project management assignment on accurate project cost and completion estimation

Question

Task: how professionals can use project management assignment research techniques to make accurate project estimates?

Answer

Scope of Inquiry
The topic of the project management assignmentintroduces the students to strategic commercial management. After this course, I have learnt the importance of high-value trading relationships. The world of businesses is becoming complicated, globalized and fragmented, forcing both organizations and individuals to improve their planning, creation and management of complicated intra-firm commercial relationships across the resulting value network (McLoughlinet al. 2021). During the Cardiff Millennium Stadium building project, the disadvantages of ineffective commercial relationship management can be witnessed. I identified that the pressing needs/issues of the project were issues occurring between Laing and CimolaiItaly Italian Steelwork subcontractor that led to substantial delays (a claim that was settled in favour of Cimolai by paying € 14 million). The local residents were against Laing's desire to extend the working hours; however, CCC approved that caused a dispute with disabled associations, and CCC ultimately had to reject Laing's plans for ineffective compliance with disability regulations. Laing had to accept a loss of € 26 million on the project. The cause of this issue was ineffective decision-making and choices in favour of not demolishing the north stand. These consequences forced Laing project manager Simon Lander to resign and be replaced by Martin Foster (Refer to appendix 1). I have chosen this project management assignmenttopic to understand managers' varying roles within various organizations, specifically in the UK. By performing this case study analysis, I learned about distinct concepts including contracts, agreements and relationships. I understood that commercial functions mostly relate to designing, negotiations, Awarding and managing varying B2B transactions. I have the desire to become a project manager in the construction field. A strategic commercial management understanding can help ensure best practices within the organization. This understanding can help understand how projects suffer due to ineffective decision-making, relationship management and inability to determine threats that can affect project outcomes on an extreme level.

This course taught me various aspects that can lead to project success and failure. The management of contractual and commercial issues concerning the projector from project inception to completion. I now understand that commercial practitioners are involved in managing different activities such as contract negotiations, risk management, construct development, dispute resolution and bidding. They are also responsible for business plan formulation, performance management, sales and innovation management. This critical learning can help me in explaining the reasons a project can face failures to someone else. The situation that was depicted in the case study is similar to various international infrastructure projects. The same issues can be noted including cost overrun, ineffective dispute management, inefficient compliance with laws and regulations and collectively ineffective decision-making affecting the project outcomes. I plan to solve these common project management assignmentissues of outspending the project's final budget and avoiding making poor decisions that lead to negative project outcomes. I do not understand how theoretical understanding can be applied to the practical scenario as the business environment has undergone dynamic changes. This course would be an eye-opener by building the essential groundwork and foundation of my understanding of strategic commercial project management. This topic is important for me to understand the job roles, expectations, responsibilities, threats and challenges faced by the project manager. By learning about these issues, I will have the opportunity for the development of the essential skills needed for supporting such complicated projects.

project management assignmentCourse concepts and models
In section 1, the topic of decision-making and risk to examine ways risks are created by taking decisions by making risky choices under uncertainty was covered. This section will discuss the importance of effective decision-making for a project manager by examining the topics of Transaction cost economics concept and risk perspectives from a rationalist perception.

Transaction cost economics and project governance
Contract management is a process that assures that parties involved in the contract fully meet their stated obligations as efficiently and effectively as possible in order to provide the business and operational objectives needed from the contract and specifically to ensure value for money Lumineauet al. (2021). Theproject management assignment process of mitigating contractual issues requires determining the purchaser's needs and concluding reaching the contract needs. The contract management is mostly based on two processes of risk and relationship management (Schwartz, 2020). The Transaction cost theory argues that the optimum business structure is one that gains economic efficiency by reducing the costs of exchange. The theory posits that every type of transaction processes coordination costs of monitoring, controlling, and managing transactions (Ketokivi and Mahoney, 2020).

