What is project engineering ?
Project Engineering bridges the boundaries between engineering and project management, leading the technical workers who contribute to the building of structures or products.
Can you define project management ?
Project management is the process and activity of planning, organizing, motivating, and controlling resources, procedures and protocols to achieve specific goals in scientific or daily problems. A project is a temporary endeavor designed to produce a unique product, service or result with a defined beginning and end (usually time-constrained, and often constrained by funding or deliverables),undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives.
What are the traditional phased sequence of steps to complete a project ?
A traditional phased approach identifies a sequence of steps to be completed.
1. Initiation
2. Planning and design
3. Execution and construction
4. Monitoring and controlling systems
5. Completion
What do you understand by critical chain project management?
Critical chain project management (CCPM) is a method of planning and managing project execution designed to deal with uncertainties inherent in managing projects, while taking into consideration limited availability of resources (physical, human skills, as well as management & support capacity) needed to execute projects.
CCPM is an application of the theory of constraints (TOC) to projects. The goal is to increase the flow of projects in an organization (throughput).
What is the initiating processes in any project ?
The initiating processes determine the nature and scope of the project. If this stage is not performed well, it is unlikely that the project will be successful in meeting the business’ needs. The key project controls needed here are an understanding of the business environment and making sure that all necessary controls are incorporated into the project. Any deficiencies should be reported and a recommendation should be made to fix them.
Explain the initiating stage in project management ?
The initiating stage should include a plan that encompasses the following areas:
- Analyzing the business needs/requirements in measurable goals.
- Reviewing of the current operations.
- Financial analysis of the costs and benefits including a budget.
- Stakeholder analysis, including users, and support personnel for the project.
- Project charter including costs, tasks, deliverables, and schedule.
What is the main purpose of planning and design?
After the initiation stage, the project is planned to an appropriate level of detail. The main purpose is to plan time, cost and resources adequately to estimate the work needed and to effectively manage risk during project execution. As with the Initiation process group, a failure to adequately plan greatly reduces the project′s chances of successfully accomplishing its goals.
Explain various scopes of Project planning ?
Project planning generally consists of :-
- Determining how to plan (e.g. by level of detail or rolling wave);
- Developing the scope statement;
- Selecting the planning team;
- Identifying deliverables and creating the work breakdown structure;
- Identifying the activities needed to complete those deliverables and networking the activities in their logical sequence;
- Estimating the resource requirements for the activities;
- Estimating time and cost for activities;
- Developing the schedule;
- Developing the budget;
- Risk planning;
- Gaining formal approval to begin work.
Can you define execution of projects ?
Execution consists of the processes used to complete the work defined in the project plan to accomplish the project′s requirements. Execution process involves coordinating people and resources, as well as integrating and performing the activities of the project in accordance with the project management plan. The deliverables are produced as outputs from the processes performed as defined in the project management plan and other frameworks that might be applicable to the type of project at hand.
What are the different execution process?
Execution process group include:
- Direct and manage project execution
- Quality assurance of deliverables
- Acquire, develop and manage Project team
- Distribute information
- Manage stakeholder expectations
- Conduct procurement
- Test the deliverables against the initial design
What do you mean by “Monitoring and Controlling” ?
Monitoring and controlling consists of those processes performed to observe project execution so that potential problems can be identified in a timely manner and corrective action can be taken, when necessary, to control the execution of the project. The key benefit is that project performance is observed and measured regularly to identify variances from the project management plan.
What does Monitoring and controlling includes?
Monitoring and controlling includes :-
- Measuring the ongoing project activities (′where we are′);
- Monitoring the project variables (cost, effort, scope, etc.) against the project management plan and the project performance baseline (where we should be);
- Identify corrective actions to address issues and risks properly (How can we get on track again);
- Influencing the factors that could circumvent integrated change control so only approved changes are implemented.
- In multi-phase projects, the monitoring and control process also provides feedback between project phases, in order to implement corrective or preventive actions to bring the project into compliance with the project management plan.
What is closing of the project?
Closing includes the formal acceptance of the project and the ending thereof. Administrative activities include the archiving of the files and documenting lessons learned.
This phase consists of:
Contract closure: Complete and settle each contract (including the resolution of any open items) and close each contract applicable to the project or project phase.
Project close: Finalize all activities across all of the process groups to formally close the project or a project phase
Do you know about Project management triangle?
Like any human undertaking, projects need to be performed and delivered under certain constraints. Traditionally, these constraints have been listed as “scope,” “time,” and “cost”. These are also referred to as the “project management triangle”, where each side represents a constraint. One side of the triangle cannot be changed without affecting the others. A further refinement of the constraints separates product “quality” or “performance” from scope, and turns quality into a fourth constraint.
The time constraint refers to the amount of time available to complete a project. The cost constraint refers to the budgeted amount available for the project. The scope constraint refers to what must be done to produce the project′s end result. These three constraints are often competing constraints: increased scope typically means increased time and increased cost, a tight time constraint could mean increased costs and reduced scope, and a tight budget could mean increased time and reduced scope.
Define work breakdown structure?
The work breakdown structure (WBS) is a tree structure that shows a subdivision of effort required to achieve an objective—for example a program, project, and contract. The WBS may be hardware-, product-, service-, or process-oriented.
A WBS can be developed by starting with the end objective and successively subdividing it into manageable components in terms of size, duration, and responsibility (e.g., systems, subsystems, components, tasks, sub-tasks, and work packages), which include all steps necessary to achieve the objective.
The work breakdown structure provides a common framework for the natural development of the overall planning and control of a contract and is the basis for dividing work into definable increments from which the statement of work can be developed and technical, schedule, cost, and labor hour reporting can be established
What are Duties of Project Engineer ?
The Project Engineer has the primary responsibility of producing a complete, accurate, biddable, and buildable set of plans for all the structures in a project. This responsibility should be performed with the least possible manpower expenditures.
The Duties of a Project Engineer are :-
1. Planning : Reviews all preliminary reports including advance planning studies for the project. Proper shoulder widths, traffic and false work clearances, approach slab status, and adequate stream flow and scour provisions must be verified prior to developing the General Plan.
2. Coordination : Coordinates structural details and design features within the project. Conducts meetings with designers and detailers as required. Standardizes details to permit reproduction rather than redrawing and seeks other methods of reducing plan cost.
3. Project Control : Reviews completed General Plans, Reviews General Plan estimates, Keeps record of Project Plan print distribution etc..
4. Communications : Maintains continual communications with all personnel assigned to the project.
5. Personnel : Determines project staffing need with Design Engineer. Uses staffing chart with modifications for duplication of details and designer/detailer experience. Supervises project staff. May delegate technical supervision for portion of work.
