Concrete Masonry Corporation
Name
Institution
Date
Concrete Masonry Corporation
TASK 1
Question#1
A project refers to a transitory course undertaken to develop a service or product distinctively. As an outcome, the key attributes of project activities concentrate on two elements that take into account temporary endeavor and distinct services and products. What’s more, a temporary endeavor signifies that a project has a beginning and an end, and it will only be terminated when the purpose has been fulfilled or failure. On the other hand, distinct products and services depict the dissimilarity with other services and products similar or the outcomes of other projects.
Question#2
Ahuja, Dozzi, & AbouRizk (1994) assert that the scope actually signifies the enclosure of the necessary thing for the completion of the project that is decided in a certain framework that structures the direction of the project. The scope is all cataloged so that the project managers have a clear perception regarding the needed task for execution. The main objective of the scope is to guarantee that all the players to the project agree with what the project is going to do.
Question#3
Gantts chart is the graphical depiction of several task completions in references to time. However, a simple strategy for an initiative is focused on a bar line chart that occasionally termed as Gantts Chart. Furthermore, it is a horizontal bar applied to strategize the time scale for an initiative and to approximate the degree of needed essentials (Bennett, 2007). The lines are used to depict the provided time for each task and the time taken. The schedule of the project can be described in the Gant Chart below:
Furthermore, the critical way runs through the project from the first activity to the last event. Therefore, the essential path for these systems is the x- axis which is a-c-f-g, and also the projects require 20 days for completion in the y-axis. There are various benefits of a Gantt chart, such as simplicity in understanding.
Question#4
The NPV mechanism examines the current value of all incomes and expenditure interlinked to an investment at a specific rate of return and then examined the net total. Nonetheless, the investment is termed acceptable if it appears constructive, whereas capitalization is termed unacceptable if it is destructive. Moreover, NPV can be calculated using spreadsheets like excel. The formulae for Net Present Value are;
On the other hand, NPV is a strong pointer in the capital budget as it determines the profitability of a project. As a result, it is because NPV allocates both productivity and time value of money. Moreover, the time value of money is an idea established in regards to opportunity costs (Cooper, 2016). Consequently, the amount of money at some point always has more considerable significance than a later time.
Question#5
Field & Keller (1995) believes that risk evaluation and regulation is an assessment of involved risk and identification of countermeasure essential to meet the need to acknowledge the risk assessment. Arguably, risk can cause an array of outcomes in the context of urgency and significance as it prolongs time and cost, and diminishes the delivery result. One of the essential elements of project management is project risk management. According to Burke (2003), risk management is the systematic procedure of acknowledging, assessing, and reacting to project risk through the life cycle of the project.
Question#6
It allows viewing the various impediments that take consideration of permissible project budget, additional expenses, and under cost. However, the supervisor can focus on normal accounting settings, but it is inapplicably and inaccurately explaining monies used according to achievement and the remaining balance. Field & Keller (1995) claims that the best mechanism to solve this challenge is called earned value system; it regulates the cost of the project.
Undoubtedly, diverse managers have distinct reporting lines and timetables. For example, periodic reports can be conveyed daily from Concrete Corporation workforce to administrator, and from administrator to assist manager. Similarly, the assistant manager can review the report on a weekly or monthly basis. Subsequently, the other mechanism to maintain vibrant interaction and inspiration among team members is planning progress revenue meeting.
TASK 2
Executive Summary
The company under scrutiny specializes in producing and designed pre-stressed concrete for construction purposes. The Concrete Masonry Corporation’s area served to take into account regional, national, and international markets. In this day and age, the organization cannot avoid the vibrant completion regardless of accomplishments in the private construction realm. The company passes a judgment to transmit an array of production equipment to a new site in Eastern Europe as part of the expansion and survival plan.
More to the point, this will enable more efficiency and agility in their product supply. Nonetheless, the corporation necessitates accurate project with proper management to be prosperous. The paper aims to examine a comprehensive plan and management for this project, covers, and applies. Furthermore, it also applies to the four junctures of the venture life cycle as well as procedures, governance, management, and regulates challenges interlinked to controlling the lifecycle.
Findings
Aims of the Project
The organization needs to transport concrete assembly machines with additional paraphernalia to Eastern Europe at some point in months. The entire project requires to be safeguarded to open on time and in budget too.
