Project Management can be thought of as a process, a method, a discipline, a role or the application of tools, skills, knowledge and techniques to complete a project. It is all these things. Project Management is about completing projects on time, within budget and to meet a set of specific requirements. For this projects must have a defined start and an end.
Project Management involves the initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and closing of a project. The Project Manager is the person responsible for accomplishing the project objectives, which could be in terms of development of a building or longer-term objectives such as achieving new business start-up outputs. Managing a project involves:
- Identifying requirements i.e. to renovate or build a new centre to benefit the local community.
- Establishing SMART (specific, measurable, reasonable and time-based) objectives, such as:
- To acquire an under-utilised community centre from the council based on a peppercorn lease for 100 years within the next 6 months.
- To renovate a community centre to meet the communities needs through: meeting rooms, conference facilities, gym, offices, performance space and a healthy eating Hub within a £2m budget within the next 2 years.
- To assist in creating X jobs or Y new businesses.
- Balancing the competing demands of quality, scope, time and budget.
- Changing plans and specifications to address changes that occur throughout the project.
All projects suffer from the “triple constraint” – scope, time and budget. The quality of a project is affected by balancing these 3 project constraints.
The following section provides useful hints, tips and tools for the various areas of project management that you may find useful when managing an Asset Transfer Project.
Project Team – Roles, Responsibilities and Structure
It is important with any type of project that there are clear roles and responsibilities defined. There are typically many roles such as: stakeholders, community, construction company, quantity surveyors, steering teams, project controls etc.
A simple powerpoint chart, together with a matrix defining who is responsible for what and role definition documents provide useful guidelines. Example project structure below:
The construction approach chosen will affect the required reporting structures and the roles reporting to the Programme/Project Manager.
Role definition documents should clearly define:
- Role Objectives
- Role Tasks/Activities
- Role Measures
- Role Reporting Line
Scope Management
Defining and managing the scope of a project is a key factor in determining its success. Tools and techniques useful in defining and managing the scope of a project are:
- Project scope statement
- WBS (Work Breakdown Structure)
- Change control systems
Project Time Management
Project time management is critical to the communication and overall coordination of a project. This process supports the timely completion of a project. Project planning is best carried out as a team activity where all the various parties involved in delivering the project can contribute.
Project planning involves:
- Defining activities
- Sequencing activities
- Resource estimating
- Duration estimating
- Developing a schedule
- Controlling and managing the schedule
Tools and techniques such as:
- Yellow stickies
- Precedence Diagrams
- Expert judgement
- Bottom-up estimating
- Analogous estimating
- Three-point estimating
- Parametric estimating
- Reserve analysis
- Resource calendars
- Crashing
- What-if analysis
- Resource leveling
- Critical Path analysis
- Project planning tools: Microsoft Office Project (for Pcs) and itask (for MACS)
It is important that a baseline for the project plan is agreed, this provides a stake from which to measure progress.
Typical Gantt chart:
Project Cost Management
Project Cost Management involves planning, estimating, budgeting and controlling costs to bring a project in within an approved budget.
Cost estimating tools, information and techniques include:
- Analogous estimating
- Bottom-up estimating
- Resource cost rates
- Parametric estimating
- Bid analysis
- Project management tools: Microsoft Office Project (for Pcs) and itask (for MACS)
- Reserve analysis
Cost budgeting is the bringing together and reconciliation of all the estimates together with constraints such as funding or financing limits to establish budgets for different line items against the WBS.
As with the time management plan, a cost budget baseline is approved, which is then used to measure progress and manage any cost implications to changes along the way.
It is also useful to have a cash-flow forecasting system is place for managing the project cash, especially with some grant funders requiring expenditure to be defrayed before payments are made. Tools such as sage forecasting are very useful for this purpose:
Other useful techniques and tools:
- Earned value analysis
- Variance analysis
- Change control
Project Quality Management
Project quality is very important in terms of making sure the project delivers a product that is “fit for purpose”. It also provides assurances that the product is built to meet the client’s specifications, reducing rework costs in the longer term. If the project fails to meet the specified quality requirements it can have a negative effect on any or all of the project stakeholders and in the ability of the product to deliver the required impact.
For example:
- Overworking teams to meet deadlines, caused by unknown problems, can cause negative impact such as team attrition and errors, causing rework and additional costs;
- Rushing quality inspections may result in errors not being detected.
Quality management processes of quality planning, quality assurance and quality control help to reduce the level of rework and costs.
Useful tools/techniques for quality management:
- Cost-benefit analysis
- Benchmarking
- Quality checklists
- Quality audits
- Inspections
- Quality management plan
People Management
People management is a critical component of managing a project. It is important to have team members involved in the project planning processes as early as possible. Getting involved early results in a plan that is likely to be more accurate and strengthens team member’s commitment to the plan.
When running a project, the project manager plans out the project roles, responsibilities and reporting relationships. This creates a resource plan.
Useful tools and techniques:
- Project organisation charts (powerpoint)
- Resource Breakdown Structure (RBS)
- Matrix-based charts
- Text based formats for role desciptions
- Resource histogram
- Training plans
- Safety policies & procedures
- Incentive plans
Working with the team to develop people throughout the process improves the skills of the people involved, which in turn raises productivity. Teamwork and communications are extremely important to having an effective team. Team-building activities built into the project plan can improve team morale and develop relationships between team members.
