Project Management Leadership and Skills: Planning and Control Assessment 1 – Planning and Control

Assessment task details and instructions

You need to develop an outline business case that will include the planning and control skills considerations of a proposed project based on the following case study.

STEP 1 – Read the Case Study 

The case study is focusing on the creation of Shopping and leisure Village by Sunset Homes, in one of their Lancashire care homes for elderly people with dementia. 
You are one of the potential project management teams of Sunset Homes and you have been tasked to work on a project proposal to justify why the project should go ahead and why you should manage it. 

Please note that real names and other details have been changed. We have sought to make this as close as possible to a live project brief. You may wish to conduct relevant research but please do not contact employees of Sunset Homes.

Dementia Village project introduction

A care home in Lancashire ‘Golden Years’, approximately 40 miles from Manchester is planning to convert their garden space into a ‘Dementia Village’.  The care home should be designed to provide more independence to the residents and thus a better quality of life, as well as a better experience for visitors and potentially also a facility for the local community. 

The care home is part of a national organisation (Sunset Homes) that operates 18 properties. The care home has 90 residents, with the great majority suffering from some type of dementia. All the residents are over the age of 65, with the majority over 80 years old. The home provides for all the needs of the residents. The home is located approximately half a mile from the centre of a small town.

The company has not attempted such a project before and there is no template that they are following. If the project is successful Sunset Homes will consider similar projects at other care homes where space allows, providing them with a unique selling point. 
Part of the project requirement is to plan for the evaluation of the dementia village project and prepare for future care home conversions.
Dementia Village Project detail

The project building work should commence at the beginning January 2026 and the project needs to be fully completed before the end of December 2026. 
Some parts of the project are already underway such as securing architects plans initial application for planning permission and initial quotes for building work. 
Initial costs for this work and some initial research and training are £12,000. 
The all-inclusive budget for the project is £850,000. 

The project board established by Sunset Homes must approve any additional cost in advance. 
The majority of this will go on the construction of 5 shops, landscaping and fencing. The shops will include a coffee shop, book and paper & magazine shop, ice cream and sweet booth, hair and beauty salon and retail food & farm shop. Each one needs be rented out, with all staff involved having received appropriate dementia training, provided by qualified external staff. 

Residents will be able to use the shops by using a chargeable electronic card. The shops will also welcome visitors and members of the community. 
A new internal position of facilities manager will be established as soon as possible. They will work alongside and reports to the existing care home manager. There are 48 full and part time staff in total at Golden Years. The new facilities manager will conduct training of all these staff concerning their additional responsibilities and implementation of new policy once the new village is open. It is not proposed to hire additional staff but a small pay increase for all staff is anticipated.

The total area to be developed is approx. 640 m2. Most of the budget will be spent on building work that will be subcontracted. 
This involves site clearance, building shops, paving, and water feature, seating areas, planting and fencing. 
Four quotes for the building work have been obtained.

• Contractor A, a large national corporation, with head office in Manchester has quoted to complete all building work in 20 weeks at a cost of £660,000 + VAT requiring six week’s lead time/ prior notice. This will include all finishing work. 
• Contractor B, based in the local town, has quoted to construct all the shops, fencing and garden features when the site preparation and landscaping, including paving, is all completed at a total cost of £440,000 and estimate the work will take 10-12 weeks. This will include all finishing work. 
• Contractor C, also local, has quoted a total cost of £280,000 to complete all the site preparation and landscaping in 4-6 weeks, depending on the start date. 
•  Contractor D, also local, has estimated that they can do the same job in 6 weeks at a cash cost of £16,000 per week for labour and £160,000 for materials. 
  An application for planning permission was made in January 2025. The Council planning officer has said that he doesn’t have any objections to the application, but the planning committee, which will meet in March 2025, must approve it. 

Once planning approval is granted and construction completed, new buildings can only go into use once inspected by the Council’s building inspectorate and approved by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), who are responsible for monitoring the quality of provision of all care homes in the UK. Both have welcomed the proposal, and if the project is successful, it could have a significant impact on the next CQC inspection due September 2026. The CQC on the other hand also has the authority to close a care home if, for example, they consider the health and safety of residents to be at risk. 

Social services and health care professionals regularly visit the care home to check on the health and well-being of residents, and social services have also indicated that they would like to inspect the new premises prior to opening.

The project will need promotion and marketing within the local community and more widely. A price rise is anticipated in recognition of the cost of the additional facility. 

Part of the promotion will be an opening ceremony involving senior company staff, the local mayor, care home staff, residents, their families and others in early November 2026.

STEP 2 – Read the Assignment Brief

The board of directors of Sunset Homes have instructed you as one of their potential project managers to look at a project proposal and provide them with report that includes the following:

Planning and Control – up to 3,000 words and/or diagrams, illustrations, tables and graphs
Develop key elements of an outline business case for the Dementia Village to the utilisation of appropriate project management tools and techniques in relation to strategic alignment, economic impact, planning and scheduling and financial considerations planning
The outline business case needs to include:

1. the project’s Mission and Objectives including the anticipated Impact that the Dementia Village will have to the organisation and other main stakeholders.
2.  A full stakeholder management plan.
3. An outline project activity plan using the appropriate Planning Breakdown Structures.
4. A resource allocation and utilisation plan by using a Resource Assignment Matrix.
5.  A cost estimation and allocation for the duration of the project using an appropriate technique.
6. A timeline schedule with key milestones. 
7. A Risk Management Assessment table for the 5 key risks associated with the delivery of the Dementia Village project.

KEY INSTRUCTIONS

You will need to take the following into account when completing your assignment.

• Each topic should be corelated to a relevant Project Management theory, tool or application and be fully referenced.
• All discussion included will need clarity of argument and relevance to the project’s context.

You should follow an industrial report format. Therefore, your report should have:

• Cover page that will include the Project title. 
• Executive Summary; (not part of the word count) 
• Contents page.
•  Introduction.
•  Main body split in sub sections based on the 7 thematic areas as detailed in page 4.  
• Discussion and Conclusion. 
• References / Bibliography.
• Appendices if required.

The report should also be page numbered. Please note if you are uncertain on how to present and structure a report then visit the university library and ask for assistance.

You are advised to use diagrams, illustrations, tables, graphics etc. wherever these are helpful, and remember that these do not count towards your word limit. If you do use these, please do not put them in the appendices if they are part of your discussion.  Appendices are the appropriate places to put supporting material, however, remember if the reader is satisfied with the main points of your discussion; the supporting information within the appendices may not even be reviewed.  
Try to use theory explicitly at all stages, but do not spend too much time describing a theory. While you must be explicit about the theories, models, techniques etc. that you use, you can assume that the reader is familiar with them. What the reader requires is evidence of your ability to understand and apply the theory and learn from to support the development of your findings and/or ideas.

You must cite all sources on which you have relied, for example textbooks, journal articles, web pages etc. using the APA 7th (Harvard) Style system. If you do not cite all sources, then you may be accused of plagiarism, and that may endanger your success in passing the module. If you are in any doubt about how to reference your work, please obtain guidance from the library and/or your academic librarian(s) for this module. 

Module Aims    

• To develop knowledge and critical understanding of the principles of effective project management within a global business context and the ways in which these principles have developed
• To facilitate an understanding of project management skills techniques, methods and tools and their application and limitations
• To enable students to acquire competences and develop existing their skills to propose solutions to the management of projects within a range of eventual career options