Section 1: Defining the Project
Question 1
The NSC CEO, Carl Lim, has appointed the following staff to form a project team for the HPSS Project:
1. Yourself, a Communication Manager who is appointed as the Project Manager. You have managed a few projects successfully at NSC. The management trusts that your resourcefulness and tenacity will help in this important project.
2. Mr. Tan Hock Chye, a Senior Facilities Engineer: His daily duty is to supervise the stadium facilities’ Maintenance & Engineering (M&E) works that are normally carried out by workers of local contractors.
As the HPSS System will be an important asset, NSC needs to have a highly qualified permanent staff to handle it. He needs to be involved in the system’s implementation and future operations. As there is no such staff in NSC, you are asked to recruit externally. It is preferred that the person has an audio engineering qualification. A job advertisement is published and it attracted many applicants.
(a) Analyze three (3) personal attributes (excluding technical expertise) which you will use to assess the applicants in the recruitment exercise, and why they are critical to the success of the HPSS Project.
(9 marks)
After the recruitment exercise, Mr Kumar Chandra is employed to join NSC and the HSSP Project.
NSC also contracted Quantum Corp from USA, a Thunder Lab partner, to design and install the HPSS System. Quantum will second one of its staff, Mr Mike Alkinson, for the project implementation.
(b) There are four members on board now: Yourself, Tan, Kumar and Mike. As the team is new, categorize three (3) common vehicles to establish a strong team identity and how you can use the vehicles in the HPSS Project.
(6 marks)
The CEO briefed you on the management’s expectations: the project shall start on 3 July 2017 and be commissioned by 4 October 2017, the working day before the audition by George’s manager. The sound performance must be optimized to pass Thunder Lab’s certification test. Exact budget has yet to be worked out. Finance is tight but management will try to accommodate essential expenses if properly justified.
(c) Based on the CEO’s direction, you are to arrange the priority of the project by constructing a project priority matrix.
(5 marks)
Question 2
(a) Prepare in a single diagram, the Gantt Chart view of MS Project with columns Information (i), Task Name, Duration, Start Date, Finish Date, Predecessors and Resource Names shown. Identify the project completion date and any resource conflicts observed.
(6 marks)
(b) Due to the specialised skills required, tight budget and project schedule, and full dedication of the team is required on this project, initial resource conflicts cannot be solved by transferring tasks to other people, multi-tasking nor add in more manpower. Hence, they can only be resolved through resource leveling.
Operate resource levelling on MS Project by carrying out the following steps: Click Resource -> Leveling Option -> click Automatic and Level entire project, and then click Level All.
Discuss the changes made and any effect due to this resource leveling operation. Evaluate any impact to the project completion date.
(6 marks)
The CEO approves the project schedule and cost. Set the Status Date (Project -> Status Date) as 4 July 2017. Save the updated MS Project as Baseline Plan (Project -> Save Baseline -> check Entire project), which will be used to evaluate the project performance at a later stage.