Feasibility study
Feasibility research is structured to allocate an overview of the main topics interlinked to a business concept. The aim is to realize any challenges that would impede the business from being prosperous in the industry. In simple words, feasibility research decides whether the business concept makes sense. According to the case study, the organization has been thriving in recent times. As a result, it signifies that the company already has excellent ground for skills and experience (Engemann & O’Connor, 2012).
Furthermore, the realization of several rivals can easily prepare Concrete Masonry Corporation an effective marketing plan after a comprehensive assessment if the competitors, commodities, allocation channels, and after-sales services that would provide them favorable access to their target market. Therefore, the project should be quite realistic and reasonable to execute since the company wants to be prosperous in Eastern Europe.
PLC – Project Life Cycle
The vast majority of authors described the PLC as a diverse mechanism. Nonetheless, this analysis will apply the four-phase life cycle. Engemann & O’Connor (2012) believes that a four-phase life cycle that takes into account the concept or initiation phase, development phases, implementation, and commission and handover phase. Moreover, a typical venture characteristically has the subsequent four main stages (each with its outline of errands and concerns): start, scheduling, implementation, and conclusion. Collectively, these levels signify the conduit a venture takes from the inauguration to its completion and are largely discussed to as the project life cycle. In simple words, the basic project life-cycle has five stages: define, plan, organize, execute, and close. Therefore, this 5-stage PLC is appropriate, precise and easy to manage activities because of large project.
INITIATION PHASE
Cost-benefits Assessment
Griffin (2010) claims “Cost and benefits assessment signifies that realizing, specifying, and assessing the expenses and advantages of the proposal over its predictable lifespan”. Furthermore, it could consider some fiscal regulation tools such as Payback Period, Net Present Value, and internal rate of return, relying on the difficulty of the initiative. NPV is recommendable for the project since the IRR mechanism is complicated, and the payback period does not calculate the time value of money. The pay cost can take into account buying or hiring company warehouse and building, salaries, licenses to open an office in a foreign country to transmit equipment in a new location. As an outcome, the company will surely gain from the abovementioned elements.
Appointing Project Team
The manager must worry about the nature of work to form an appropriate team. Hillson (2012) asserts that there are four common concepts of groups that include function, single, matrix, and contract teams. Nonetheless, it can be applied if the initiative would have a mixed or combined team. Moreover, the project needs a good team with an extreme spirit of accountability and corporation to prosper. Working together will endorse each individual in technical challenges and enhance the capability of solving an issue. People have basic skills and experience, and it would get the project to complete quicker and more effective.
According to the case study, the project team has explicit knowledge of the project goals and objectives. Each member also has the proper understanding, technic, skills, and experience in organizing (Kerzner, 2009). Moreover, good interaction and negotiation are very significant too. The company can outsource staff for other small activities to save money, whereas this approach should be executed accurately through interviewing skills, psychometric testing, job description, and evaluation testing.
DEVELOPMENT PHASE
Design
The initial approach in this level allocates a work breakdown plan for building the warehouse. Milosevic (2003) believes that a work breakdown plan is a service or product-oriented task hierarchy of all the work to be executed to attain the project contractual aims that are essential in meeting the final objectives. What’s more, the work breakdown plan for the concrete masonry corporation has three-level that is evaluation, development, and finalizing the transportation.
Schedule
Sequencing tasks: the project team will decide the approximated time and the need resource as one of the main approaches in the work breakdown plan. Subsequently, the timing of the start and the conclusion is calculated as the Gantt chart is the simplest way to highlight the project’s schedule. On the other hand, time management aims to monitor and control the time spent on each task (Miner, 2007). However, the manager should document the actual time of the activities from that if there are any alterations, he can modify and update all timing of events. Therefore, reacting speedily and passing the appropriate judgments would be the result of proper time management. Furthermore, some tactics or plans will be allocated to evade interruption and delays.
Budgets
Aggregation of costs, overheads, and expenditures provided to the projects constitute the total project budget. The company under study has cash in hand as it is a designing and producing pre-stressed concrete organization. As a result, it means that the appropriations of this project are accessible in the company. According to Morris, Pinto, & Söderlund (2012), there are various ways to approximate the project budget that takes into account the ballpark estimate, budget estimate, and definitive estimate. Primarily, the project team should consider the budget estimate mechanism that applies experience from an identical project and then uses it to their current situation. Subsequently, the team can utilize the definitive estimate approach as it is more accurate, and its calculation is based on the work breakdown plan of the project.
