Critical Factors For Global Project Management In Construction Sector: A Case Study Of Regency Plaza Project Essay.

1 . Critically analyse the construction sector, market and environment to identify the critical factors that impact on global project management process and practice in this market specifically, and develop strategies for addressing these sectoral specificities.

2.Demonstrate mastery in the application of project management tools and techniques within a range of complex construction project management situations.

3.Analyse the role of project costs/finances, resource management, health and safety, supply chain logistics and contractual agreements

Part A: Project Contracts (Module 3)

• Identify and analyse the legal benefits and challenges that Regency Plaza might experience from each of the following types of contracts:

oStipulated or lump-sum contract

oCost of work plus fee contract

oCost of work plus fee with guaranteed maximum price (GMP) contract

oConstruction management (CM) contract

oDesign-build or design-and-construct (D&C) contract

• Explain what you would do to mitigate any potential challenges of these contract types.
• Which of these contracts you would have recommended for this project? Explain why.

Part B: Project Pre-Planning (Module 4)

• Analyse the major challenges you would need to address prior to beginning construction and explain what you would do to mitigate any of these potential challenges.
• Evaluate the most effective approach you would use to meet on-time delivery of your project with low cost and high quality. Use examples to support your evaluation.
• Explain how you would organise your project’s costs. In other words, what type of project cost breakdown would you use? Provide examples of categories.
• Analyse how you would organise your project’s major deliverables and their components using a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). Explain the level of detail needed in your WBS and why.

Part C: Controlling Communication (Module 5)

• Develop a communications management plan that would provide appropriate project status reports to stakeholders.
• Analyse how you would use these reports to address project stakeholder expectations, including your preferred medium.
• Analyse the level of detail necessary to regularly make these stakeholder reports.

Project Contracts

The report is based on analyzing the Regency Plaza Project which is a combination of project consisting of 300-room Regency Plaza as well as 96 luxury condominiums. This report argues the lawful benefits in addition to challenges that Regency Plaza experience in their business operations. The challenges are identified for different contract type and mitigated on time for successful completion of Regency Plaza Project. Effective approaches are also analyzed to gather on-time delivery of the project with small cost moreover high quality. Project cost breakdown structure and work breakdown structure are also analyzed so that the project manager can track the progress of the construction work. Communication management plan is analyzed to interact with the project team members to discuss the challenges and mitigation strategies. Finally, the lesson learned components are identified for project close out.

Following type of contracts help to identify and analyse legal benefits and challenges that the project might experience such as:

Stipulated or lumps-sum contract: It is an agreement between the contractor and customer. It is required that the contractor can agreed to give specified services for the fixed price. It shits the cost liability from the client to contractor. At the time of bid submission, the contractor should build large mark-up to contain the expenses (Adriaanse, 2016). The contractor bids low to win it, then they may loss the money on contract until a strict control over time as well as expense is done.  

Cost of work plus fee contract: It mitigates the liability for the project expenses. It places liability on project client and is used as urgency linked with need to facilitate the construction project work of hotel room and condominium units. It presents the contractor with an incentive to complete the project work rapidly (Thomas & Wright, 2016). Cost of work plus fee contract provides incentive for contractor to bid job properly as the percentage is higher when job comes under budget and low when the job costs more than its estimated amount.

Cost of work plus fee with guaranteed maximum price (GMP) contract: It is well defined project in which the client can make few or no changes throughout the construction work. Liability to bring the project within budget is based on project contractor those can estimate the maximum cost (Klee, 2018). Cost savings is an option for the project client can split with contractor but it is based on terms negotiated with the contract. Sometimes, this cost savings are shared among project owner and contractor as incentive to keep the cost of project down.

Mitigate the Potential Challenges of Contract Types

Construction management (CM) contract: Under this contract, the construction manager has responsibility to arrange as well as supervise the performance work by the sub-contractors. This contract is used for Regency Plaza Project where the employer is appointed and separated of trade contracts for carrying out the project work (Greenhalgh, 2016). The construction manager can oversee the project completion work for fee.   

