Project management principles and practices

Construction Project Planning Phase

Your clients have secured the financing to develop 48 acres land into mixed-use buildings. They have asked you to draft a high-level project plan to begin the more detailed discussions. Forty percent of the site is an undeveloped field, and the project must include a nursery school.

Where should you begin?

Based on your readings and your experience, identify the approach you would take to drafting this high-level plan.

Describe three key questions you would ask your clients and your rationale for starting your planning with those questions.

The beginning point for the project will be the planning phase. The planning phase is one of the most essential segments of the project because during this session the scope, schedule, and budget will be defined. The beginning of the planning phase is also equally important. One step that is often overlooked is to include all of the relevant stakeholders so that their opinions of how the finished project should look in terms of quality and functionality. If you skip this step it is likely that the clients and stakeholders will be unhappy with the finished project or it could also result in a significant amount of change orders to meet the end user requirements.

One way to try to understand the stakeholder's perspective is to try to determine their set of values and their expectations for the project. Not understanding the requirements is a big risk for any project. There are many ways to try to mitigate these risks in a project during the planning phase. Risk is defined as an event that has a probability of occurring, and could have either a positive or negative impact to a project should that risk occur (Northrop, 2011). Therefore, steps should be taken to understand the stakeholders values on a high level so that the project manager can by in sync with the stakeholders. If the values of the stakeholders are understood then this can save a lot of trouble later in the project.

However, usually in a project with so many different stakeholders, it can be difficult to determine the values of the group. Many of these stake holders can have different expectations for the project. Thus, one tool is to try to pinpoint priorities that are shared among all the different parties involved. It is important to incorporate as many viewpoints as possible to ensure that all of the end user requirements are completely clear.