What is the  purpose of the project management plan ?

 

The purpose of the project management plan which has to be developed here is to present a guide for managing a project involving designing and construction of a house. The responsibility of the development of this document lies with the project manager. The primary goal of such a project would be to develop a quality construction of the house within planned schedule and budget. The project management plan provides a detailed explanation of relationships between different components and resources of a project.

 

This project is about construction of a house for which the project management plan is prepared for managing the complete cycle of the construction project beginning with procurement of the building materials, construction of the house structure, installation of required furnishing, interior deigning and installation of all equipments in the house. The project makes use of PMBOK guide as a guiding methodology for creating this project management plan (A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, 2000).

A project scope statement defines what a project exactly is. This includes what services and what products are developed and how a person can know when specific objectives of the project can be achieved. The scope statements should define project boundaries such that when the project progresses and the scope is widened beyond these boundaries, it can be said that the project is facing variations from the scope. Project scope statements define project objectives, deliverables, milestones, technical requirements of construction and limitations or exclusions (Billows, 2016).
PROJECT OBJECTIVE: To construct a high-quality of a house within defined number of months and the expenditure should not be exceeding a budgeted amount.

• The deliverables include a house whose dimensions can be defined here and this includes the area in square foot, size of bath, bedrooms and the full house.
• deliverables can include a finished garage.
• Modular Kitchen including usable appliances like microwave, dishwasher and more
• Gas furnace with the programmable thermostat.

MILESTONES
1. Permits approval dates
2. Dates when the Foundation would be poured
3. Dry in time for various activities like Framing, sheathing, plumbing, electrical, and mechanical inspections
4. Final inspection dates

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS
1. Local building codes that the constructed house must meet can e defined
2. Energy rating criteria for windows and doors can be defined.
3. Factors for meeting wall insulation requirements for Exterior of the house and inside the house such as ceiling and floor can be defined.
4. Deliverables may also define what size of garage by defining what size and number of vehicles it can include inside it
5. The Structure which is constructed should pass the codes of seismic stability.

LIMITS AND EXCLUSIONS
1. For design specifications, the original blueprint provided by the client could be used as the basis
2. Owners of the project are responsible for landscaping.
3. Some electronics like Refrigerator and air conditioner may not be included in the provisioned kitchen appliances.
4. A pre-wiring for air conditioning may be included.
5. Contractor can contract out some of the services required for construction project to sub-contractors but contractor would be considered responsible for the work done by the sub-contractor.
6. deliverables may also include the working time and working days for construction workers

This section of a project management plan may first define some primary goals of the project and then the same would further be divided into project objectives. Project goals can be:
• An urban thoroughfare at the construction site that allows transit of trucks and other vehicles and at the same time, ensures that the pedestrians remain safe while passing by.
• Create a positive ambience inside the house with the use of good interior designing
Specific Objectives of this project would be:
• Plan all activities required for completing the construction of the and draft the same n documentation
• Identify requirements for procurement and develop a plan for that
• Develop a schedule for construction project with specific milestone dates
• Identify budget and allocated the components to various resources of the project
• Establish control measures to ensure that the project remains within the constraints of the budget and schedule to make deliveries.
• Establish risk management plan for managing risks that may occur on project and develop a response strategies for known cases
• Procure materials and services from contractors including contractors for furnishing, transporter and interior designer

Stakeholders and Key Personnel
A stakeholder mapping may be used here to identify stakeholders, their key characteristics and an understanding of how they would be supporting the project in various ways can be achieved. Stakeholder mapping replaces subjectivity with the objectivity such that assessment process can be made transparent and this transparency would make assessment processes clear to people who would be facilitated to then review the progress using appropriate approach (Duncan, 1996).
There are various methods available that can be used for stakeholder mapping such as power to influence classification model, stakeholder expectations recognized against key performance areas and value hierarchies, stakeholder classification as per the threat and cooperation potential and stakeholder satisfaction assessment. Other techniques available include influence-interest grid, power-impact grid, CLIP analysis, power-interest grid, Power, attitude and interest three dimensional grouping.
In either case of the use of method for stakeholder mapping, there would be some common dimensions that can be used to understand stakeholder relationships in the case of house construction project and these include power of the stakeholder which can be low , medium or high, support extended by the stakeholder which can be positive negative or neutral, influence that can range from high to low, interest again ranging from high to low and attitude which can be constructive or destructive.
A stakeholder cycle methodology may be used here to identify stakeholders, priorities their needs, visualize, engage them and monitor communication with them through baselines reports.

Identify Stakeholders: A list of stakeholders would be prepared and for each of these stakeholders, two aspects of the relationships between them and the project would be identified. This would include their expectations from the project and their perceptions about project success or failure. Further, stakeholders would be classified on the basis of their direction of the influence on project which could be upward, downward, outward, sideward external or internal. The classification can also be done on the basis of multiple stakeholder orientations considering their rights, interests, ownership, influence, knowledge and contribution. For the house construction project, these stakeholder classifications can be done as follows (Introduction to Project Management: Principles, Techniques and Tools, 2013):
Interest The stakeholder would affect the organization by taking decisions related to following work:
• Closure of the site for the use of space for pedestrians (Stakeholder – Contractor)
• Safety norms to be used by workers or those passing by the construction site (Stakeholder – Government)
• Investments on project components (Stakeholder – Sponsor
Rights Specific rights of the stakeholders may be protected such as:
• Health and safety of Workers and of Public as stakeholders
• Payment receipts against the contract work done for contractors as stakeholders

Ownership An owner has the legal title to certain asset or property of a project such as the project sponsor who reserves the rights on the construction and the profits.