His contribution emphasizes more on economic governance and specifically the boundaries of the company. The governance structure is viewed as the institutional framework within which economic exchanges (transactions) are initiated. The deployment ofproject management assignment TCE approach can be helpful in mitigating conflicts and achieving reciprocal benefits (Hennart and Verbeke, 2022). It is also argued that in order to facilitate market transactions, it is mandatory to identify who it is that one wishes to deal with, to initiate negotiations leading to initiation of the contract, using the inspection required to confirm that the terms of the contract are being observed, and so on (Bylund, 2019).

Transaction cost takes place by the decisions in the form of cost of planning, deciding, changing plans, resolving disputes, and after-sales. Hence, transaction costs are one the important aspects in business operations and management. Likewise, the late incurred costs due to ineffective decision making can exceed the overall sum of the project costs and increases the need for adjustments of costs (Kaimet al. 2019). Similarly, the Cardiff Millennium Stadium project suffered due to transaction costs decisions made in respect of cost of planning, changing plans, resolving disputes and after-sales. The project management assignmentcalculations made by Laing including the steelwork package was a mere € 20 million, a comparatively lower amount, Cimolai afterwards submitted their € 18 million claim that was against Laing proposal for “providing insufficient support and ineffective design related details.” The losses incurred in the project were due to the consequential changes that occurred over the time to change stadium design arising from disputes from CRFC and WRU’s. It is a concrete example that explains the ways project budget overrun can be possible due to ineffective transaction cost planning which creates spaces for conflicts and affects project manager performance. The literature research has highlighted contributed to my understanding of ways contractual issues can be managed by improving transaction costs decisions. I agree that this theoretical learning can be helpful in managing critical decisions that can collectively impact on the project management assignmentproject outputs. The theories are well aligned to the practical scenarios as such problems occur in the projects which hamper the desired outcomes and performances. I believe that the concepts of contractual issues management and transaction; cost economics have efficiently explained the ways projects can suffer. These theories of learning have ensured that I make informed decisions due to knowledge of ways decisions can have repercussions.

Conflict management& dispute resolution
The commercial managers are expected to have the knowledge of whether the project management assignmentproject's costs are aligned with the estimated amount to avoid the overrunning of the budget (Alsharefet al. 2021). The amount of return desired from the project is also required to be monitored, together with the capability of the project to meet the desired objectives (Egliet al. 2018). The managers using financial information are required to justify the financial information behind the formulated financial statements. Afterwards, it is important to use that essential piece of financial information to formulate accurate financial decisions, by gaining a brief knowledge of cost behaviors and then implying this knowledge to techniques including break-even analysis, performance measurements and cash flow management (Maduagwu, 2022). The investment appraisal techniques including discounted cash flow can be used to make informed dressmaking in relation to commercial management.

These are the best practices to ensure that the best financial decisions are taken to avoid financial issues in the project. The Cardiff Millennium Stadium suffered due to ineffective techniques used to deal with financial information while estimating the project design costs which lead to conflicting situations creating disputes between WRU and CRFC. Laing submitted insufficient design/engineering work due to inaccurate examination of the likely costs associated with the project in the bidding stage. This ineffective move cost Laing in the post-award situation as demolition costs incurred a hike than the estimated amount. The additional workloads created a situation for increased disputes in between CRFC. It was also due to over dependence on subcontractors, specifically Cimolai. The project management assignmentproject equally suffered due to financial, timescale, and technical constraints. I am aware that ineffective planning in the first stage can cause issues in the deal execution stage. Hence, I am clear that project planning is highly important to avoid varying constraints that can affect project potential and cause strenuous pressure on the involved stakeholders.

Application of OGC Gateway process model
The OGC gateway process assesses a project management assignmentproject by examining the critical phases in the project lifecycle to provide assurance that it has the potential to process successfully to the next phase. It is viewed as the well-proven technique that ensures efficient delivery of benefits together with more predictable costs and outcomes. The study shows that OGC gateway application users improved governance routines and made sure that desired results are acquired despite projects showing higher levels of complications (Vo et al. 2021). A Gateway review can be viewed as a checkpoint that is reached at the very end of each stage completion of the lifestyle. This information can be shared that ensures the project is viable and can be progressed to the next stage (McGrath and Whitty, 2020). These types of measures were avoided which can assure that the project is performed in a cost efficient manner.

