LECTURE NOTES ON CONSTRUCTION PROJECT MANAGEMENT

1.3The Project Scope and GoalsProject Goal SettingYou can’t hit a target if you don’t know what it looks like. Similarly, you can’t possiblyreach your project’s goal if you don’t know what it is. When you understand how yourproject fits in with the broader company direction, it’s time to really pin down your goal.“But,” you say, “I know exactly what my goal is, because my boss told me.” However, aset of deliverables isn’t necessarily a goal. On first consideration, you might say the goalof expanding the railroad westward in the United States was to enable a train to go fromcoast to coast. But was it? Perhaps the goal of those railroad barons was not to get a trainto go cross country, but to open up opportunities for commerce in the West. It’s time toput the same kind of thought to your project’s goal.Getting your goal straightSay your project involves training new employees in a new software system. Your goal intraining them on this software could be to:-Make employees more productive in their jobs.-Enable employees to better serve customers.-Create a prototype program with reduced training costs that can be used to reduceoverall training costs across the company.-Increase employee retention by providing useful on-the-job skills. These goalssuggest different priorities as well as different measurements for gauging thedegree to which your project has succeeded in meeting its goal.How, exactly, do you go about determining your goal? First, go back to the person whoasked you to take on the project and grill him or her about what’s expected of this project.Should the training have a measurable impact on job performance, customer satisfaction,employee retention, or cost of delivery? The answer you get might be that the projectshould do all of these things. But think about whether that’s realistic and whether one ofthese goals should be paramount in guiding you and your project team. If overall trainingprogram cost reduction is the biggest goal factor, for example, employee productivityConstruction Management3Dr. Emad Elbeltagi

might have to take a back seat when you’re making choices along the way. If customersatisfaction is the real goal, training costs might have to be adjusted accordingly.Writing a goal statementAfter you get more specifics about your project’s goal, it’s a good idea to put your goal inwriting in a goal statement. A goal statement outlines why you’re doing this project andwhat you hope to accomplish at the end. You don’t get down to specific deliverables andparameters in a goal statement. For now focus on the why and the desired result.Here are a few sample goal statements:-The goal of the project is to upgrade the shopping cart feature on our Web site tobe easier to use so we can increase online sales by 25 percent.-Our goal is to reduce human resource workload by 10 percent by offering selfservice information on job benefits on the company intranet.Using the example of a training project, consider for a moment what such a project mightinvolve. Are you supposed to write new training materials, hire staff to deliver classes,analyze the training’s effectiveness, update training materials as needed, and promote thetraining internally? In that case, the scope of your project involves managing the entirecreation, delivery, and maintenance of a training program. Or is your goal to simplycreate the training materials? Or should your focus be limited to launching the newtraining, including promoting it to management and staff? These goals indicate verydifferent projects, each with its own set of deliverables, tasks, resources, schedule, andcosts. Writing a goal statement helps you focus on such a project from the outset.Project scopeWhen you understand your goal, you can begin to define the specific parameters of theproject. This is often referred to as a project’s scope. It is necessary to know that a scopeis not a goal. Take a look again at this goal statement from the previous section: The goalof the project is to upgrade the shopping cart feature Web site to be easier to use toincrease online sales by 25 percent. A scope statement for this project might read: Thisproject will involve all the steps to design and implement a new shopping cart feature(but does not include maintaining or refining it once launched). The cost of the projectConstruction Management4Dr. Emad Elbeltagi

