Question

Case – Recreational Park Project

The public has recognized the benefits of recreation and parks as essential to their health and quality of life. A recent survey conducted in 2016 found that the construction of more recreational facilities was a top priority among residents in Lazarette Town (in the Caribbean).

As such, the town council in Lazarette, with the help of other key stakeholders, has sourced and secured three (3) million dollars of grant funds from the Caribbean Wellness Community (CWC) for the development of a mini outdoor recreational park on three (3) acres of land donated by a benevolent resident of the town.

The park will contain sporting facilities among other recreational facilities (e.g. walking trails, children playground, tennis court, basketball court, work out stations, benches, shower facilities, rest rooms etc.). All major key stakeholders and sponsors have unanimously agreed that that the facility should cater for residents of all ages. Additionally, a group of minority stakeholders has expressed their requirements of having an eco-friendly and climate resilient facility. The park should be completed and ready for use by 2022, i.e. the project duration should not exceed two years.

To ensure that the project is completed on time, within scope and on budget, the funding agency and the Lazarette Town Council require that a dedicated and knowledgeable project team is assigned to the project. CWC has expressed the need for the project deliverables to be of ‘high’ quality to guarantee stakeholders’ satisfaction and safety. The CWC requires that ‘tight’ procurement processes should be followed to ensure transparency, accountability and economy. It is anticipated that most of the goods, works and services for building the park will be procured from vendors, suppliers and contractors in the town. In addition, CWC has detailed the need for both positive and negative projects risk to be properly managed throughout the project.

In response to CWC implied and expressed requirements, the Lazarette Town Council has selected and appointed your team to provide project management services for the Recreational Park Project. As a proactive team, your team has decided to use ‘best practices’ in project management to plan project activities and get approval from key project stakeholders before constructing or building the facility. Give the type and nature of the project, the intention is to use a traditional/waterfall approach to project management activities instead of the largely popular and contemporary agile methodology used other industries.

Your team understands the value of planning before doing, and the council’s concerns of not losing the grant funding from CWC. In addition, your team is keen on building a good reputation in the

town. With a can do attitude and the need to increase the chances of the project success, the project management team (your 5-member group) is determined to ensure that the team utilizes the ‘best practices’ for planning, executing and controlling this valuable community based project.

1. Create an appropriate quality management plan for the project.

Answer 1

Case analysis

• Project: recreational park at lazarette town (in the Caribbean)
• Funds grant of 3 million dollars
• Place 3 acre donated by benevolent resident of the town.
• Park will contain sporting facilities along with recreational facilities like walking trails, children playground, tennis and basketball court, workout stations, rest rooms, shower facilities etc. to cater to all age groups of the residents.
• Construction duration: 2 years should be ready by 2022 and must not exceed 2 years.

In order to increase the chances of success of the community-based project me and my team would follow the best practices in project management in planning, executing and controlling viz,

1. To start with, first of all we will establish a clear project plan using SMART

2. Proper documentation of each and every task ensure honesty, accountability and trust among stakeholders.

3. Clear project role and responsibilities so that proper work area and expectations are established.

4. We will avoid the estimation of the projects in a vacuum.

5. Make sure all the stakeholders are well aware of happenings and are happy with it too.

6. Make communication process simple and direct so as to ensure proper communication.

7. Research for prospective opportunities and potential risks to manage and take necessary actions for project benefit

8. Continuous monitoring of task progress and review of plan.

Quality management plan for the project

Quality is what matters the most for both product and services. So, it is very essential to have a properly developed quality management plan can help in taking the progressive steps towards success. Here is the 7-step model of quality management in a project management applied to this project.

1. Customer identification: as we go through the case, final customers are the residents who will use the recreational park, but till the park is built the stakeholders and other interested parties like CWC, lazarette town council are also the customers, it is very essential to know what thy are expecting and make sure we provide them that and they are happy about it. So, make a comprehensive list of all internal, external and hidden customers and with proper prioritization focus on their needs.

2. Needs identification: once the customers are been identified, make a comprehensive list of their needs, wants and requirements as the saying goes quality=met customer needs. Their needs are for high quality work to guarantee safety and satisfaction, transparency, accountability and economy of procurement process.

3. Specifying the needs: here we turn the needs and wants into specifications and measurable terms like what is done to make sure the safety of residents are top priority in the park to be built, procurement is done within the city limits i.e.. vendors, suppliers and contractors are from the town and all the dealings are documented well and shared among the stakeholders.

4. Assuring quality: above steps are with regards to planning, not comes the action part. Here all specifications are turned into actions to be performed and develop a detail operational plan to describe how and what is to be done.

5. Plan: next is to collect all the above each quality assuring activities into a single plan, to evaluate the common plans, and to properly assign them to the teams working with that specialization.

6. Quality control: it is to make sure that the actions are going as per planned. making time to time reviews of the actions to check for any deviations and to take necessary steps to correct them.

7. Focus on improvement: having a view where continuous improvement is the main focus of the project managers. With this attitude only, there can be the scope for quality needs being met.