Design-build or design-and-construct (D&C) contract: This contract is accurate when the project delivery method is stated as design build. The architect has completed the design phase, and then the project puts for bid to other contracting organizations. After signing of the contract, the contractor is accountable for plan as well as building work desirable to finish the construction work (Rowlinson, 2018). After the project owner commends the design, the contractor oversees the method of construction along with hire of subcontractors as required.  

The project manager takes measures to manage and allocate risks involved in the construction contract. The parties to bond should have lawful ability to come in into the contract. Legal ability means that the revelries should have authorized age and skilled. The individuals those are signing the contract have power to attach lawful entity to project agreement. There should be real aim to enter in the agreement as of the parties (Ballesteros-Pérez et al., 2015). The purpose of all construction contracts should be for the legal endeavours. The contract should identify the term which will direct the agreement.

The recommended contract for this project work is design-build or design-and-construct (D&C) contract. It is a contract type to bring the construction project in which plan as well as construction services are being contracted by solitary entity as design build contractor. The project owner prepares request for qualification where there is analysis of sources under fair competition based on some specific criteria as well as weighted factors (Charrett, 2018). It is a procurement route where the contractor is being appointed for design and construction of work. The client appoints the consultant for design development for the hotel and condominium units in Regency Plaza Project. This contract is used when the project owner saves time by having construction start before completion of final design of the hotel and condominium.     

The condominiums venture focused on catering wealthy couples in middle age. The construction duration of the project is 29 months with a total sale of $134.4 million. However, the undertaking work of the hotel was not achieved. The sale of condominiums units were moved slow as only 30 out of 96 units were being sold, therefore it results in bad economy and task was behind the project scheduled time. The shareholders of Regency Plaza Project were so much frustrated and the condominiums units were uttered their displeasure over poor superiority workmanship as well as delayed finish work for the condominiums units.

Contracts Recommended for the Project

The challenges related to budget and schedule is mitigated by implementation of budget and project schedule plan with considering of all the project resources and expenses so that the project should not go over-budgeted and behind the schedule (Love et al., 2018). The Regency Plaza hotel will build with the project specifications as well as design of the blueprints and the condominiums units will furnish by the drawings provided from the construction company. Right amount of contractors are reserved for right to contract of the project work.

The project manager and project team members follow regular approach to organize, define, schedule, track and manage the project work. The approach is designed to get better likelihood of the development success, awareness of the project benefits and ease the project team to distribute quality products on planned time with estimated budget (Sovacool, Nugent, & Gilbert, 2014). The top down approach defines the project task involved with starting the project goal and final deliverable. This approach provides a clear insight of the project details so that the project work can deliver on time with lower cost and higher quality of the work.

The cost is organized by establishment of proper amount of control over the project budget. The cost is prohibited by the project manager by recognition of the sources of project cost (Lock, 2016). The cost breakdown structure which is used for this project work consists of the cost elements and its respective cost into various components.

When Helen Millers had submitted the interior design of the hotel and condominium units, then the work activities such as civil, mechanical, electrical as well as plumbing work are carried out of the Miller units and other part of the building in such a way which is suitable for the entire project structure. Kelly construction receives new architectural changes after they started to work in the construction of Regency Plaza Condominium. This unit is down part of the completed construction work for accommodating the architectural design of the hotel. The work breakdown structure is moved from WBS 1.1, architecture of condominium units towards WBS 1.2, construction of condominium which is caused tension among the stakeholders of Regency Plaza Project. Hodgkins has defined the solution for the condominium unit’s technical specification (WBS 2.1.2) so that the project work should complete as per scheduled budget and time. Since, completion time of Regency Plaza Project is behind the project schedule, condominium unit’s technical specifications will be done when the architecture of condominium unit is not opposed the construction work of condominium. With a detailed structure, cost, time and project activities are performed successfully. Detailed WBS is served as the project guideline which makes sure that the project is done as per planned time.

