Time Management
Time management generally is allocated with the process of planning for specific activity based on the information individual has especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity [1]. In the project management, for instance, Time management deemed to be a necessity as it is inevitable to change the time due to budget constraint and it regarding the planning based on the budget, resource availability, dependencies activities and overall project duration.
Project Schedule
This is a 4-year project including route A and B which will extend to makes transportation more convenient for the eastern and northern part of Adelaide, with a length of approximately 14 and 16 km respectively. The construction of both routes will start concurrently, but route A takes only three years to be finished whereas the other one takes nearly four years. This timeline schedule is estimated through the documents of previous similar projects in Adelaide and by considering part of these routes are located in the main streets which has a large number of commuters as well as cars and buses as the daily basis specifically during the rush hours. Regarding this congestion, the construction team won't be able to work full time during the day at least for these particular locations which decrease the pace of project development and takes more time to be prepared and built. Therefore, for every 5 kilometres near these main areas, an approximate 8-month duration is considered while for the other parts this period will reduce to 6 months. It is noteworthy to mention that these 5 kilometres serve as the benchmark for this project by the aim of decreasing the traffic problem. Thereby, at the end of finishing construction the first 5-kilometre, the second one will start. The assumptions of the construction schedule are listed below:
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- The characteristic of the asphalt layer on the ground is the same for the whole route that makes a similar time duration for the excavation process.
- The construction team works for two shifts at day and night.
As evident in the Gantt chart in Figure 1, required activities are divided into several categories such as contractual, the preparation, procurement, operation and the closure phase. Contractual Phase in which its main concern is contracting with the necessary agencies and requesting for the urban and infrastructural plans of the Adelaide city. Afterwards, the tramway and the target tram stations will be designed in terms of radius and length of the street in the preparation phase. The other part of this phase engages with getting approval for design, locating the estimated situation of the tram stations and calculating the required resources. Additionally, acquire the land in the project boundaries which do not belong to the SA government and relocate the utility and telecommunication cables based on the infrastructural plans, are investigated and decided under this category. The third segment is responsible for procurement of the required materials, equipment and vehicles for the various time interval of the projects regarding the construction, mechanical and electrical installation. Operation phase embraces the wide range of activities such as site clearance, excavation and demolition, infrastructure and installation process, which Gantt chart delineates clearly. Finally, the last two months of the project involved with resolving the possible issues for the flawless closure.
Project Milestone
A project milestone is a significant moment or event in the project which has zero duration due to representing the point of time or particular achievement [2]. Milestone paves the way for managers to have a more accurate visualisation of the development of the project. Thus, milestones play an important role in the project management and for such a construction project, building tram light, these are listed as follows:
- Contracts
- Acquire the construction site
- Route design approval
- Station design approval
- Station Location approval
- Start and Completion of different phases of the project
- Punch list
- Final site inspection
Internal and external dependencies
Dependency represents the relationship between the various activities in the project and is of great value in the project management of each industry. Generally, most of the tasks and activities in the projects rely on each other in terms of depending on either input or output on the others. Followingly, indicating the list of these activities in order, is advantageous and essential regardless of the nature of the project, which are the responsibilities of the project managers. Dependencies can be classified as the internal and external one. Internal dependencies describe the relationship in which the team has control over without the engagement of any third party and for our tram light building project are described briefly as follows:
- Staff hiring
- Staff training for the safety purpose via understanding the HSE structure
- Staff availability
- All the operational activities are dependent on each other in such a way to complete the project. For instance, the installation of electrical conduits can not be done before the excavation and demolition process.
On the other hand, the external dependencies contribute to the activities that have no control over as they stem from the outside of the team through external parties. This type of dependencies for our proposed project are accounted toward the below sections:
- Legal approval for starting the project, acquiring the required properties, relocating the utility and telecommunication cables, pipes and sewerage, closing the street for construction reason and working at the night shift
- Materials, equipment, heavy and light vehicles delivery as ordered from the third party supplier
- New built trams delivery as the train construction company responsible for them
- Site access regarding the congestion in the rush hours and teraffic issue
Schedule Control
The indispensable part of project management is the schedule control segment. At a glance, schedule control carries out the project advancement process via monitoring and reviewing every task and identified whether the project aligned with the timeline or not that helps the project manager to prioritize the activities in terms of its importance and delay duration and mitigate the potential risk as soon as possible. To do so, using trend analysis and graphical charts is advantageous that considers the project progress and compares the actual start and finish date of each activity with the planned one and notify the project manager of any project variances. Also, thanks to modern technology, the Microsoft project software makes monitoring much easier by providing a variety of options such as determination of the predecessor and successor with the required time duration for adding the leads or lagsand the anticipated finish date in activities.
Thus, any postponement on the activities conducts the project manager to apply modification in the plan. This modification effects on the project component including the scope, schedule and cost baseline, risk register plan and project documents in which update will necessitate [2].
References
- En.wikipedia.org. (2019). Time management. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_do [Accessed 27 Oct. 2019].
- Institute, P. and Project, M. (2012). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide)-Fifth Edition (ENGLISH). Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.
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