Knowledge This would include specialized knowledge that a stakeholder may have such as contractors who are experts in their specific services like construction, transportation and so on.

Influence The stakeholder may be impacted by the project in some way and he or she can also create an impact on the project outcomes. Employees of the organization and occupants of the house would be impacted by the construction project while sponsor and main contractor of the project would influence the project decisions.

Contribution Different stakeholders can contribute to the project in different ways. As sponsor contributes to project by supplying funds. An employee contributes to project by using his or her expertise on project execution. Suppliers are responsible for supplying building materials on site for construction and contractors would be contributing to the project by executing that tasks of construction, transportation, designing and so on.
Based on this information, stakeholder would be identified for priority settings such that high importance stakeholder is given high priority. A priority list considering all the project would be created.

Project Organization

Monitoring and Control Mechanisms
The project can make use of standard mechanisms for monitoring and control of projects such as risk management, operational readiness and requirement tracing. Project control mechanism re used to identify events on a project that are likely to delay the schedule or make the costs go upward of the budget. The control measures identify variations in project schedules and deliverables. If project control is not in place then it can lead to deviations that further can increase expenses or introduce delays.

On the house construction project, an original cost estimate can be used to create the project budget which would serve as a financial guide for the project manager and team. Items that are included in the original estimate are based on the estimates for each category but the actual costs incurring on the project can be different and these are called the job costs. Job costs serve as basic unit for establishing control over costs and are recorded in the job cost accounts. These accounts can be divided into multiple work elements that are related to other costs accounts or other activities (Kerzner, 2001). Number of cost accounts vary with types of projects. On a construction project, there could be 7 different divisions of cost accounts. These divisions are further drilled down into numerous subdivisions and even final details. Sub-divisions can be related to personnel, resource costs and materials.
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and Schedule
Work break down structure outlines all the activities required to complete the project at hand. The WBS is prepared using project management software tools like Microsoft Project and the structure includes tasks descriptions durations, resources, project milestones and key incremental deliverables.

 

A communication plan for the house construction project may be prepared by seeking answers to following questions:
• Who requires what kind of information?
• When is this information required?
• Who would be responsible for delivering the information?
• How can this information be delivered to the recipient?
There are two inputs that are required for making a communication plan and these include WBS product list and a project charter that identifies what agreements have been established between the sponsor and the project manager for every key element of the project.

First, the stakeholders would be identified and then their information requirement would be explored to understand what kind of information has to be delivered to them. after understanding their needs and communication frequency required, the method of communication could be identified.
The Communication management plan for the house construction project would use these information to form a communication plan which would contain following elements:

• Introduction and background of the project illustrating why project is needed
• A list of sponsors, project manager, project team members and stakeholder would be presented
• Methods that would be used for communication would be tabulated along with the details of who, what , when and how
• Stakeholder Analysis: Internal stakeholders would be identified according to the cost centres and the external stakeholders would be identified by an external organization getting affected by the project. each of these stakeholders would be identified from following perspectives:

o Project goals and vision of the stakeholder for the project
o Preferred mode of communication by the stakeholder
o Preference of conducting reviews for assessing team performance
o Communication matrix would include details of products to be delivered, who would produce it, how would it be delivered, who would be receiving the product and the date when it would be submitted

This project plan would be prepared for each of the following components of the project:
• Project Initiation Document
• Permits
• Specifications and estimates
• Construction (Caltrans, 2007)

Risk Management Plan
In this plan various risks that can occur on a house construction project would be included and recoded in a risk register. Risk management planning is done considering triple constraints as the baseline including scope, schedule and cost of the project. Further an organized process would be used for managing risks of the house construction project and these include:

Risk Management Planning: All the activities of WBS would be assessed to identify potential risks that can affect either of the three constraints in any way. Activities that would be found posing some risks would be recorded in the risk management plan.

Risk Identification: Risks would be identified for the whole life cycle of the project. The uncertainties would be explored for every stage of the project.
Risk Assessment: Every risk identified in the previous step would then be assessed on the basis of its probability of occurrence and the impact on the project. The consequences of risks would be studied both qualitatively and quantitatively.

Risk response: risk response strategies would be identified for each risk identified. In response, a project manager could take any of the following approach – Eliminate risk, transfer risk to contractor, avoid risk from happening, mitigate impacts of risks or ignore the risk.
Risk management and control: Risk handling strategies are defined in the baseline of the project while residual risks would be recorded in the contingency plan
Reporting and Tracking: Risks would be documented in a risk register and the same would be maintained as a log which would be used for recording and reporting risks at the time of occurrence (SLAC, 2009).

Quality Control Plan

A quality control plan is used to propose processes that could be used for controlling the quality of all the work products. The plan would include information about organization, quality control reviews, communication methods and quality assurance certification requirements
The reviews would be conducted to assess the quality of the submitted work requirements on the construction project. This assessment would be done on the basis of compliance of the work with the project requirement, technical accuracy, compatibility with the other documents related to project, and compliance to the previous reviews received.

Quality control would be established by project manager who would be distributing responsibility of maintaining and controlling quality to various project team members including designer, area engineer and contractors. The sections that would be reviewed to established control in the construction project include road design selection, environment selection, pavement selection, contracts and specification, value engineering, road safety considerations and so on (DOTD, 2008).