The project management assignmentcase study provides a series of poor decision making and commercial project management measures that affected the project. I was previously unaware of these efficient measures, tools and techniques that can be applied to improve the project quality assurance, management and decision making. I agree that this comprehensive knowledge enables the application of theoretical understanding in the practical scenario to avoid these issues that can hamper the stakeholder’s interests and project potential.

Emergent Insight and knowledge
The above section 2 provides the linkage between theory and practice that has helped in the generation of new knowledge through which my role as a project management assignmentmanager can be improved in the future. The ways I intend to operate differently to avoid the above stated issues faced by Laing the project manager of Cardiff Millennium Stadium is discussed below:
Issues and problems related to strategic commercial management differently in the future After comparing and contrasting the theoretical understanding to the practical scenario I have understood that the project can go sideways due to ineffective planning. I have understood the importance of efficient project planning as it sets a vision and projected outcomes. The project's planning identifies varying risks attached with the project and minimizes those risks. In the case of macro-micro levels, risk factor is inevitable. The efficient project management assignmentproject planning is significant as it confirms that team members have an idea about the potential risks and strategies to mitigate those risks. This helps in achieving larger goals, ensuring quality assurance and keeping project budget aligned with the operations. While examining the case studies a number of poor examples of management issues were identified which created a series of issues in pre-award and post-award situations. From the perspective of a contractor, Laing failed to fulfill his responsibilities towards their clients. Laing ineffective guidance and directions has poor repercussions on the project. Due to Liang inefficient support the project losses increased to €196 million which is due to € 34 million losses on the millennium Stadium project. I have learnt the ways projects can face financial disaster due to yielding poor financial outcomes for their stakeholders. Laing exceeded the losses due to the errors made in the tender processing that got wrong expectations. This forced reshaping of the project and introducing of new stringent criteria in relation to the contracts. I have gained a comprehensive understanding of processes involved in the commercial management of the projects. The project management assignmenttheory and practice understanding makes it easy to understand the importance of commercial acumen which is a critical skill set. I understand that in the future due to dynamic changes in the business environment the international infrastructural projects will become more complex. The project managers will be expected to deal with these complications by having knowledge of commercial practices to deploy commercial management best practices to avoid facing issues. The commercial decisions must be made by using authentic tools and techniques to avoid the issues in the execution stage. In the future I will take an informed approach by making use of these lessons learnt from concrete examples. I can apply the learnt theoretical understanding and models application to breach viable decisions which sets a viable pathway for others to follow.

Performing activities for better project efficiency
This project management assignmentcourse has made me understand the importance of tactical and transferable skills for effectively designing, negotiating, and awarding the management of commercial projects. In the future I intend to use concepts and principles associated with commercial management. I will use break even analysis techniques, cash flow statements and OGC gateway process models and checklists. This way the project intended outcomes can be achieved without damaging the project objectives. I read gained unfamiliar learning that is difficult to achieve from incurring experiences.

I believe the implications of this understanding are that I will take a professional attitude and act with calmness when exposed to these risks. The light bulb moments occurred when I learnt about varying concepts, models and theories which explain the ways project managers end causing issues. This was an open specs experience as it has changed my overall thinking, perception and understanding. Now I have commercial awareness related to CM, more knowledge about the difference between disputes and conflicts and understanding of varying tools and techniques to overcome difficult situations. I would like to achieve my lack of risk taking attitude and ensure better skills development. This way I can develop my competence to achieve my dream job by developing the mandatory skills set. I intend to develop both short and long term actions for my career development.

Key learning and action points
Lessons learnt at individual, team and organizational levels
I choose this project management assignmenttopic expecting to learn the importance of strategic commercial management related opportunities, threats and expectations. I ended up learning the importance of certain skills and competencies in the project managers. This experience has changed my perspective by learning the issues project managers face when dealing with projects. At a personal level I learnt I need to develop a certain skills set and competencies such as ability to use financial related tools, techniques and software. I need to have technical competencies and ability to apply project management tools and techniques to overcome the issues. At a team level, I have understood the importance of problem solving, dispute and conflict management as it can hamper the performance and overall project priority levels. At an organizational level, I have learnt the importance of collective decision making, managing business environments and maintaining the competitive edge of the projects.

