HOW TO RUN MEETINGS

The press of business has reduced my recent posting activity. I have been involved in a series of progress meetings and have been surprised by the lack of results due to incompetence of the resident engineers responsible for conducting these meetings. That's why I recommend the following link where you can find a good information on how to run the meetings:

http://www.projectmanager.com/how-to-run-team-meetings.php

SUPPORTING MANAGEMENT PLANS

Supporting management plans are added to a project as appropriate depending on the project's size and complexity. Larger and more complex projects may require adding one of the following supporting plans to the project management plan at project initiation:

• Quality management plan;
• Risk management plan;
• Contract management plan.

The quality management plan describes how the project will comply with the client's quality policy in terms of project procedures for quality assurance (QA), quality control (QC), and continuous process improvement. QA is the planned processes the project will follow to make certain that the quality policy is met through. QA audits to examine if the project activities are in compliance with project procedures, and process analysis to examine the effectiveness of project activities, learn from experience and problems encountered and thereby improve the process. QC is monitoring of the specific project results to determine whether they meet with predetermined quality standards and metrics. Continuous process improvement is the iterative application of  process  analysis over the length of the project and from project to project. Each consultant and construction contractor performing work on the project must have a QA plan that is acceptable to the client, so that the client can assess that the contractor's quality standards meet the client's quality management plan.

The risk management plan describes how the project is organized and the procedures used to manage the project risks, addressing in the plan:

• roles and responsibilities of project staff in risk management;
• identification of project risks;
• categorization of risks in terms of probability of occurrence and impact on project scope, cost, schedule, quality;
• risk handling, should the risk event occur, through either: 

Assumption-accepting the consequences of the risk;

Avoidance-changing the project deliverable design or work methods that lead to the risk;

Control-developing measures to reduce the risk's probability of occurrence, continually re-evaluating the risk, and having in place contingency plans to adopt that mitigate the impacts of the risk;

Transfer-sharing or transferring the consequences of the risk with others, for example, through insurance or warranty provisions.

The contract management plan defines what goods and services are to be acquired for the project and how they will be purchased or contracted, how project purchase orders and contracts will be administered, and what type of contracts will be used. 

PROJECT INITIATION-PM's TO DO LIST

In project initiation phase PMs turn their attention on how to plan an authorized project. In this phase PMs develop two important project planning documents: the project charter (sometimes called project requirements definition or statement of work) that documents what the project will deliver and project management plan that documents how the project is to be delivered. If needed, supporting planning documents (risk management plan, quality management plan, contract management plan) might be created. 

PMs to do list:

• receive project authorization;
• write project charter;
• assess client's capability and capacity;
• select procurement (delivery) strategy;
• establish project organization structure;
• write project management plan;
• write supporting plans- risk management plan, quality management plan, contract management plan

PROCUREMENT METHOD AND RISKS

The procurement strategy needs to identify how and when suppliers are brought onto the project. There are numerous procurement methods that have developed over time for use by construction owners as shown below:

• own forces-owner manages, design and constructs project with own forces. Owner has total control and accepts all risks;
• design-bid-build-owner manages project, contracts out design to engineering consultants and construction to contractors. Maintains overall project control and transfers detailed engineering design/ construction tasks and risks to contractors;
• CMAR (construction manager at risk)-owner retains a CMAR contractor in final design, who participate   in design review, estimating and value engineering and at some agreed point guarantees a fee to manage and carry out construction-owner transfers a share of control of scope through design to the CMAR contractor and all of the control and risk of the management and execution of construction;
• D/B (design/build)-consutlant contractor completes design through preliminary engineering (approximately 30%). Owner retains D/B contractor to complete design and construction-owner retains control of scope through concept design (30%) after which control and risk of design and construction is transferred to D/B contractor;
• design/build/operate/maintain-as for D/B plus contractor is responsible for the operations and maintenance of  the facility for a specified period-owner transfers control and risk of operations and maintenance to the contractor;
• turnkey-owner prepare performance specifications that is bid on by turnkey contractor, who also may participate in financing the project-owner controls scope of performance specification after which control and risk of conceptual/detail design and construction transfers to turnkey contractor.