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BSV11101 Project Management and Construction Assignment Sample

Coursework Scenario

Construction projects are difficult but not impossible to manage!

Construction Project Management is the art of managing projects so that they are delivered successfully. It has been described as the overall control and coordination of all activities necessary, from inception to completion, towards the realisation of a completed asset that meets a clients expectations with respect to function, utility, schedule and budget.

The track record of project management in fulfilling this description, in the case of construction projects, is significantly less than perfect. Empirical evidence suggests that construction projects in the UK have approximately a 50% chance of being completed in accordance with their targeted objectives. Outside the UK it has been reported that approximately 65% of all infrastructure projects it supports encounter budget and schedule overruns. Despite this, it is clear that SOME construction projects are managed and delivered successfully.

Academics, theorists and practitioners have debated the causes of project failure and various recipe’s for success. Since some projects are delivered successfully while others aren’t, it is reasonable to suppose that there could be some ‘ingredients’ that can be found within the successful projects that are missing from the unsuccessful projects. On the other hand, construction projects are inherently uncertain, complex and extremely varied one from another, so it could be countered that success or failure may not be directly within the direct control of individual project managers or project management teams, rather being determined by certain factors within the projects themselves.

However, if true, this second position would substantially undermine much project management thinking and would certainly cause significant problems for the project management profession! For this coursework, you are to assume that you work within a large project management practice and you have been invited by a leading UK Project Management Institute to be a keynote speaker at a national conference that has as its theme: “Project Management for successful Construction Project delivery”.
As the basis for your keynote presentation you have been asked to produce a research paper that will be included within the Conference Proceedings. These Proceedings will be published by the conference organisers and will be made available to the delegates.

The title of the conference paper that you have been invited to submit is:- “Evaluating construction project success; investigating the PM role in delivering success and appraising the propensity for PM success”.

Coursework Tasks

“Examining construction project success; investigating the PM role in delivering success and appraising the propensity for PM success”.

Your coursework task is to prepare and submit this conference paper. To do this you will need to research ideas on the subjects of project management success; this should include examining what criteria should be used to determine whether or not a construction project has been delivered successfully and why these criteria valid. You will also need to investigate the project management role in relation to delivering a successful project; this requires examining literature on the expectations that can be reasonably demanded of those discharging the project management role. Lastly, to complete this conference paper you will need to appraise the things within the construction project management process that may aid the project manager in delivering successful projects and those which hinder the same and in so doing understand those things upon which the project manager may need to place greatest attention on - this is likely to include factors related to the project managers skills and abilities and organisational aspects within the PM process.

It is expected that your research paper will be predominantly literature review based, however, you may also introduce empirical evidence from your own experience of a project or projects if appropriate. (It may be appropriate to introduce evidence from your experience within the paper, however, it would be inappropriate to ONLY discuss personal experience with no reference to published literature. Therefore, some consideration of experience is optional, whereas review of literature is compulsory).

Because your paper will be published in the conference proceedings it must adhere to a prescribed template (please note that the publication is hypothetical, but the template is not!). This template is included in Appendix 1. Please note that marks will be deducted if the template is not followed. As well as adhering to the template, your conference paper should be structured in a logical way.

A suggested structure for the discussion section would be: An Introduction; in which the purpose, aims and objectives of the paper are explained: An Examination of Project Success; in which you examine the various criteria and/or indicators that can be used to estimate how a construction project has performed: An investigation of the role of the project manager in delivering project success; in which you assess the project manager’s role in relation to project success and the expectations demanded of the PM: An appraisal of the propensity for PM success; in which you appraise the things that can aid or hinder project success and therefore the areas that might demand the PM’s greatest attention. Finally, a Conclusion in which you sum up the main findings and the contribution that your paper has made.

Note: Your paper must not exceed 6 printed pages (sides) of A4 paper - this applies for all the content of the paper from the Abstract to the Conclusion, but it excludes the list of references. Any text exceeding the 6 page limit WILL NOT be read or marked.