Managing the team involves putting in place the most appropriate tracking mechanisms to review performance, provide feedback and help resolve issues. This will be a mixture of written reports, observation, team meetings and one-to-ones.
Project Communications
Project Communications are critical to the success of the project, and by planning the communications in advance makes life much easier. In a development project, there are many stakeholders:
- Beneficiaries
- Community
- Steering team
- Board of the company
- Funders
- The press
There is also the project team members made up a number of external companies and their team members as well as internal company staff.
Planning how, when, what and who to communicate with the various project stakeholders and team members, up-front in a project, will make the project run much smoother.
How well project communications are carried out can determine the ultimate success of the project and how it is perceived.
Useful tools & techniques:
- Communications matrix
- Project web-site
- Progress reports
- Action registers
- Project presentations
- Videos
- Feedback from stakeholders
- Site visits
- Time-reporting systems
- Cost reporting systems
- Review Meetings
- Community consultation
Managing Project Risks
The overall objectives of managing risk within a project is to increase the probability of the events that have a positive impact on the project and reduce the probability of the events that have a negative impact on the project. Risk management involves:
- Identifying the risks
- Quantifying the risk
- Developing options to reduce threats to the project or maximize opportunities
- Tracking and monitoring risks
- Executing risk mitigation strategies
Useful tools and techniques:
- Risk probability and impact matrix
- Risk reviews
- Risk register
- Brainstorming
- SWOT analysis
- Interviews
- Challenging assumptions
- Decision tree analysis
- Modelling and simulation
Procurement Management
Project procurement involves all the processes involved with contracting with organizations for products and services to complete the project. This includes contract management, change control and contract administration.
The first stage is deciding what services or products to buy, how and when. Various tools and techniques are useful at this stage, such as:
- Deliver internally or sub-contract analysis
- Reviewing contract types
- Fixed-price
- Cost-plus-percentage of cost fee
- Cost-plus-fixed fee
- Cost-plus-incentive fee
- Time and material
It is important to have a defined statement of work. A construction project requires detailed plans, bill of materials, room schedule, timeframes, background survey information, risk related agreements etc in order to be able to bid for the work.
Note: It is advisable to budget for specialist construction lawyer to ensure the Development Trust is protected when preparing the contracts and warranty documentation for a construction project. This cost varies – between £5 and 15K as a guide.
The complexity and level of detail of procurement documents should be relative to the value and risk of a project.
Evaluation Criteria
Evaluation criteria is often included in published procurement documents, these are used to score the responses to in invitation to tender. Evaluation criteria can be varied and include items such as:
- Understanding of requirements
- Technical ability
- Overall cost
- Approach
- Track record
- Financial capacity
- Timeframe
- Type of business
- Commitment and demonstration of Corporate Social Responsibility
- Intellectual property rights
- References
- Capacity & commitment of assigned resources in the bid
- Commitment to use local resources
Note: Some funders will have specific procurement guidelines, these should be built into the procurement process.
Useful tools & techniques for the procurement process:
Standard contracts
- Weighting systems
- Evaluation criteria
- Independent estimates
- Negotiation techniques
Once a contract has been agreed, both parties will then administer the contract. Each party must ensure they meet their contractual obligations. Depending on the value and complexity of the contract, and also due to the legal implications, sometimes a separate administrative function is created within the project to administer the contract/s. The quantity surveyor in post in a development project may undertake this additional role.
Contract administration also has a financial element to it. The contract manager would be responsible for approving payment to suppliers based on achieved performance.
The contract administrator would also be responsible for managing any changes to the contract.
Useful tools and techniques:
- Change control system
- Audits and inspections
- Reports
- Reviews
- Accounting systems for tracking payments
Contract Closure
The contract closure process is the process of closing down the contract, ensuring all relevant documents are up to date, verification that all project deliverables have been achieved, payments reconciled, and all relevant documents archived. It is good practice to hold a post-project review to document the lessons learned, which can then be applied to the next project.
Project Management is often seen just as a set of procedures and controls to plan and manage a project. It is these things, but it also is very much about people. Managing projects, involves managing people and relationships with stakeholders, clients, partners and suppliers. As a Project Manager, avoid focusing just on processes and procedures and ensure a significant amount of your time is dedicated to communications and the building and managing of relationships.
Avoid making decisions in isolation. Remember, there is always a solution to a problem. Managing changes and risks to projects is a one constant you can rely on, and often it requires cooperation from many parties to arrive at a solution that everyone can feel happy about.
Case Study
The renovation of a 36,000 sq ft, grade II listed, school into state of the art enterprise centre. This was a £4.5m project, with the construction contract making up £3.2m. After 3-months of a 9-month renovation timeframe, dry and wet rot was uncovered to a much greater extent that previous survey had determined. The survey company has since been dissolved. The problem, along with other issues that had been discovered resulted in £900K in additional costs. The approach to resolve the issue involved getting all parties – architects, construction, quantity surveyors, structural engineers and the client in room until a solution was found. The solution was a mixture of making changes to the specification, delaying items that would not impact the building being opened and operational – such as painting the outside railings, convincing grant funders to convert revenue funds to capital, a plan to obtain additional working capital funds and the last £200K was resolved by each partner at the meeting contributing financially back to the project by reducing their fees. This solution would not have been possible without key relationships being built throughout the project. Project Link: http://www.shineinharehills.co.uk/
Association for Project Management
Project Management Institute