Challenges of Implementing a Project Management Office (PMO) in the Companies and Projects of Oil and Gas Industries (Case Study: Oil Engineering and Development Company)

Today, the need to apply project management knowledge as a key factor in success in project-based organizations is obvious. In order to increase the effectiveness of project management, increase the level of maturity of project management, and ultimately increase the success rate of the organization, it is necessary to establish a unit with centralization and project coordination function, which plays a role in the project management office (PMO). Adopting this approach is one of the effective measures in centralizing and integrating the organization's project management processes. With this in mind, organizations today have realized the need and importance of implementing project management offices to overcome problems and increase project management effectiveness. In this regard, in the present research, the challenges of implementing a project management office in the companies and projects of the oil and gas industries, with a case study conducted in the Oil Engineering and Development Company, have been identified and prioritized. For this purpose, in the first stage, to identify the challenges, interviews were conducted with experts in this field, which led to the identification of 36 challenges and were divided into three categories: organizational, managerial, and human resources challenges. Finally, in the second stage, these challenges were prioritized using the distribution of questionnaires among experts and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Managers with traditional thinking are some of the main and challenging issues in implementing project management offices in companies and executive projects of oil and gas industries.