Projects for change: reframing discontinuities within a public infrastructure agency

What the paper says

Projects are used to implement strategic change, particularly in infrastructure contexts where societal value unfolds over long time horizons. Existing project management literature searches for bridges with change management, understanding the importance of a continuous project process, yet focusing on discontinuities in multi-actor scenarios and defined stage-gates. The internal mechanisms of public owner organisations remain underexplored, yet are of paramount importance, due to the role of the public organisation in the front-end phase and as a warrantor along the whole project's process. This study addresses this gap by investigating how discontinuities arise within a Norwegian public infrastructure agency as it implements a sustainability-oriented strategic change programme across its projects’ development. Drawing on an engaged scholarship approach, combining document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and participatory workshops, the study identifies and categorises four intra-organisational sources of discontinuity (P–I–M–S): (P) changes in personnel, (I) information transfer, (M) lack of performance measurement, and (S) misalignment in long-term strategic ambitions. These discontinuities, emerging during a change programme implementation, reveal the gaps along the continuity spine in the project’s process. In response, the paper argues for deliberate, early integration function (PMO-like) to resolve the discontinuities that arise. By unfolding the mechanisms internal to the public organization in the implementation of the strategic change across the project process and the specific discontinuities, the study offers an empirically informed perspective on the longitudinal integration in projects, with implications for both practitioners and researchers. • Infrastructure projects function as vehicles for long-term strategic change. • Continuity is essential to keep projects aligned with organisational strategic intent. • Discontinuities arise early within the public administration itself, even before external actors enter the process. • These discontinuities create early misalignments and generate downstream challenges for future management entities. • An internal integration function (e.g., a PMO) is needed to secure coherence across phases and sustain strategic alignment.