A PROJECT ANALYSIS ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHANNEL TUNNEL
1.0 INTRODUCTION
The Channel Tunnel is one of Europe's biggest infrastructure projects ever. The 50.45km long tunnel has fulfilled this old dream by linking Britain and the rest of Europe. The idea of a fixed link between Britain and France was first mooted by a French engineer in 1802; it connects England and France 50m below the seabed of the English Channel. It's not just a tunnel, but a huge infrastructure containing massive machinery and control systems in an underwater tunnel system (Lemley, 1995; Kirkland, 1995). In 1990 the service tunnels broke through at the halfway point. The main rail tunnels met on May 22, 1991 and on June 28, 1991, each accompanied by a
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Several adaptations to the traditional approaches like agile, interactive, phased, extreme, etc have been made but each will be expected to meet the requirements of the project objectives, timeline, resources, and deliveries of the stakeholders. Other industry standard certifications like ISO9000 and regulations like the Sarbanes-Oxley have also influenced methodologies and processes used by several organisations (Kerzner, 2003). Generally, managing projects should involved five major process which include the project initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and controlling, and then project closing. See Fig. 2 below.
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Fig 2: Major Project Management Processes. (Source: US DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS)
The nature and scope of a project is determined at the initiation stage. This involves analyzing the business needs, developing goals, budgets, tasks, deliverables, and the stakeholder analysis. The project planning stage determines the planning team, develops the scope, and identifies work breakdown structure and activities that will be needed to complete deliverables. The planning stage also estimates time and cost activities, develop schedule and risk plan, and gain formal approval for work to begin. The executing stage involves all processes used to meet the project requirement and involves managing people and resources. The process that entails the identification of potential problems and
Planning a project is the second phase of a project life cycle, where once the project has been approved, it is necessary to create a game plan of how the project goal will be achieved within the given budget and timeframe. It encompasses project scope and deliverables, activities and sequences, resources required, responsibilities (who does what), duration (e.g. how long each task will take), schedules (timeline of the entire project), budget, and risks. Anyone who is involved in performing the project should participate in the planning process because
The next step is the documenting of the project plan at this stage of project development will help team members adhere to the established strategy, schedule, budget, and definition of quality during the course of a project. The records will reflect the project overview. Within the project overview, there will be a detail description of the project scope and technical information. Then the team will record the project 's strategy, schedule, budget, quality definition, and compile the information into a management plan that will be distribute amongst the team member.
There are many different aspect that will have key roles in the project management process. The presence of triple constraint will impact the project process. The relationship between the project scope, cost, and time will determine what changes will be implemented. These factors also impact the quality of the project and the knowledge of this will aid in the decision making process. The initial planning process of a construction project will be examined. A statement of need, goals and objectives, the stakeholders and project requirements, and project scope must be outlined. All of these areas will aid in the initiation and planning phase of the project. To ensure a smooth completion a project manager must understand the constraints involved and the development of the initial plan of the project.
c After the acceptance of all stakeholders is achieved, actual growth begins and a project management methodology needs to be selected based on the major areas seeking improvement. A project tracking and monitoring system has to be in place for improved estimation of project life-cycle.
In Business, project management is used regularly to accomplish unique outcomes with limited resources under critical time constraints. There has been a rapid increase in the number of firms that use project management methodologies as the preferred way of accomplishing almost every business undertaking. There are a number of approaches to managing project activities and in project management these approaches are referred to as methodologies. This paper attempts to explore the many different methodologies in project management and allow the reader to determine the best approach for their organization.
Agile and waterfall project management are the two most used terms now a day in any corporation in which its a method of supervision of the design and constructing activities for engineering and information technology in a highly flexible and interactive behaviour. Also, a comprehensive description will be stated about Project Risk Management and a personal choice of an additional project management method. In the following paragraphs, the user will be given an insight on the following factors which will be talked about. In agile and waterfall project management a full detailed clear description will be given illustrating the pros and cons of the whole process and how could it be helpful and how it’s being implemented in a firm. Then an analysis between the two methods will occur, following a summary at the end of the section with the main points which has been discussed. In Project Risk Management a discussion of the importance of risk management will be reviewed. In an additional stage, a topic of a personal choice will be talked about on the topic of project management which will be Critical Chain Project Management. It will be then followed with a conclusion.
