Austin TERM Paper - Grade: A+ PDF

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This is the last and term paper that was required for this class discussing the Austin Hall project and how it related to theory in class. ...

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MGMT 364 – Project Management Professor. Lacey McNeely 8th December 2019 Term Paper – Austin Hall Project Introduction The Austin Hall Project was a million-dollar project that successfully integrated all actors including faculty, staff, contractors, architects and project managers. This was a successful project because it was on schedule, on budget and the scope was not changed by a lot. It was a time sensitive project since they had to have it ready for move in before fall term classes begun. Moreover, they were tight on the schedule, since a lot of OSU’s further planning was dependent on the Austin Hall project being started on time and Batcheler Hall being the available space. Additionally, during that time OSU enrollment was increasing by 3-5% every year, which resulted in a demand for more classrooms. The team that was working on the Austin Hall project managed to achieve that and finish on time, however, there were many tradeoffs between cost, time, design etc. that the team had to face before they delivered this project. Austin Hall is on the Historic District of OSU, due to which there were many approvals, documentations and permissions that the team needed before they could initiate the project. Moreover, there were other challenges during the project such as change in weather, the structure of the building and soil issues. I will be discussing how this project teaches us how to manage the trade off between cost, time, scope of the project, some lessons that I learned from this project and theory in relation the trade-offs. Lessons learned from the Austin Hall Project There were many lessons that I learned from watching these videos but two of the main lessons were compromise(understanding) and team cooperation. Firstly, I learned that discussions, coordination and team meetings are essential for project success. Greg Stormbeck mentioned in his video that one of the most important things for project success is team spirit and cooperation. He said, “worst projects can be the best if only you can assemble a team of good people”. The team that was working in the Austin Hall project had regular meetings that everyone from project managers to the faculty attended. This kept every one up to date with the project progress. Moreover, in her video, Dean Kleinsorge mentioned that when they were looking to see what design would work best in a college of business. Her and some other team members from the faculty travelled to other colleges to get some inspiration. Then they all poured in some ideas regarding what they think is important and needed in their building. Another example that I found was very interesting is from Brian Price’s video. He discussed that a project like this would not have worked if there was no trust in the team. It is important to take everyone’s ideas and inform everyone about the changed that are happening in the project. Decision should be made utilizing everyone’s best intentions for the project. This is why team coordination is so important, as it helps create better ideas using everyone’s feed back and

2 opinions. This lesson taught me that at the end, people are what makes the project a success or a failure. Thus, it is important to build a relationship with people that have the best intentions for the project success and are willing to coordinate. Secondly, when you are managing a project or even if you are just a part of the project, it is important to understand that compromises have to be made. Being stiff on your decisions would only slow down the project and waste resources. In Austin Hall’s example, most of the videos mentioned that the building is on the historical district. Which meant that there were many rules and regulations that needed to be followed. The city of Corvallis had asked for changes over and over again in order to make it follow under those regulation. This lead to change the design structure of the building. Moreover, the Dean mentioned in her video, that initially they had planned on having all the sophomore classes to be offered in Austin hall which would require more than one big room/auditorium. However, they were not able to achieve this due to the shortage of space. This taught me that compromises are often going to made, in personal life or work. However, at the end the result is what matters. Managing trade-off’s between cost, time and scope The topic that really stood out to me from all of the videos was about managing trade offs between cost, time and scope. I selected this topic because one of the key things that a project manager is responsible to do is make appropriate trade-offs and act as a peace maker when tensions arise. I selected this topic because one of the key things that a project manager is responsible to do is make appropriate trade-offs and act as a peace maker when tensions arise. It is essential to understand when to let the schedule slip, ask for additional funds or scale back a little on the scope of the project. During a project, it is very likely that managers will need to manage resources like money and time while trying to meet with the project scope. These tradeoff’s need to be managed very carefully to prevent further risk that may decline project success. For example; if a project manager is not efficient with these trade-offs, they could deal with the problem of scope creep, which adds up to a finished product that the customer would not appreciate, or if project is adding up to be over budget communication will be essential to let client know and figure out a solution. Lastly, if there is an over schedule issues, this should be discussed with the client and look in the future if they are okay with adding more resources and expediting work to catch up. All of these decisions are important to make for a project manager so this is why I chose the topic. Managing trade-offs in the Austin Hall Project. I think in the project, they did a good job in successfully managing trade-offs. Austin Hall Project gives many examples of how to manage trade-offs and disagreements between the stake holder, while keeping up with the project priority. According to Malcolm LaMay, he mentioned that that in this project schedule was a big priority as the project had to be ready for classes. Next, the budget was relatively set on soft cost of 15 million and the cost of architect, contractor and other big costs as 35 million, with 10% contingency money. From what I noticed from all the videos, the common thing seemed to be that the team had to change the scope more than the budget was fixed and schedule was there were a priority. They had initially wanted more class rooms and there was a conflict between having more class rooms or faculty offices. Professor Byron Marshall mentioned that there was a continuous change in the environment which they

3 could not control. The DHE program got integrated with COB and enrollment of business increased, which required bigger space, however, they had to prioritize schedule and costs in this case. In professor Byron’s video he had mentioned that the architects were asking for having a wood exterior to save more costs, however, this was not something that the faculty agreed on, so they declined. It is crucial for project success that trade-offs are handled properly. Managing trade-off’s in theory Firstly, in class we studied about the Establishing Project Priorities. Every client needs the project to be an ultimate success and also that it meets that satisfies criterion perfectly. However, this was not always the case. Sometimes it may be important to reduce the scope of the project so that the project is completed faster. Other times, cost could be a priority and that would mean that scope and time has to be reduced. The Project manager needs to have a discussion with the clients and ask them about what their priority is? What criterion they can be flexible on? And what criteria needs to be optimized? This can be done using the Project Priority Matrix, this describes what criteria is constrained, enhanced and accepted (see figure 1) In this theory, constraint is a fixed meaning that there can not be any changes in this. In the Austin Hall example, it was the schedule that was constraint since the building had to be ready for move in before classes began for the fall term. The next is enhance which means that means to optimize a criterion based on the scope. Lastly, there is accept where it is okay to not meet the exact requirements. For the Austin hall project, I think this was the scope of the project. The design and structure of the project had to be changed a few times during the project to follow the laws of city and the historical district requirements. There were similarities between the Austin hall project and the theory from the textbook. In most of the videos, when they were asked the question of trade-offs, the team mentioned that schedule was their priority, because of that they had to make sure that everything was on time. In Malcolm La May’s second video, he talked about the snow storm that occurred. He discussed that they stopped the brick work, however, they tried to absorb schedule by doing the interior work that day. Making this challenge more of a “hiccup”. In this example, we can see that the contractor was clear that schedule is a priority so they put their resources to work even during a weather issue.

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Figure 1: A priority matrix. (Gray & Larson, 2006, p.107)

5 Reference -

Gray, C. F., & Larson, E. W. (2006). Project management: The managerial process. Boston: McGraw-Hill/Irwin...