• The Ballpark Estimate comes from corporate objectives, normally draws a “bird’s eye view” of the project outcomes, and has lots of “wiggle room
• The Budget Estimate (or top-down estimate) is most often based on analogous estimating budget experience from a similar project and applying them to the current project.
• The Definitive Estimate (or bottom-up estimate) though takes time but this method offers an accurate calculation for project total budget. The definitive estimate bases on a work breakdown structure (WBS).
Risk management
Indisputably, risks frequently prolong times, augment expenses, and diminish the delivery outcomes. The risk planning is essential as it assists people to reduce or avoid those awful outcomes. Field and Keller (1998) think that realizing the dangers or peril signifies that people evaluate the productivity of risk-taking place and their project outcomes. The risk can be categorized into three groups that take into account controllable, uncontrollable, and force majeure.
Risk Type of risk Response
Reducing by develop and
Conflict between team Controllable maintain a good relationship
members with team members, create
motivation
Delay the transfer because the Accept the risk, change the
bad weather at sea ( heavy Uncontrollable
plan and schedule (if possible)
rain, storm)
Over the budget Controllable Reducing the scope of project,
ask for more funds
Natural disasters because the
manger and team did not do Force majeure Accept the risk and get over
research about the weather the damages
conditions.
Kelvin Lewis – Project Avoid risk by self-study and
Manager lack of experience
gain more information about
and time consuming to adapt Controllable
the project as well as
to the new working
company.
environment
EXECUTION PHASE
Organizing team
Typically, project human resources obtained seasoned, talented, and accountability in the field of project. The organization can provide a project manager, risk manager, technical manager, financial, and two staff and other contracted labors. It is essential data regarding strategy is conveyed comprehensively amid the project team to guarantee project on schedule (Pica, 2015). Furthermore, elements such as the right conditions, the well-thought plan will foster a sense of belonging and accountable workforce.
As an outcome, it will augment the representation and result of the project. The project manager is the person with daily accountability for the behavior and affluence of the overall project. However, the project manager has various duties and responsibilities that vary. What’s more, these duties and responsibilities take into account monitoring the project, control and supervise the projects as coined in the project charter.
The additional duty of the project manager includes reviewing the tasks and performance of the project team. The project manager is also responsible for reporting to the project funder and can also negotiate scope, essentials, and timetable alterations with investors. Lastly, the project manager has the freedom in the project constraints. However, the project funders can replace the project manager collectively but cannot overturn or take the project manager’s decision in the project.
The risk manager is the individual who examine or evaluates the risk of the project. More to the point, the duties of a risk manager is to calculate the possibility of any threats, evaluate the risks, and come up with a plan to countermeasure or counterattack these threats. On the other hand, the main role of the financial manager is to account for the expenses or monies used in the project.
The financial manager has the duty to examine the sub-contractor expenditure, joint venture accounting, tracking the progress of the project, and handling any fiscal issue at hand. Lastly, the technical manager is responsible for any technical issue such as assembling machines. The technical manager also regulate the system development and testing, conversion and migration happenings, status reporting, regulate consultants’ activity, and technical coordination with local staff and third-party vendors.
Assigning Works
The project manager, with four-sub managers, must collaborate in the discussion and appointment of a specific task for sub-teams. The manager develops a structure for project organization and allocates each sub-team an image to work and right to report in the roundtable. Besides, there will be a provision of all needed documents that include procedures, schedules, checklist, manuals, and budget, among others (Pica, 2015).
Planning modification
There are significant or less unforeseen challenges in any project, and as an outcome, the team should always plan to respond. Nonetheless, some of these challenges may be alterations in people, time, and the client’s decision. Furthermore, the manager should organize all strategies and consider if it would make a significant impact or not when there is an unforeseen change in the project. What’s more, the project manager also knows if he or she needs to alter anything in the current schedule and strategy (Roberts, 2011).
Review Project Status
Roberts (2011) believes that project status is the approach that measures and aggregates all collected information from diverse departments in the project. As abovementioned, the project manager must decide to track the current position and enhance precision based on the milestones. Moreover, the best supporter for the supervisor to have a quick overview is the automated reporting software. It signifies that the project team members will organize the weekly status report and conveyed it to the project manager as the project is executed.
