Reference no: EM133294676

Project management

Learning outcome 1: Demonstrate understanding of project management planning and programming tools.

Coursework Scenario: undertake some programming activity and present various completed critical path network analyses, barcharts, costings and a time/ cost optimisation.

For this coursework, you are to assume the role of a Project Manager who is focussing their attention on the construction phase of a particular project.

This project consists of the construction of a new aircraft maintenance facility. The design stage of this project has now been completed.

At this stage, one of the planners in your team has already completed a WBS for all of the tasks that are necessary for the construction of the building. An initial Project Logic Evaluation based on the tasks included in this WBS and this Project Logic Evaluation has now been passed to you in the form of a Network Diagram in Appendix 1).

Estimations of task durations for each of the14 tasks have been completed following the PERT approach. The estimates for Do, Dm and Dp are based on your company's normal working practices. Costings for the normal daily costs of tasks have also been estimated and Crash durations and extra costs for accelerating tasks to their lowest durations by making use of overtime have also been calculated.

This information has also been passed to you for your attention in Appendix 2). Please note that in this particular exercise, no materials costs are included since these will remain the same regardless of how the project is scheduled.

Note that the normal working practice means performing tasks at their expected durations. ‘Crashing' is not the normal working practice and this involves increasing the number of hours worked by human resources and plant and equipment during any one day period through the use of overtime. This enables the durations of some tasks to be accelerated (reduced) to ‘speed up' specific tasks if there is an advantage to so doing.

You are now required to complete the tasks described under section 3 (next page).

Coursework tasks

(i) Complete the network analysis for the maintenance facility project, based on the project logic diagram that is provided in Appendix 1, and based on the expected durations for each activity, which can be determined (following the PERT approach) from the task data in Appendix 2. This initial analysis should be completed on the basis of the normal working practices.

(ii) Produce a Linked Barchart that presents a summary of the ‘normal' project programme.

(iii) To the nearest whole day calculate the target duration for the construction of the maintenance facility allowing for a 95% probability of on time completion. This is the duration that will be agreed with the Client for project handover. If the project is delivered later than this agreed target duration, penalty costs of £12,500 per day will be incurred by the project team.

(iv) When the PLE was prepared for this project, it was assumed that the construction company contracted to construct the maintenance facility would be able to use both of the cranes that it owns to complete the necessary tasks. The following tasks each require the use of a crane: ‘Construct Columns L/H side‘, ‘Construct Columns R/H side‘, ‘Install Roof Trusses‘, ‘Attach Roof Cladding Panels' and ‘Attach Wall Cladding Panels'. However, since the initial planning, the contractor has advised that one of their two cranes has suffered a failure of a critical safety component. The repair has been scheduled but unfortunately due to a supply chain issue affecting the required replacement component, the repair will not be completed in time for the tasks the crane was needed for in this project. Consequently, the contractor will now only be able to supply their 1 remaining usable crane for all of these tasks as opposed to the 2 that were originally planned for. In keeping with the conditions in their contract, the contractor has notified you in advance and as a result the contractor themselves will not be held liable for any penalty costs or additional indirect costs incurred, but they will ensure there is no increase in the direct costs accrued by the affected tasks. Re-plan the project so that no more than 1 crane will be required for the completion of these 5 tasks and report the implications to the project caused by dealing with this unexpected resource constraint.

(v) Having re-planned the project for this resource constraint, the project is now underway. The following tasks have already been completed: ‘Clear Site', ‘Install Ground Drainage', ‘Excavate and Construct Raft and Floor Slab', ‘Construct Columns L/H side', ‘Construct Columns R/H side and ‘Install Roof Trusses'.

However, unfortunately during the execution of the ‘Construct Columns L/H side' and ‘Construct Columns R/H side' there were problems with high winds that interfered with the safe working of the crane and ultimately this delayed the completion of these two tasks. The ‘Construct Columns L/H side' task took 2 days longer to complete than was originally scheduled and the ‘Construct Columns R/H side' task took 1 additional day to complete compared to the original schedule.

The direct costs for each of these tasks will not increase as a consequence of these delays because the contractor has decided to absorb the additional direct costs in a goodwill gesture acknowledging the problems they caused earlier by only supplying one crane. However, the project is now further delayed and further penalty costs (which are not included within the direct costs the contractor will absorb) will now be incurred.

As Project Manager, it is your responsibility to try to make sure the remainder of the project is completed as optimally as it can be.

This requires you to re-plan the remainder of the project, accelerating the delivery of tasks that can be crashed by using overtime and thereby minimising the remaining cost of completing the project including any penalty costs.

Using the crash data in Appendix 2, re-plan the remaining tasks in the project, so that the most optimum solution for the delivery of the project, in light of the problems experienced, will now be achieved.

When ‘crashing' the remaining tasks to determine the optimum solution, you must assume that it is an ‘all or nothing' scenario; in other words, incremental ‘crashing' of tasks is not permissible.