Recommendations for individuals, team and organization
At an individual level I recommend undergoing corporate training programs for project management and leadership training programs. By undergoing these training courses I can ensure the skills development essential to perform the job roles and meet the expected responsibilities with ease. At a team level, I intend to lead real-life challenging projects while interning in an organization. This way I can expose myself to experiential learning by committing mistakes, undertaking coaching from experts and observing the experts intently. At an organization level, I intend to carry out my own project management assignmentresearch to understand the industry's challenges related to distinct projects. I will aim to increase my existing awareness by participating in workshops.

Action plan for executing these recommendations/changes

Table 1: Action plan for career development
(Source: Self-created)

Critical reflection
While preparing for the project management assignmentcritical review of reflection for this inquiry-based report I have to conduct additional research to understand the case better. I believe that working on this Inquiry-based report has increased my capability and competency. I think my research based skills, strategic and critical thinking ability, problem solving skills, commercial awareness and management skills competencies have increased. I have the understanding now of the ways theoretical understanding can be applied to achieve the desired results. I think these project management assignmentskills and competencies will be helpful in the future when managing real-life challenging projects.

References
Alsharef, A., Banerjee, S., Uddin, S.J., Albert, A. and Jaselskis, E., 2021.Early impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the United States construction industry.International journal of environmental research and public health, 18(4), p.1559.project management assignment
Bylund, P.L., 2019. The firm vs. the market: Dehomogenizing the transaction cost theories of Coase and Williamson. Strategic Management Review, Forthcoming.
Egli, F., Steffen, B. and Schmidt, T.S., 2018.A dynamic analysis of financing conditions for renewable energy technologies.Nature Energy, 3(12), pp.1084-1092.
Hennart, J.F. and Verbeke, A., 2022. Actionable and enduring implications of Oliver Williamson’s transaction cost theory. project management assignmentJournal of International Business Studies, 53(8), pp.1557-1575.
Kaim, R., Härting, R.C. and Reichstein, C., 2019. Benefits of agile project management in an environment of increasing complexity—a transaction cost analysis. In Intelligent Decision Technologies 2019 (pp. 195-204).Springer, Singapore.
Ketokivi, M. and Mahoney, J.T., 2020. Transaction cost economics as a theory of supply chain efficiency. Production and Operations Management, 29(4), pp.1011-1031.
Lumineau, F., Wang, W. and Schilke, O., 2021.Blockchain governance—A new way of organizing collaborations? Organization Science, 32(2), pp.500-521.
Maduagwu, E.N., 2022. BREAK-EVEN ANALYSIS: A TOOL FOR EFFICIENT PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT IN MANUFACTURING FIRMS IN ENUGU METROPOLIS. Advance Journal of Management, Accounting and Finance, 7(6).
McLoughlin, K., Lewis, K., Lascelles, D. and Nudurupati, S., 2021. Sustainability in supply chains: reappraising business process management. Production Planning & Control, pp.1-34.project management assignment
McGrath, S. and Whitty, S.J., 2020. The suitability of PRINCE2 for engineering infrastructure.Journal of Modern Project Management, 7(4), pp.312-347.
Schwartz, S., 2020. You Bought It; Now Don't Mess It up! A Guide to Improving the Post-Acquisition Integration Process.Int'l. In-House Counsel J., 13, p.1.
Vo, H., Kirkham, R.J., Williams, T.M., Howells, A., Forster, R. and Cooke-Davies, T., 2021. An empirical study of assurance in the UK government major projects portfolio: from data to recommendations, to action or inaction. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business.project management assignment
You, C., 2019.Principles of risk analysis: decision making under uncertainty. CRC press.project management assignment

Appendices
Appendix 1: Millennium stadium project milestones