COMMISSIONING PHASES
Arguably, the project requires assessment and inspection to respond in helping every member concentrate and accomplish the intentions. The manager will apply an analytic mechanism by preparing daily meetings to assess the project. The manager will gather information and report from team members during the assemblies. Moreover, the project should be re-checked and accepted by the consumer before it can close. Well-Stam, Lindenaar, & Kinderen (2004) believe that all the documents are signed off and completed. Project closure should be of great concern as a small strategy that has issues in factors of sentiments for staff, intellection for internal and external institutions.
Project management skills and competencies
The project manager takes part in the project from the beginning to the end. Field & Keller (1998) thinks that the project manager and the assistant primarily begin with the realization of goals, strategizing the flow of activities, and approximating the time, essentials, and proficiencies required finishing the project. Moreover, the project manager should critically comprehend all the responsibilities and steps of the PLC in his experience. The manager should also have need traits to direct the entire team.
The project manager has an array of extra responsibilities in the overall attainment of the assignment. What’s more, the project manager is the person who comes up with the vision of the project. Besides, the project manager also has the duty to develop clear and transparent goals of the project. The manager also should know how to communicate, encourage, and impacting his fellow members so that the project would become a success. The manager should integrate, incorporate, and lead the team and foster the culture of trust among other members. The project manager is also an individual with outstanding energy level, enthusiastic and faces the issues heads-on.
More to the point, the manager also knows how to access and assess the human resource. As an outcome, it signifies that the project manager should pick team members who have the right skills, experience, and attitude. A profound supervisor will examine the most applicable members but not the best ones. A good leader with a scholarly style is very instrumental to the success of any project as leadership style has an extreme effect on the others (Turner, 2008).
Nonetheless, leadership comes in different sizes and shapes that may include autocratic, democratic, and charismatic, among others. Generally, democratic is the most suitable leadership style for the current project team as it persuades members to share different concepts and perspectives. Furthermore, it allows an excellent leader to engage members as part of the policymaking. On the other hand, there are certain situations in which the leader must not use the democratic style in the team process (Turner, 2008).
For instance, when the time is constrained and not permit deliberating with a member, the supervisor should apply the autocratic mechanism to pass his judgments. The project manager also must report and liaise with diverse degrees of management. More to the point, these different levels of management may take the shape of general director, sponsors, clients, and investors as it uses the skills of reporting-line (Turner, 2008).
Conclusion
Conclusively, this paper is comprehensive planning for the company under scrutiny to endorse the project manager and his faculty. The report takes into account the ample stages in the life cycle of the project alongside the needed advanced competencies and skills for the manager to regulate the project.
References
Ahuja, H. N., Dozzi, S. P., & AbouRizk, S. M. (1994). Project Management: Techniques in Planning and Controlling Construction Projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Bennett, F. L. (2007). The Management of Construction: A Project Lifecycle Approach. London, FL: Routledge.
Burke, R. (1999). Project Management: Planning and Control Techniques. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Burke, R. (2003). Project Management: Planning and Control Techniques. NJ: Halsted Press.
Burke, R. (2009). Fundamentals of Project Management: Tools and Techniques. NJ: Burke Pub.
Cooper, C. L. (2016). Risky Business: Psychological, Physical and Financial Costs of High Risk Behavior in Organizations. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Engemann, K., & O’Connor, R. (2020). Project Risk Management: Managing Software Development Risk. Berlin, NJ: Walter de Gruyter.
Field, M., & Keller, L. S. (1998). Project Management. Andover, NJ: Cengage Learning EMEA.
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Kerzner, H. (2009). Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
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Miner, J. B. (2007). Organizational Behavior: From theory to practice. 4. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
Morris, P. W., Pinto, J. K., & Söderlund, J. (2012). The Oxford Handbook of Project Management. Oxford, NY: OUP Oxford.
Pica, M. M. (2015). Project Life Cycle Economics: Cost Estimation, Management and Effectiveness in Construction Projects. Surrey, FL: Ashgate Publishing.
Roberts, P. (2011). Effective Project Management: Identify and Manage Risks Plan and Budget Keep Projects Under Control. London, NJ: Kogan Page Publishers.
Turner, J. R. (2008). The Handbook of Project-based Management: Leading Strategic Change in Organizations. New York, NY: McGraw Hill Professional.
Well-Stam, D. V., Lindenaar, F., & Kinderen, S. V. (2004). Project Risk Management: An Essential Tool for Managing and Controlling Projects. London, NJ: Kogan Page Publishers.
