Unit VIII PowerPoint

Unit VII Project

Unit VII Project: Building a window seat at home

Project Overview

The proposed project is a personal project aimed at building a window seat at home. The window seat will be 60 inches wide, 18-1/2 inches high and 15 inches deep. The project will be managed and funded by the head of the household at home. The project is expected to start on 1st October 2019 and be completed on 8th October 2019. The project belongs to Mr. Robert Johnson.

Project Mission Statement and Scope Statement

The aim of the project is to build a window seat that is extra touch. Building a window seat will transform house into a real comfortable home. The window seat will serve various activities. A person will enjoy reading, chatting with a friend or basking in the sun while seating at the window. The mission of the project therefore is to transform the house into a comfortable place by building a window seat and a built in storage room.

The project will involve four major components or structures. The first activity is building a window seat and topping it with a cushion for comfort and adding fun pillows. The second activity will be to build 6 cubic feet built-in storage room beneath the window seat. The third activity will be to install pre-built stylish wall cabinets pulls in the built-in storage room. The final task will be to paint the entire window seat.

Project Schedule and Control

The project will take six to eight days in order to be completed. It is expected start on 1st October 2019 and end on 8th October 2019. In order for the project to be completed as scheduled, then adequate resources will be required to be allocated to the project. The resources required include financial resources, human resources and other supplies and materials.

The project manager will use a number of resource allocation and monitoring processes to recognize the best available resources for the project, assigning them to the project team and monitoring workload throughout the work and reassigning resources if required. The resource management processes that will be utilized by the project manager include division of project into tasks, assigning of the resources, determination of resource attributes, resource leveling, uncovering of risks early, tracking resource utilization and analysis of the project (Lock, 2017). Division of the project into a number of tasks will enable the project manager to determine the optimal level of resources required by each project activity. The project manager will have to assign the resources accordingly to minimize wastage of resources. It is important for a project manager to have a high level overview of the available resources so as to be in a position adjust the resources when required. Resource attributes such as grade, skill, quality and availability have to be examined by the manager in order to ensure that efficient resources are allocated to each project task. The manager will be required inspect the project resources to ensure that their utilization is as smooth and level as possible. The resources required will have to be tracked and analyzed by the project manager. This is of great essence in order to avoid underestimating the amount of resources required to complete the whole project.

There are several project evaluation and control processes that will be utilized by the project manager. Financial control process will used to ensure that the financial resources allocated for the project are used well. Budget control process will be utilized to ensure that the project operates according to the budget. This will assist in avoiding situations of altering the original budget. Budget control process will have to take into consideration factors such as schedule slippage. Schedule control process will be used to monitor the schedule of the project so as to ensure that the project runs as scheduled hence assists in avoiding situations of having to extend the schedule of the project due to delays (Von, 2016). This is important so as to ensure that a project operates in line with its schedule. Scope control process will be used to monitor structures and the components of the project. Quality assurance control process will used to monitor project activities and quality of output the project. Risk management control process will be used in effective management of risks that the project may be exposed to. This will result in containment of the risks identified. The project will be evaluated basing on the scope, schedule and budget. The project will be considered successful if all the project structures and components are complete. The project will be evaluated to determine whether it is completed according to its schedule. The project will also be considered successful if there will be no adjustments made in the original budget.

Project Management Structure and Budget

The leading project team members include project director or manager, project coordinator, risk manager, quality assurance manager, project evaluator, mason, carpenter and a painter. These personnel will have to work full time because of the demanding nature of the project. The project manager will be responsible for overseeing the whole project until completion. Project coordinator will ensure that the project is divided into tasks and also ensure that all project tasks are undertaken as planned. Risk manager will be responsible for ensuring effective management of the process of managing risks. Quality assurance manager will responsible for coordinating all the assurance activities on the project. Project evaluator will come up with evaluation plans and conduct evaluation activities on the project so as to determine whether the project achieved its objectives or not. The mason will be responsible for building the entire window seat. The carpenter will be tasked with installing wall cabinets on the storage room construct beneath the window seat.

The total cost for the whole project that will involve building of a window seat is estimated to be $52,387. This particular amount is divided as explained below.

Salaries and allowances for the individuals working on the project are significantly large due to skills and qualifications which are required to ensure transparency, efficiency, and competence that are needed to accomplish the whole project. The personnel who will be working on a full time basis are project manager, project coordinator, project evaluator and a mason who will be paid $5,812, $4,287, $2,114 and $1,078 respectively. Each one of personnel will be work a maximum of 7 hours a day. All project personnel will be required to report the project manager. The whole project will take a week to complete. The above-mentioned salaries and other benefits are for the whole week. In the whole week, salaries will be totaling to $13,291 and the benefits for part-time personnel will be $6,175 which adds up to $19, 466. Project risk manager, quality assurance manager, carpenter and a painter will be working part-time since they are employed in other organizations where they are serving for the most part of their time. The staffs who are working on part time basis will not be entitled to salaries for the whole week. Instead, they will be entitled to allowances for the services offered.