Project Pre-Planning

The communication management reports are used to address the expectations of the project stakeholder. The project manager can communicate with stakeholders via email to update them about the project progress (Hughes, Champion, & Murdoch, 2015). Communication report is well managed element of the project which consists of the regular and clear interaction with the stakeholders and project team. The project manager and team can determine requirement of communication. Communication requirements are used to communicate project related information to the stakeholders (Hardin & McCool, 2015). The plan consists of expected format and content via e-mail updates.

The level of details which are required to make the stakeholder reports are activities completed in provided period of time, activities which are planned to complete, critical issues and problems. The report also consists of the activities which are planned to complete in next period (Taroun, 2014). There are four type of reports which are communicated with the stakeholders such as project status report (contains status of the project plan occurred till date), risk report (contains the type of risks and its details), timeline update report (contains the progress of time required to perform each project activities) and agenda (contains list of meeting activities carried out).

Project acceptance: The role of project acceptance is set of conditions which are required to meet before acceptance of the project deliverables. The project acceptance factors are cost, time schedule, customer satisfaction and cost benefit analysis (Hassan et al., 2016). The project manager should define the project acceptance criteria before starting to work in the project. In this construction project, the acceptance criteria are:

1. All the project requirements are approved by the management.
2. Back up of the project information are completed properly (Joseph, 2017).
3. The project executive should sign off the project report.

Contract close out: It refers to the process for verification of administrative actions which have taken on project contract. The contract is reviewed to determine that all project requirements are met (Fertitta, Nedinsky, & Gilmore, 2016). This close-out report determines that subcontractors are completed all the work which they are responsible.  

Document turnover and archiving: It defines the amount received into sales for a stated period of time. It also consists of information related to cycle of purchase, sale as well as replacement of the stock of goods and products (Brook, 2016). The role of archive is to contain historical records and the physical place where the data are located.

Team performance appraisal: This report provides feedback to the organizational team based on their performance in the project plan. It provides information to help in improving performance, increasing business efficiency and defining expectations of the management. The appraisal compares work performed against the project objectives and goals that the employee is agreed at starting of the appraisal period (Robinson & Adriaanse, 2015). The role of team performance appraisal is to evaluate presentation of team on their managerial presentation.

Analyze Major Challenges Need to Address to Begin the Construction and Mitigate the Challenges

Team reassignment or demobilization schedule: The team members are updated on various project records. The project team is ensured that right people are allocated at right time for addressing the project requirements by staying on schedule and in estimated budget (Jugenheimer, Sheehan, & Kelley, 2015).

The lessons learned document contains learning gained from the process to perform the project work. The project manager is responsible to coordinate the lessons learned component among the project team members for their future reference. The project manager can reduce the project cost by learning from the past project work and implement past successes while avoiding of past failures (Wright, 2017). Lessons learned are used to reduce planned duration of the project work. After completion of entire construction work, the project manager coordinates furthermore interacts with the team to analyze the lesson learned document for monetary returns.

Conclusion

It is concluded that the successful Regency Plaza Project is not dependent on the technical aspects but it engages the stakeholders to increase enthusiastic for undertaking the condominiums venture work. The project team implements of strategies and creates dynamic team as it plays an important role. Communication, time management, budget and organize of meeting is a critical path into the project management. The key learning from the project is balancing hard and soft skills which are required for an effective project manager. The possible problems which are faced by the project manager are budget and schedule problem, therefore entire work is confronted with budget as well as time constraint accomplished by the contractors those are overlooking the quality of project. Poor communication is a critical factor for the project success. Therefore, proper mitigation strategies are adopted to overcome with identified issues. Proper project planning is done in terms of budget and schedule. There is also proper allocation of manpower to the project for completing individual work package with specific cost involved. It is recommended that the project manager should posses’ ability to communicate and hand over work to the team members.    

References

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