Week Five: Project Plan and Project Execution Plan Presentation

April 12, 2021

Instructor: Gary Denney

A Place Called Home Project Plan

Learning Team Group Two is completing a project plan for "A Place Called Home." Based on our research on the housing market, the value of homes is rapidly going up. Our goal is to build a semi-custom tiny home and see how fast it sells to buy more land and build tiny homes there as well. We will also produce a detailed description of our plan that will outline the project's essential strategic features. This will include the project charter, overview, work breakdown schedule (WBS) of activities, procurement budget, and list of the project milestones and tasks to achieve success on our project.

Milestones & Critical Paths

A milestone in project management is a point that indicates where a change is made during the development of the project. Milestones are significant in projects as they showcase the project's development phase's major areas and display when the next phase of a project is ready to be executed. Specific work tasks can be performed together to save time and allow project scheduling to maintain integrity. Our first milestone is to hire a project management team that will execute the following tasks as their first work tasks:

· Project Approval from City

· Securing funding

· Purchasing of Land

· Building Permit Approved

· Contract signed by constructions company.

· Materials Ordered

These work tasks are required first to begin development. Without these tasks, there will be no builds. Another milestone includes the preconstruction phase. This is where zoning, plans, land surveys, hookups of water and sewer, permits, and insurance is obtained. We then have the construction phase, where everything pertaining to the dwellings' construction will take place. Work tasks such as lot cleaning, driveways, utilities, attach to a week or public water, septic or public sewer, footings, foundation, termite treatments, foundation walls, windows, plumbing, concrete, roofing, brick/stone or siding, insulation, painting, cabinets, flooring, landscaping. Once all the critical paths are completed, we have come to the finished project.

Work Breakdown Structure

Work Breakdown Structure in project management helps divide the work into categories and sub-tasks. It categorizes work under respective teams and individuals who will be held responsible for completing that task. This breakdown increases productivity and efficiency in the team. In this particular example of “A Place Called Home," we will need to start with first creating teams like an operational team who will handle all the operational work, then there will be finance team who will handle all the costs and budget. We have the labor who will be directly involved with the manpower work, then a group of electricians, painters, installers (all types like floor, cabinets, showers, doors, etc.). They will each be tasked and given a timeline to complete their work. This can be divided or categorized under different project stages like initiation, planning, execution, control, and closeout. They can also sub-categorize under resource (can include labor), manufacture, capital (installation equipment), and material (like paint, flooring, etc.). 

Gantt Chart

With our Gantt chart for our “A Place Called Home" project in place. We must dive deeper into the project to discuss and better understand all details of the project. The first major point to discuss is the time frame we are working with and trying to adhere to. As stated in our project plan and Gantt chart, we have a start date of (5/1/21); with this date, we are hiring our project management team. Our next milestone date in our project chart is 6/1/21; this is the day that our project kicks off. We start the beginning stages of our house design. The latter tasks I just discussed showcase the first and significant dependency of the project, with the project team's hiring as the step that needs to be completed before our blueprint for the house design even kicks off. As with each task and sub task, the next stage of the project is dependent on completing the prior steps in the project. For instance, we need a blueprint done and approved by the city before we start preconstruction. In the chart, we have separated time frames for each project's major task, with the sub-tasking with dates for each with a start and end date. The major tasks for the project have specific time frames and sub-tasking assigned to them. It's planned out this way to ensure all details of the previous step are completed prior to getting the next phase started. We finally have our planned-out end date for the completed project, which we have as 7/1/2022. But we know that the project may run into obstacles to hinder the time frame and completion. This way, we have implemented more extended periods of completion into the tasking to get things done in time, even with obstacles.

Project Budget

The project budgeting process will be ongoing through the project's entirety and should be consistently worked on as costs fluctuate, or circumstances change, or project activities get derailed. The project budgetary methodology selected includes several methods and tools. First, we analyzed project requirements and drawings to verify the scope to build out our estimate's framework to cover everything in the plans and specifications, plus options or allowances for any choice alternatives. Next, we added all the estimates and pricing gathered from multiple subcontractor bids.

We will also use the top-down estimating method that begins with the final product and then works backward to break the activities down into smaller and smaller activities. The most productive benefit of this estimating is that crucial tasks are identified quickly. As the project develops, the team will become "lean" in the build execution and delivery phase.

To track costs and report on them, we have created a policy included in the budget, which allows the project to stay aligned with the organization's accounting procedures for hiring construction resources and contracting practices. The finances will be frequently monitored throughout the entire project to determine how the budget is performing. Project procurement and cost will be reconciled against the budget and contract pricing agreements.

A budget vs. actual dashboard will be used as a visual tool to compare the projected budget with the actual amount spent. The Project Budget dashboards will highlight various aspects of the budget and share a continuously updated forecast of the final project cost with status constraint indicators using green, yellow, and red fonts to highlight if we are staying within the budget. The green font will indicate if the project is within 5% above or below what you budgeted; yellow boxes indicate 15% either way, and red arrows indicate costs are outside the 15% range.

Conclusion

To conclude, in our project "A Place Called Home," we have laid down our benchmarks, listed the essential and vital steps to be taken. We have included a work breakdown structure as it helps the project team list and divides its work for better productivity and efficiency. It narrows down the role and responsibilities to respective teams. We have also included a Gantt chart that illustrates all the tasks that need to be performed along with their timelines. We have also listed the project resources that we will involve and the dependencies. Furthermore, we have attached a project budget sheet that includes all the costs involved, what the construction cost is for, and the work packages that have been approved.

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