Urban Consolidation and Logistics Pooling - Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information Systems - page 190

This conceptual model comprises five modules. The management-sharing
module contains all the elements for the management of sharing services and
collaboration. The information technology module contains all the ICT used in the
proposed sharing solution. The organization module lists all the actors involved in
the sharing solution, in both internal and external contexts. These three modules
are related to tactical and operational decisions. The other two (i.e. the enterprise's
challenges and solutions) belong to strategic planning.

3.1 The Goals and Risks of the Community

One of the first actions in project management is to define the main goals,
expectations and risks studied in that project's preliminary development (Clerland
and Ireland 2002 ). Considering the technologies and tools as well as the contexts
for their use, several choices must be made in order to set up the optimal logistics-
sharing services. It is therefore important to formulate questions related to the
goals and risks of the project, and to find the most appropriate solutions .
Individual targets for a given group of stakeholders, as well as each specific
context, must be taken into account in order to determine the goals to be attained.
Consequently, the project's general objectives will serve to re-define individual
goals and establish the principal targets at operational, tactical, commercial and
strategic levels.
However, the main targets of logistics sharing and collaboration are related to
the following incentives:

• Economic gains that can be obtained either by reducing costs or increasing
efficiency (Crainic and Laporte 1997 )
• Company quality, which is increased by better respecting lead-times and service
quality

standards in order to reach new markets and potential customers

(Gonzalez-Feliu 2012a ).
• Improved environmental performance, which will bring both new customers and
the right of access to restricted zones or allow the continuation of certain
practices respectful of environmental laws (Dablanc 2008 )

After that comes the indispensable in-depth analysis of the possible risks that
the project may encounter. The main types of risk to be considered in a logistics
and transportation project (Seiersen 2006 ) are as follows:

• Risks related to the project accounting itself, more precisely to the different
types of resource that can be affected to the project, in financial, economical,
technical, technological or human terms.
• Risks related to the organization of the project and its continuity. It is important
to note that the reorganization of a project can be considered only when it is
already operative and stable.