Management - University of Sydney
All are welcome to attend.
📅 Wednesday, 15 April 2026
🕐 1-2 pm
📍 Boardroom, School of Project Management, The University of Sydney
The presentation will also be available online via Zoom (link to be shared).
while network positions can both enhance efficiency and enable anti-competitive or illicit behaviour. Using social network analysis, the research highlights how governance, transparency, and strategic collaboration impact delays, competition, and value creation in PPP markets, offering insights
Adopting a multi-level approach, the study explores how institutional environments influence sponsor collaboration and how network structures affect project performance. Findings reveal that institutional variables interact dynamically across market phases,
This research examines how public–private partnership (PPP) sponsor networks shape infrastructure market outcomes. While PPPs are widely used to address global infrastructure gaps, their effectiveness remains mixed.
🎓 John sebastian Salazar florez will defend his PhD thesis titled “Interorganisational Project Networks in Public Private Partnership Infrastructure Markets.”
How to apply:
Interested candidates should email their application materials to Associate Professor Michele Barnes by 26 Mar 2026. Full details are provided in the attached scholarship document.
The project involves national-scale survey research and fieldwork in diverse communities across Australia, combining quantitative network analysis with interdisciplinary approaches to understand resilience in complex social–ecological systems.
The PhD candidate will be based in the School of Project Management and supervised by Associate Professor Michele Barnes with the support from ARC project team.
We invite applications for a PhD Scholarship in "Social Networks for Disaster Preparedness and Climate Resilience" as part of a recently funded ARC Discovery Project.
Instead of relying on traditional methods that assume stable, formal institutions, they show how researchers can creatively combine available relationships, cultural norms, informal networks, and context-specific knowledge to access data, build trust, and generate meaningful theoretical insights.
Drawing on fieldwork from the Medina Airport public–private partnership in Saudi Arabia, the authors introduce institutional bricolage as a research strategy.
This article tackles a challenge many researchers and practitioners face but often struggle to articulate: How do you conduct rigorous research in environments where conventional institutional structures simply don’t exist—or don’t operate as expected?