Choosing a right methodology for the project management enables the organization to tackle the projects comprehensively, systematically, and an approach to assess the risks and difficulties that large projects encompass. It also offers benefits at the strategic, tactical and operational levels to an organization. The two basic, most popular methodologies are: Waterfall Model (which is also known as Traditional Model) and Agile Model. Both of these models are being adopted by the managers for successful completion of the projects.
This phase begins when the project is defined and the appropriate resources have been selected. The first part of the planning phase involves collecting, defining and validating functional, support and training requirements. The second part involves developing initial life cycle management plans, including project planning, project management, Configuration Management, support,
Successful execution of a project calls for a company to adopt relevant and sound approaches to the entire cycle of the project. During the period that the team is executing the projects as per the project plan, the manager of the project should be diligent in tracking and monitoring the work which is being undertaken (Burt, Petcavage & Pinkerton, 2009). Some of the effective approaches during the controlling and the monitoring phases entail the strategies of
No matter what methodology is used for a project, the first step of any project would be to define the scope. The project scope will help define the work that needs to be done and is needed to establish a project timeline, set the project goals, and to allocate the funds. (www.clio.com.au) When the project scope has been defined, the Project Manager will be able to keep the project on time, on budget, and be able to allocate tasks to the right people, making sure things are efficiently done.
Once a project has been approved, the next step in the project process is to develop a plan. A project plan provides a strategy in which an endeavor will progress and outlines the complete events essential to complete a project. The process also presents an outline for monitoring functions and milestones to track progress. A high level project plan must be developed in order to effectively outline the necessary activities, monitoring, and strategy in order for a project to be successful
In this phase it involves the developing of set of planning document which will actually guide your team throughout the project. There are also key stages of the planning phase like first of all it define the work Breakdown structure (WBC) of all the phases and stages, their activities, their task . it also describe the financial issue , expenditure and what resources will be required to complete this Project. The key stage of the planning are also define resource plan in which it will describe which type of resources we will use , in Financial plan it talk about the financial issues of the project what expenses will be occur and how it will be approved, in the Quality plan it discuss about the quality of the project what quality standard will b adopted and what type of quality standard are available , in the Risk Plan it will discuss the risk management how and where it will be handled , in the Acceptance Plan it will discuss the delivery of the project and customer satisfaction, in this communication Plan all team communication and also client communication will involved it describe pass the information to the right time and updates of the project to the
Formulating the scope of project i.e., capturing the content, requirements and the constraints. Planning and Preparing a business case and the environment for the project.
A project is a transitory effort attempted to develop an exceptional merchandize or service. Since all projects are distinctive in nature and include a specific level of ambiguity, they are distributed into particular stages that improve and support overall management and control. According to Hormozi, McMinn, and Nzeogwu (2000), every “projects have a life cycle and they are born from an idea, develop into a finished product or service, and then terminate” (p.45). The stages or phases of project life cycles may vary depending on management strategy, industry, application/ methodology being used for a particular project. However, in general the project life cycle stages include: (1) Initializing, (2) planning, (3) execution, (4) controlling, and (5) closing or termination.
Alternative approaches to management developed over the years are extremely important to modern software project management, although new approaches are needed to deal with some of the toughest challenges. According to experts, “the popular interest in management as a discipline and a field of study is fairly recent. But management, both as a practice and as a field of study, has a respectable history, in many different countries, going back almost two centuries.” (Drucker 2008, p.12). Modern approaches to management were developed in the USA after World War II which are now taught in colleges and universities. The four classic functions about management one may learn in school are: “planning, organizing, leading, and controlling” (Nelson & Economy 2005, p. 5). More functions need to be added to the list of skills for acquiring in the process of learning about project management aspects. Project management challenges can be viewed from a process perspective and many experts such as McFarland (1970) highlighted this view. Management is the “process by which managers create, direct, maintain and operate purposive, organizations though systematic, coordinated, cooperative human effort” (McFarland 1970, p. 5). “Because projects are transient, their delivery follows a development process, from germination of the idea, through initiation, design and delivery, to commissioning, handover to the client and closeout of the work.” (Turner 2014, p. 5)