Construct a project plan for merging 2 companies and into a smaller facility Inc
ID: 395600 • Letter: C
Question
Construct a project plan for merging 2 companies and into a smaller facility
Include:
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
Deliverables and goal of project
Scope
Schedule
Approximate length of project(Short-term or long-term)
Tasks needed to execute project
Milestones
Cost
Estimated cost
Project funding
Cost performance
Roles and Responsibilities
Reporting structure/relationships
Communication Management Plan
Stakeholder Management Plan
Develop a quality management plan
Describe the tools, techniques, or processes that you will use to develop your plan.
Quality planning
Quality control
Quality assurance
Quality improvement
Explanation / Answer
Construction planning is a fundamental and challenging activity in the management and execution of construction project. It involves the the choice of technology, the definition of work tasks, the estimation of the required resources and duration for indiviidual tasks, and the identification of any interaction among the different work tasks. A good construction plan is not written or otherwise formally recorded. In addition to this technical aspects of construction planning, it may also be necessary to make organizational decisions about the relationships between the project participants and even which organizations to include in a project, for example the extent to which sub-contractor will be used on a project is often determined during construction planing.
Forming a construction plan is a most challenging task . As Sherlok Holmes noted
Most people, if you describe a train of event to them, will tell you what the resut would be. They can put those events together in their minds and argue from them that something will come to pass. There are few people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be able to evlove from their own inner consciousness what the step were which led up to that result.
Like a detective, a planner begins with a result (i.e. faclity design) and must synthesize the steps required to yield this result. Essential aspect of construction planning include the generation of required activities, analysis of the implications of these activities, and choice among the various alternative means of performing activities. In contrast to a detective discovering a single train of events, however, construction planner also face the normative problem of choosing the best among numerous alternative plans. Moreover a detective is faced with an observable result, whereas a planner must imagine the final facility as described in the plans and specification.
In developing a construction plan, it is common to adopt a primary emphasis on either cost control or on schedule control . Some projects are primarily divided into expense catagories with associated costs. In these case, construction planning is cost expence oriented. Within the categories of expenditure, a distinction is made between expenses incurred directly in the performace of an activity and indirectly for the accomplishment of the project. For example, borrowing expenses for prooject financing and overhead items are commonly treated as indirect cost. For other projects, scheduling of work activities overtime is critical and is emphasized in the plannng process. In this process, the planner insures that the proper precedences among the activities maintained and that efficient scheduling of the available resources prevails. Traditional scheduling procedures emphasize the maintainance the task precedences or effiient use of resources over time. Finally, most complex projects required consideration of both cost and scheduling over time, so that planning and record keeping must consider both dimensions in this cases, the integration of schedule and budget information is a major concern.
As in the development of appropriat alternatives for facility design, choices of appropriate technology and methods for construction are often ill-structured yet critical ingredients in the success of the project. For example, whether a decision is to pump or to transport concrete in buckets will directly affect the cost and duration of tasks involved in building construction. A decision between this two alternatives should consider the relative costs, reliabilities and availability of equipment. for the two transport methods. Unfortunately, the exact implications of different methods depends upon numerous consideration for which information may be sketchy during the planning phase, such as the experience and expertise of workers or the particular underground condition at a site.
An example from a roadway rehabilitation projects in Pittsburgh, PA can serve to illustrate the importance of the good construction planning and the effect of technology choice. In this project, the decks on overpass bridges as well as the pavement on the highway itself were to be replaced. The initial construction plan was to work outward from each end of the overpass bridges while the highway surface was replaced below the bridges. As a result, access of equipment and concrete trucks to the overpass bridges was a considerable problem. However, the highway work could be staged so that each overpass bridge was accessible from below at prescribed time. By pumping concrete up to the overpass bridge deck from the highway below, costs were reduced and the work was accomplished much more quickly.
One objective in many construction planning effort is to define the plan witin the constraints of a universal coding system for identifying activities. Each activity defined for a project would be identified by a pre-defined code specific to that activity. The use of a common nomencluture or identification system is basically motivated by the desire for better integration or organizational efforts and improved information flow. In particular, coding systems are adopted to provide a numbering system to replace verbal descriptions of items. These codes reduce the length or complexity of the information to be recorded. A common coding system within an organization also aids consistency in definations and catagories between projects and among the various parties involved in a project. Common coding systems also aid in the retrieval of historical records of cost, productivity and duration on particular activity. Finally , electronis data storage retrieval operations are much more efficient with standard coding systems.