In order to ensure optimal use of the available resources, the project manager will have to ensure that unnecessary expenses are avoided at all cost. Consultation fee will be $ 1,550 for the whole week. Contract amount is estimated to be $10,327. Materials and supplies that will be required will be about $17,623. Miscellaneous and other expenses will amount to $3,421. The following table shows the proposed budget for the whole project.

Item	Estimated Amount in $
Salaries and allowances for the staff	19, 466
Consultation Fees	1,550
Contracts	10,327
Materials and supplies	17,623
Miscellaneous and other expenses	3,421
Grand Totals	$52,387

Work Breakdown Structure

The project will be broken down into four main components. The first task is building the window seat. The materials required will be stones, sand and cement. The second component of the project will be to build 6 cubic feet built-in storage room beneath the window seat. The materials required to build window seat and a built in storage room beneath the window seat will be stones, sand and cement. The mason will be tasked with building these mentioned structures. The project coordinator will ensure that these tasks are undertaken as scheduled.

The third task will be to install pre-built stylish wall cabinets pulls in the built-in storage room. The carpenter will the person in charge of installing wall cabinets in the storage room built beneath the window seat. The final task of the project will be to paint the entire window seat. The painter will be the person painting the window seat after it has been built. Quality assurance manager will ensure that all the standards required for building a window seat are duly followed.

Risk Management Process

There are a number of steps which will be necessary in order to respond to project risks. Risk manager will be tasked with identifying potential risks. He/she will identify potential risks by conducting a review of the similar projects undertaken before.

After identifying potential risks, the risk manager will record the identified risks on the risk register. A risk owner will be appointed after all potential risks have been identified and recorded. The risk manager and risk owner will carry out analysis of the risks. They will qualitatively carry out analysis and agree upon the best risk response strategy.

The risk owner in conjunction with the risk manager will assign tasks required to implement the risk response strategy to action managers. The risk manager and the risk owner will monitor the progress. The risks which are estimated to have the most significant impact on the project will then be selected from the risk register.

A quantitative analysis will then be conducted on the risks which are identified as having the most significant impact. This analysis is used to determine the overall impact that these high level risks will have on the project. Both the risk manager and the risk owner will be reviewing each risk separately. These open risks will be reviewed on a daily basis until they are all closed.

Project Communication

Communication is a key factor when managing a project. For project execution to be successful, effective communication to all stakeholders is essential. The project manager will decide on the best communication strategy from the very beginning of the project. The project manager will ensure that communication facilitates attainment of objectives and goals of the project. He/she will also ensure that effective channels of communication are used.

The project coordinator will be in charge of passing information. He/she will be the person sharing information pertaining to the project. The information can be relating to the progress of the project. The project coordinator will pass important information to the project manager and other personnel. The project manager will then update the project owner on the progress of the project.

After conducting a meeting, the project coordinator will communicate the resolutions and decisions made to the stakeholders. If there are any changes on the project, the information will have to be passed to the relevant project personnel.

Project Closure

The project manager will oversee the project closure. After the end of the project, a project closure report will be generated. Assessment of project results, success criteria, lessons learned, project assessment, project manager assessment and project team assessment are of great essence when closing the project.

When closing the project, the project manager will find out whether all the requirements of the project deliverables were met. The planned cost and actual cost of each item which was budgeted for will have to be examined. This will help in finding out whether there was a variance between actual costs incurred and planned costs. The planned completion date and actual completion date will also be examined. This will help in finding out whether there was any variance between the two. Success criteria will be determined it were met or not.

The lessons learned from the project will also be outlined by the project manager. The lessons learnt are important for future similar projects. The failures and success of the project will have to be documented. The project evaluator will carry out an assessment on the whole project, project manager and project team. This is important so as to find out how they performed in their work.

Project assessment will entail aspects such as business case development, initiation, requirements definition, planning controlling and executing of the project (Mir & Pinnington, 2014). These aspects are very critical in that they are key factors to be considered when finding out whether the project was successful or not. The results of the project assessment will be used to close the project.

Project manager assessment will entail aspects such as integration management, scope management, time management, quality management, risk management, procurement management, human resources management and communication management. These aspects will tell whether the project manager was successful in managing the project (Raymond & Bergeron, 2008).

Before closing the project it will be important to evaluate how the entire project team performed. Project team assessment will entail components such as professionalism, collaboration, teamwork, conflict management and responsiveness (Soekiman, 2011). After evaluation and assessment of all aspects of the project have been concluded by the project evaluator, the project closure report is compiled. The project owner will sign at the end of the closure report indicating that he/she has accepted the project. It is at this particular point that the project will be considered closed.

References

Lock, D. (2017). The essentials of project management. Routledge.

Mir, F. A., & Pinnington, A. H. (2014). Exploring the value of project management: linking project management performance and project success. International journal of project management, 32(2), 202-217.

Raymond, L., & Bergeron, F. (2008). Project management information systems: An empirical study of their impact on project managers and project success. International Journal of Project Management, 26(2), 213-220.

Soekiman, A., Pribadi, K. S., Soemardi, B. W., & Wirahadikusumah, R. D. (2011). Factors relating to labor productivity affecting the project schedule performance in Indonesia. Procedia engineering, 14, 865-873.

Von, D. L. (2016). Fiscal decentralization and budget control.