Major Reasons and Control Systems
Discuss about the Construction Management and Economics for Schedule.
In project management, Projects are defined by three main elements. These three elements are essentially what makes an entire project. These three things are Scope, Schedule and Budget. Every single project is unique and should have a clear and well-written requirement document that allows one to take into all kinds of considerations for levels of service demanded, quality of deliverables, operational needs then even other regulatory requirements such as health and environment standards, disabilities provisions and so on.
The scope is not fixed and essentially evolves if the project has dynamic set of requirements that evolve during the lifecycle of the project. For instance, in the early phases of the project, the scope may include 5 service bays but when the plan is under-going and halfway through, the exact location of these service bays and also each type of service in these bays can be defined. Also, the scope requirement shouldn’t be confused with scope creep. Scope creep is something that changes the scope in dramatic way that would end up affecting the schedule and budget. For instance, a scope creep would happen if the service demands for 6 service bays instead of 5. Accommodating these changes in scope would now call for a serious change in the base scope and thereby would affect the budget significantly (for instance, larger facility, more land, re-design, additional resources and materials needed etc) and would also alter the schedule significantly.
At the same time, all projects must have a suitable and definite beginning as well as an end. The project plan would usually define an approximate start date as well as an approximate end date. Once the project management team has a well-defined scope, the team would then need to determine what it would take to complete the project and they do so this by defining the project schedule. The project schedule would involve breaking down of the project into several more easily manageable activities that are easier to accomplish. The scope of each activity would be noted, including its estimation would be drawn and it would be placed in a logical sequence in order to have a complete project schedule. The end results a complete project schedule that tells one the total expected duration of the project, and the logical relationship between different activities including those ones which are on the critical patch that ultimately control the end.
Analysis
Similarly, the budget of the project is also a well-defining characteristic that ultimately defines the boundaries of the project. Every project needs a perfectly balanced budget in order to define its funding needs. The budget would usually be needed to fund the project. The project manager along with his team defines the budget based on each of the project phases and keeps on refining it as and when he or she gets better information. When a company tries to fix the budget of a project too early in the project lifecycle, they are caught off-guard when they learn that their actual budget is significantly different than what was initially defined. Therefore, the project manager based on the early project requires draw up a comprehensive budget that is realistic and suitable for the project.
However, A lot of things went wrong with the project at the company. These wrong-doings and carelessness ultimately caused the issues related to project later. Some of these issues pertained to the three broad elements outlined earlier. The documents pertaining to the project were sensitive but it failed to convince the Information Commissioner and that is one of the core reasons that the project had issues and delays.
Another major problem was the lack of reporting. A project needs to have a well-defind communication and reporting plan so that all stakeholders are on the same page and therefore critical information couldn’t reach the decision makers and a lot of important decisions got delayed or were never taken by the right people. As mentioned previously, if there are any changes in the scope it must be incorporated appropriately through a change management process. If there’s a major scope that could lead to scope creep then the budget and schedule are going to be affected.
Another thing that happened as cladding panels which are essential for a significant part of the construction work were quite problematic in nature. Such issues should have been incorporated in the scope itself and if they had been missed, it could have been fixed later through an appropriate change management process which again couldn’t happened owing to ineffective communication plan. Another issue with the project was significant alteration of the original plan as mentioned by the government, the original plan. This is again a scope change problem that eventually lead to scope creep.
An effective monitoring of the project is also critical as it turned out that the entire actual construction hours were less than 15 to 20%. Also, once the project was being completed, there were no mechanisms in place to verify the phase had indeed completed successfully. Owing to these, the project ran in various issues and caused significant budgetary and schedule overruns.
Recommendations
The first and foremost thing pertaining to project management is that the project should have a clear and well-written requirement document. The same should happen in the case of the Perth Children Hospital. After having several discussions with the stakeholder, business analysts should draw up a requirement specification document that would aid in the development of project scope and thereafter drafting of the plan. Apart from this, the project manager being selected for the task should have reasonable commercial negotiation skills, conflict resolution experience, project management experience in similar industry and setting, good communication and time management skills among others.
Once the basics has been taken care of, as soon as the project planning is kicked-off, the very first document the project manager and his team would draft will be the scope document The scope of the project, the budget and the schedule should not be planned in the earliest stages of the project as there isn’t enough data to quantify these elements. As a result, once prelimary requirement and engineering phase has crossed, only then there should be estimation of budget, schedule and other elements. Scope would cover all the details about the Perth Children Hospital’s scope and it would define and suggest the nature and the extent of work to be done for the Perth Children Hospital. A well-defined scope should effectively limit and / or eliminate any future scope creep altogether.
The next step would be to involve the stakeholders and draft a project specification documentation based on the architectural plan of the Architect and getting it validated with the government and regularity body of that city. Once there is a green signal by the local authorities, further plan for the project can be executed. However, if there are some changes to be done as mentioned by the local authorities, then the same should be reflected upon in the project plan to be prepared. This should ultimately lead to the creation of budgetary plan and the complete scheduling of the project.
The project management should also cover the reporting aspect. A well-defined communication plan with regular meetings with both face-to-face meetings as well as emails and tele-conferencing would allow for an effective reporting and communication. Hence a lot of issues that may require a major decision can be resolved if the stakeholders are aware about them. As a result things such as Cladding panels being a problem or the problem of in-effective decision making can be resolved with these. Related to this, is the problem of monitoring which also had not been done effectively. If the project hasn’t been monitored properly, then irrespective of a sound project management plan, the end-result would never be convincing.
Conclusion
Project Management is an important discipline in today’s time and it features systematic methodologies, tools and techniques in order to get the Project done. The children Perth hospital project has been identified in this report above and it was noticed that there were some serious lapses in the initiation, planning, execution as well as monitoring of the project which lead to a project filled with issues and delays. The project teaches us many new things and sheds lights on some of the most important things one should consider when managing a project.
References
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