A project is an organized programme of activity carried out to reach a defined goal, often of a non-recurring nature with a specified terminal point. It is a package of time-bound, scheduled and assembled activities dedicated to the attainment of a specific objective of successful completion of a work, on time and within the allotted budget. Effective management of projects is therefore vital for the development of any industry or organization, since development itself is the effect of a series of successfully managed and completed projects.
Project management envisages meticulous planning, effective implementation and professional management to achieve the management of time, cost and performance. Scientific techniques of project management can play a major role in streamlining the management of projects. Project management consists of the following steps:
1. Combining activities into 'work packages', which have the features of a project. The work packages are related to one another and they all contribute to the same goal, bound by time, cost and performance targets.
2. Entrusting the whole project to a single responsibility centre called 'project manager' for coordinating, directing and controlling the project.
3. choosing a suitable organization structure to support and service the project internally, and through vendors and contractors externally.
4. Building up commitment through negotiations, coordinating and directing towards goals through schedules, budgets and contracts.
5. On the basis of schedules, budgets and contracts, ensuring that goals are achieved through continuous monitoring and control.
Thus, defining what is to be done, maintaining its integrity, and ensuring that is done and performed as desired, within time and cost budgets fixed for it, through a modular work approach, using organizational and external resources, is what project management seeks to achieve.
The activities during various phases of a project in an organization are enumerated hereunder:
Conceptual or Initiation Phase
- Identifying needs which could be to tackle specific problems / events.
- Ideas on how best to satisfy this need.
- Germination of a project based on this idea.
Project Definition Phase
- Searching for and evaluating alternatives
- Techno-economic viability of the project
- Feasibility studies
- Proposals
- Developing cost estimates and basic budgets
- Determining the technical configuration of the project
- Determining the performance requirements, key & sub-systems
- Determining the basic project team
- The basic schedule of implementation.
Planning and Organization Phase
- Establishing the infrastructure and enabling services for the project
- Project Engineering and Design
- Detailed Studies and Analyses
- Setting up Project Organisation and Staffing
- Appointing a project manager
- Preparing Schedules and Budgets
- Obtaining necessary licences and clearances from the Govt.
- Raising finance, if required
- Developing systems and procedures for monitoring and reviewing the progress of the project
- Building and testing prototypes
- Procedures for inviting tenders and awarding contracts
- Site Preparation and development
- Procuring Equipment and materials
- Work packaging
Implementation Phase
- Exact specifications for all equipments and machineries
- Placing orders with vendors for the supplies
- Selecting contractors
- Preparing and issuing constructing drawings
- Erection of equipment and machinery
- Electrical fittings
- Piping
- Instrumentation
- Performance measurement and verification
- Modification in systems, where required
- Testing and trial runs
- Commissioning of the plant
Completion Phase
- Catalogue all drawings, documents, specifications
- Draw up operational and maintenance manuals
- Handover to production
- Training operational personnel
- Reconciliation and transfer of materials, labour and responsibility
- Finalisation of project accounts
- Reassignment / redeployment of the project team
No comments:
Post a Comment