Project Management Practice Individual Report | Univrsity of Salford Manchester

Mini-Case Study

You are a newly qualified project management professional working for a construction project management consultancy (Perfect Project Managers) that has been asked to make a bid for the professional project management services on a large project for an international oil marketing organisation. The oil company wishes to procure its own national headquarters building and other accommodations on a site acquired from a government department that has relocated to another city.

The company’s national headquarters office building will be a seven-storey steel framed building with glazed facades and a central atrium. The building will be finished to high specification levels. The company also wishes to develop residential accommodation for its staff and a multi-purpose hall for indoor sports which can also be converted to serve as an exhibition hall. 

The office building will front an existing national highway. The residential accommodation will be in a six storey, concrete framed building that used to serve as the office of Regional Health Department. Therefore, the project will involve the restoration and refurbishment of the existing six-storey building that is located away from the headquarters building. This building has been unused for some time and has extensive dry rot and asbestos based materials within its structure and fabric. This existing building is to be retained and it will be renovated, refurbished, and converted to a block of high-quality residential flats. A heated swimming pool, sauna, gymnasium, and appropriate changing facilities are also to be developed as separate building to the new multi-purpose hall.

The proposed project’s location is immediately next to a wildlife sanctuary. The existing road and sewer network will need to be altered to accommodate the project. The local authority is insisting that separate road and pedestrian bridges should be constructed across the national highway to facilitate entry and egress from the site. 

Given the nature of the client and the project’s location, sustainability is one of the success criteria for the project. To impress the community, the company insists that the project must be designed and constructed to achieve “Excellent” BREEAM rating. The owners are also insisting that a high security fence be erected around the perimeter of the site. The company also wishes to have the whole complex ready for the celebration of its 20th Year Jubilee approximately five years from today. It has always rented accommodation and, as such, wishes to have a big celebration. 

The initial budget for the project has been informally assessed as being in the region of £420 million. As part of your organisation’s bid preparation process, you have been asked to consider issues related to the development of a draft Strategic Project Plan (SPP). The proposed project is expected to take 44-50 months to construct on site. Given the limited in-house expertise, it is clear that a complete design and construction team will need to be assembled. 

Notes

• You can make any assumptions that you wish, provided that the assumptions are reasonable and are clearly written down as part of your answer.
• All questions must be answered in the context of the mini-case study. The mini-case study has provided information about a theoretical project. You should read the information very carefully before attempting questions.

Tasks 

You have been appointed as the Project Manager for the project and your CEO has asked for a strategic report of between 3500 – 4000 word counts that satisfies the following:

1. With reference to the project described in the mini case study, critically assess the risks that emanate from the internal and external environment. Discuss the strategy and extent to which it is possible for the project team to mitigate the downside risks identified.
2. Based on the project described in the above mini-case study, critically discuss how can your project management company provide quality service and product to the client and other project stakeholders. You can propose any quality management approach you wish to adopt for the project throughout its life cycle.
3.  Identify the internal and external stakeholders of the project described in the mini-case study. Fully evaluate how will these stakeholders influence on the project decision-making and how you would manage the stakeholders for the success of the project.
4.    You are appointed by the Perfect Project Managers to construct a 3D interactive model using mixed reality. Critically discuss how mixed reality can be of value to the delivery of the projects described in the mini-case study to improve sustainability and use some examples of mixed reality technologies to support your answers.
5.  Describe the main procedures your company would adopt to manage the ‘close-out’ stage of the project in the mini-case study and indicate how your organisation could use such procedures to aid its organisational learning.