Solution

Introduction

Project management is a significant element of the construction industry, and the construction industry of the United Kingdom is associated with multiple projects of high budgets and value. However, approximately 50% of the construction projects in the United Kingdom are completed by delivering quality to satisfy project objectives, while 65% deal with budget and schedule overruns. Urba?ski, Haque and Oino (2019) identified project success as dependent on the efficiency of a project manager's leadership capability, making them one of the most significant stakeholders required for improving the quality of construction projects in the United Kingdom. This study aims to evaluate the role of a project manager in satisfying different requirements for project success.

Examining the project success

A range of factors can indicate a construction project's quality, and help leaders understand whether a project is successful or not. Some significant indicators for evaluating project success include time, cost, project environment, stakeholder satisfaction, quality of the project, the functionality of a project and more (Unegbu, Yawas and Dan-Asabe, 2020). Among the indicators mentioned above, project quality holds the most significant amount of significance in the success of a project, and the project quality is further related to the cost, time and scope (Refer to figure 1). According to the concepts of triple constraint in a project and its quality, cost, time and scope are regarded as the most crucial elements. A project leader's inefficiency in managing these three elements can undermine the quality of a project (Guo, 2019). Therefore, to examine the success of a project, one must evaluate these three indicators (time, cost and scope) and the efficiency of the project leaders in managing these through the project. It will not only highlight the project's efficiency in managing potential constraints but can also highlight another indicator, which is project quality (Pollack, Helm and Adler, 2018).


Figure 1: Project triangle
(Source: Self-developed)

On the other hand, evaluating the functionality of the outcomes of a project and their alignment with the primary set objectives or performance indicators can be an efficient way of examining project success (Pirotti et al., 2020). If one finds the functionality of a project to be aligned with the expected outcomes by reviewing the notion of a project, the project can be successful. However, a project failing to deliver expected functionality and outcomes can indicate the failure of a project (Pirotti et al., 2020). For instance, in the case of the Crossrail construction project of the United Kingdom, the project was aimed at minimising the disruptions encountered by the residents and business owners of the UK by improving the transport networking system in the UK utilising the power of the railway (Crossrail UK, 2022). However, the project failed to deliver this, and its functionality was not as expected due to the stakeholders' poor decision-making and the lack of proper project execution (GCR Staff, 2019). Moreover, these factors have enhanced the project's cost and time, which is another indicator of an unsuccessful or inefficient construction project.

In addition to the criteria mentioned earlier, the efficient management of project stakeholders and the project management environment is essential for proper project management (Irfan and Hassan, 2019). Therefore, the leaders can also evaluate these factors to understand the degree of success of a project. For instance, a project with positive relations among stakeholders and an efficient environment that can foster stakeholder participation can promote the efficiency of project management and lead the project towards success (Irfan and Hassan, 2019). Hence, evaluating these factors and their effectiveness can indicate the possible chances of project success. These indicators and their positive outcomes are majorly dependent on factors including project manager competency, project team competency, project team efficiency of project teams' needs management, managers' focus on risk management and more (Unegbu, Yawas and Dan-Asabe, 2020). Therefore, one can say that the project manager is one of the essential stakeholders. They should be competent enough to appraise other associated factors required for a project's success, along with ensuring project evaluation of project success and its compliance with the project objectives.
Role of the project manager in delivering project success

As previously discussed, multiple indicators and factors determine the success of a project, and most of them are managed by the project manager. A project manager holds the most important and crucial position in the construction project management process for assignment help which determines the degree of project success (Daniel and Daniel, 2018). Nevertheless, one can regard the project managers as responsible for project outcomes, whether success or failure. Specifically, the projects manager's role should include the following:

Project planning: Project planning is one of the essential parts of a construction project in the United Kingdom which determines the efficiency of project execution. The phase of project planning includes a project breakdown into different tasks, scheduling the tasks, communication between different teams working together on a project, and forming a budget for the entire construction project in the United Kingdom (Armenia et al., 2019). A gap in efficiency of this phase can create a gap in the execution phase and eventually result in overrunning time and budget and compromising the project quality. Therefore, project leaders must ensure the project planning phase efficiently and make proper plans that the leaders can execute properly without overrunning the budget and time or disrupting communication.

