Project Management Provides a Competitive Advantage for Bechtel
Bechtel Group = the world's premier manager of massive construction and engineering projects
- construction feats on the Hoover Dam
- the Boston Central Artery/Tunnel project
- the Riyadh
- Saudi Arabia Metro
- over 25,000 other projects in 160 countries
3.1 The Importance of Project Management
Bechtel's Strategies
- quickly has to mobilize substantial resources, often consisting of manual workers, construction professionals, cooks, medical personnel, and even security forces
- its project management team develops a supply chain to access materi
3.2 Project Planning
Projects = a series of related tasks directed toward a major input
Project Organization = is developed to make sure existing programs continue to run smoothly on a day-to-day basis while new projects are successfully completed
Project Organization is Most
3.3 Project Scheduling
Project Scheduling = involves sequencing and allotting time to all project activities
- managers decide how long each activity will take and compute the resources needed at each stage of production
- managers also chart separate schedules for personnel ne
3.4 Project Controlling
Project Controlling = involves close monitoring of resources, costs, quality, and budgets
- using a feedback loop to revise the project plan and having the ability to shift resources to where they are needed most
- controlling projects can be difficult; s
3.5 Project Management Techniques: PERT and CPM
Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) and the Critical Path Method (CPM) = both developed in the 1950s to help managers schedule, monitor, and control large and complex projects
- CPM arrived first, as a tool developed to assist in the building a
3.6 Determining the Project Schedule
Critical Path Analysis
- Critical Path = the longest time path through the network (to calculate the critical path, we calculate two distinct starting and ending times for each activity)
1) Earliest Start (ES) = earliest time at which an activity can star
3.7 Variability in Activity Times
- supply chain issues such as late arrivals of materials, absence of key personnel and so on could delay this activity; therefore, we cannot ignore the impact of variability in activity times when deciding the schedule for a project
- PERT's ability to ha
3.8 Cost-Time Trade-Offs and Project Crashing
Problems Project Managers Face
- the project is behind schedule
- the scheduled project completion time has been moved forward
- Crashing = the process by which we shorten the duration of a project in the cheapest manner possible
- Crash Time = the shorte
3.9 A Critique of PERT and CPM
Advantages
1) especially useful when scheduling and controlling large projects
2) straightforward concept and not mathematically complex
3) graphical networks help highlight relationships among project activities
4) critical path and slack time analyses h
3.10 Using Microsoft Project to Manage Projects
Microsoft Project (specialized project management software) = extremely useful in drawing project network, identifying the project schedule, and managing project costs and other resources
- Specialized Project Management Software = most preferred for larg