will not exceed 25,000 and implementation must be completed before October 1 toaccommodate holiday sales traffic. The new shopping cart feature should help to increasesales by allowing customers more options to review their orders, give them more frequentopportunities to shop for more items after they have added a product to the cart, andallow them to save their cart contents and come back to complete the sale at a future date.The new feature must function on our existing Web technology infrastructure.Writing a scope statementScope statements define both what a project will involve and what it will not involve. Inour example, the scope statement specifies that the maintenance of the shopping cart,once launched, will be handled by other project team. You typically get into specificsabout the project budget, timeframe, and deliverables in a scope statement. You shouldn’tinclude every single detail, but you should have enough information that a project teamcan understand the most important parameters of the project. Together, a goal statementand a scope statement are two valuable tools for focusing yourself and your team andkeeping you on track as you proceed. If you take the next logical step in pinning downyour project at the outset, at this point you would create what’s called a project charter.This would include specifying a project name, getting authorization in writing to beginthe project as of a certain date and to draw on a specified budget, creating a list ofresponsibilities, and having those with an interest in the project (called stakeholders) signoff giving you authority to run the project. You can use your goal and scope statements tohelp you obtain the various pieces of your project charter.Breaking Your Project into PhasesHow does all this goal and scope analysis relate to Project? When you start a new projectschedule, one of the first things you will do is to enter individual tasks. Knowing yourgoal and scope helps you to identify the steps you should be performing to accomplishthem. Before you create your first task, you should probably begin to think beyond thescope of your project to more detailed project parameters. These parameters help youdetermine what tasks to include in your project. For example, you might consider:Construction Management5Dr. Emad Elbeltagi

-Deliverables: These are tangible products, services, or results that you’ll produceduring your project. Somewhere in your project should be tasks that reflect thedelivery of each deliverable.-Key Dates: In addition to the project end date, do you have to meet other keydates along the way?-Completion Criteria: How will you know when you’re done? Do you start upthe new service and that’s it, or do you have to test it for a week before your job isdone? Knowing your completion criteria gives your team something specific toaim for and helps you create the last phase of your project.-Expectations: Knowing what you expect from your team, management, andyourself can help you identify some tasks. If you expect your team to hold aquarterly debriefing meeting and submit a progress report, you might include sucha task in your project. If you expect management to sign off on a prototype, a tasksuch as Prototype Approval is logical.-Potential Risks: Identifying potential problem areas can help you build in somechecks and balances to help avoid or minimize them. For example, you maycreate tasks that contain terms such as Q&A, Testing, Review, Debrief, andRevise to monitor or fix problems along the way.1.4The Project Life-CycleThe acquisition of a constructed facility usually represents a major capital investment,whether its owner happens to be an individual, a private corporation or a public agency.Since the commitment of resources for such an investment is motivated by marketdemands or perceived needs, the facility is expected to satisfy certain objectives withinthe constraints specified by the owner and relevant regulations.From the perspective of an owner, the project life cycle for a constructed facility may beillustrated schematically in Figure 1.2. A project is expected to meet market demands orneeds in a timely fashion. Various possibilities may be considered in the conceptualplanning stage, and the technological and economic feasibility of each alternative will beConstruction Management6Dr. Emad Elbeltagi

assessed and compared in order to select the best possible project. The financing schemesfor the proposed alternatives must also be examined, and the project will be programmedwith respect to the timing for its completion and for available cash flows. After the scopeof the project is clearly defined, detailed engineering design will provide the blueprint forconstruction, and the definitive cost estimate will serve as the baseline for cost control. Inthe procurement and construction stage, the delivery of materials and the erection of theproject on site must be carefully planned and controlled. After the construction iscompleted, there is usually a brief period of start-up of the constructed facility when it isfirst occupied. Finally, the management of the facility is turned over to the owner for fulloccupancy until the facility lives out its useful life and is designated for demolition orconversion.Of course, the stages of development in Figure 1.2 may not be strictly sequential. Someof the stages require iteration, and others may be carried out in parallel or withoverlapping time frames, depending on the nature, size and urgency of the project.Furthermore, an owner may have in-house capacities to handle the work in every stage ofthe entire

Construction project management is a relatively young field. However, its impact has been quite remarkable. It has become an important practice for improving the efficiency of construction operations around the world. This book deals with some topics and tools of the large field of project management.