Decision-making: Decision-making is also a significant responsibility of a project manager. For instance, in the case of the Crossrail project in the United Kingdom, the gap in the efficient decision-making by project managers influenced the project outcomes and eventually delayed the project. Along with delaying the Construction project, the wrong decisions of the project manager have also resulted in budget overruns (GCR Staff, 2019). To be specific, one can say that decision-making is a crucial part of construction project planning and its execution with harmony (Erdogan, Šaparauskas, and Turskis, 2019). Therefore, the leaders of a construction project in the United Kingdom must possess the capacity to make proper decisions to enhance the chances for a construction project to succeed on par with its objectives.

Arranging resources: Arrangement and delivering proper resources enhance the efficiency of the construction project team and their performance in the construction project. Resource allocation improves the alignment of construction project team members with the leader's vision by reducing potential constraints associated with the stress triggered by a lack of resources (Yu et al., 2018). Moreover, it contributes to the appraisal of a construction project's scope and potential to succeed in the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, the over-allocation of resources can also be implicative in the over-utilisation of the resource. Therefore, project managers should focus on arranging and allocating required and appropriate resources to avoid stress due to a lack of resources and over-utilisation.

Quality management: As previously discussed, the quality of a construction project is one of the critical indicators for project success, which makes it essential for the construction project managers of the United Kingdom to manage the project quality to ensure success (Guo, 2019). A construction quality management process can be defined as the methods that continuously measure the quality of every project activity and identify the flaws to mitigate them with appropriate action (Pollack, Helm and Adler, 2018). Specifically, managing cost, time and project scope are the fundamental elements that can hinder the project quality. Therefore, the project leaders must focus on managing cost, scope and time management activities and ensure they do not exceed. For instance, the exceeding budget and time of the Crossrail construction project of the United Kingdom have undermined the quality of the project, which is a lesson for the UK-based construction project leaders for their roles to manage these aspects of a project to deliver a project with expected quality.

Stakeholder management: Stakeholders and their performance are crucial for project success. Specifically, effective collaboration among project stakeholders can induce innovation, better risk management performance, and better decision-making. Moreover, it can also contribute to developing a positive project management environment (Ewurum, Egolum and Ogbuefi, 2019). In contradiction, stakeholder management gaps can create a hostile project environment and poor decision-making. Therefore, project managers should appraise better stakeholder management strategies and manage the project stakeholders successfully to ensure project success.

Appraisal of the propensity for Project Success

The personalities of construction project managers can be different, which results in their utilisation of different project management approaches. A project manager's propensity refers to the project manager's specific inclination, tendency and behavioural traits. Multiple factors influence the propensity of project managers (Górecki et al., 2019). Some of the significant factors that influence the character and behaviour of project leaders include confidence in the leaders, project management experience, knowledge, management skills and more (Noor and Mehar, 2021). The factors mentioned above can regulate the propensity of project managers to support project success and lead the project towards failure. Therefore, the leaders should ensure the management of the propensity positively. The leader's propensity or behavioural traits play a critical role in the success of construction projects globally, along with the UK markets. For instance, the leader's emotional intelligence is one of the significant facilitators for stakeholder collaboration, satisfaction and management of a positive project management environment (Rezvani, Ashkanasy and Khosravi, 2020). It can reflect project managers' commitment to regulate project team members' commitment successfully.

On the other hand, Fareed, Su and Awan (2020) have found that transformational leadership behaviours work best while managing a construction project. The emotional intelligence of project managers is also a part of transformational leadership and intellectual intelligence, which contributes to the efficiency of the leaders in managing the competency of leaders in decision-making and managing project teams strategically. These factors are responsible for the management of project success, and one can say that the project leaders should work to promote these propensities to ensure project success. In addition, leaders' propensity plays a crucial role in managing a project towards success and competency in project management (Górecki et al., 2019). Thus, one can say that the management of the propensity of a project can be effective in ensuring project success.

Conclusion

Conclusively, one can say that project managers are the most crucial personnel for ensuring project success. They are responsible for managing project quality, effective decision-making, project planning, stakeholder management and resource allocation. Therefore, their competency and interpersonal skills determine the project's success, and the project managers need to align their skills and propensity with the success criteria of a project.


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