Assessment 2: Workbook

Assessment type	Case study
Word length	N/A
Weighting	40%
Due dapte	11pm Sunday Week 4

The workbook has four topics to align with Weeks 1-4 of the unit. Please seek to complete the exercises week to week as appropriate, to support your engagement with unit theory and your skill in applying the theory and tools

Week 1 Exercises

1.1 Project Selection Prioritization Matrix

Below is an example of how calculations in a trade-off matrix are performed:

Project/Selection Criteria	Criteria A		Criteria B
Weight:	5		10		Total
Landscaping project	7		5
	(5*7=) 35		(5*10=) 50		(35+50=) 85

Using the example, score each of the projects in the table below. Based on the score, which project would you choose?

Project/Selection Criteria	Potential Monetary Gain		Success Probability		Social Opinion
Weight:	5		10		3		Total
Construction Project: International Hotel, Maui	8		5		5
Construction Project: Local Hotel, Sydney	10		6		4
Infrastructure Project: High Speed Rail – Sydney to Canberra	9		3		8
Investment project: The Old Farm House	7		7		10

Based on the prior Project Selection Prioritization Matrix, you undoubtedly have surmised that the Old Farm House investment project is the best option for you at the moment.  Following this decision, the following project brief below has been developed for you.

Old Farm House Project

You have inherited a century old farm house and acreage in a rural area.  You have visited the site and made an inspection.  The house needs a great deal of repair work to get it marginally liveable.  You have itemized the most important things that need to be done and estimated the time required as shown below.

You plan to use this house for holidays and as a rental property through AirBnB. Your parents have provided you with a personal loan of $10,000 – that will give you enough money to buy the supplies and have a spending budget on help from a local carpenter, a painter and their apprentice. You yourself have committed to working 80 hours over your holiday to fix up the house, but you are terrible at carpentry and painting. Your two weeks holiday leave starts on the first Monday of June. Assume you, the carpenter, the painter and the apprentice^[1] all can work up to 8 hrs per day, 5 days per week.

You expect that within 2 years of renting the property you will have earned enough money to repay your parents.

Each activity is to be performed by one person only.

Continually ask yourself the question “when this is done, what else can I start now, or which things can I do at the same time?”.

Resources	Cost	Note
Supplies needed	$5,000
You	$0	Can do all jobs except carpentry and painting
Carpenter	$125 per hour	Expert in carpentry (wood repair), cannot paint
Painter	$60 per hour	Expert in painting, cannot do wood repairs
Apprentice	$40 per hour	Can do all jobs except carpentry and painting

Please note while working on this project, many assumptions are made that appear unrealistic, such as for example the wages, or constraints around who can do what.  The main reason behind these decisions has been to create an example that is easy for you to work on, while keeping it within small boundaries.

The following List of Most Important Fixes and Project Customer Trade-Off Matrix are provided to you as background to the project; they are part of the brief to help you understand the case study.

List of Most Important Fixes (not necessarily in order of schedule or priority):
1	Purchase supplies
2	Hang new curtains
3	Repair wooden shutters
4	Paint shutters
5	Hang shutters
6	Repair wooden porch
7	Paint porch
8	Repair wooden floor
9	Sand floor
10	Refinish (paint) floor
11	Paint ceilings
12	Paint doors
13	Paint interior walls
14	Paint exterior walls
15	Wash exterior windows
16	Wash interior windows

Project Customer Trade-off Matrix

Old Farm House	Enhance	Meet	Sacrifice
Cost		Cannot go over $10.000	Spend full budget to save time
Schedule	Save time (you are allowed to spend the full budget if it enhances time finished)	Must finish in two weeks (10 business days)
Quality		Must meet
Scope		Must meet

1.2 Scope Overview (word limit: 200)

Use your own words to convert the project brief into a scope overview:

Based on the prioritization matrix, the highest rating holder is Investment Project: The Old Farm House. To generate high revenue in less time, the most suitable and profitable project is repairing and furnishing the old farmhouse. The repairing of the farmhouse is done to prepare for rent. According to the plan, the property is decided to get furnished to offer as rent in the summer holidays. The budget for the entire project is allotted $10,000, which is provided by the parents as a personal loan. For this project, a carpenter, a painter, and their apprentice are hired. The miscellaneous work, other than carpeting and painting, is performed by the project manager. The materials and supplies for the project involve a cost of $5000. The time duration of the entire project is 80 hours. The above project starts on the first Monday of June. To perform the function of carpeting, apprentice, and painting. All three have different charges according to their work. The carpenter charges $125 per hour, the painter charges $60 per hour, and the apprentice charges $40 per hour. The investment project is supposed to complete in the decided time duratio

1.3 Milestone Schedule

Based on the project brief and the list of work packages, please list the milestones you would identify for this project. The first and last are already given for you. Estimate a completion date for each milestone, as well as what the acceptance criteria would be. Also think about who should judge whether or not the criteria have been met.

Milestone	Completion Date	Acceptance Criteria	Stakeholder Judge
Charter signed off	4 June 2022	Complete work on time	parents
Planning of changes or task that is made in the farm house	6 June 2022	Requirements in the farm house	Project manager (self)
Selection of supplier	10June 2022	Good quality of raw materials	Project manager (self)
Delivery and transportation of raw materials	11 June	Charge Reasonable cost of transportation	supplier
Selection of human resource like painter, apprentice, and carpenter	12 June	Experience and skills	Project manager (self)
Performing decided fixes in the farmhouse	20 June	Good quality work or productive work	Carpenter and apprentice
Project completion	21 June	Completed in time duration	Project manager (self)

1.4 Initial Risk Identification

Based on the project brief, examples from the textbook and your own interpretation, please identify at least four potential risks to the project.

Project (Potential) Risks	Risk Owner	Contingency Plans
Work health and safety risks like slips, falls, and injuries.	Carpenter and apprentice	Taking preventions to avoid the injuries and incidents in the workplace
Unavailability of raw material in the market (Mhetre, et al., 2016).	supplier	Assembling raw material in advance or maintain stock (De Marco, et al., 2016).
Poor weather conditions	Nobody	Poor weather conditions are uncertain, so only precautions can be taken.
Illness of workers	workers	Extra workforce or other skilled persons can be hired.

1.5 Resources

Based on the project brief, examples from the textbook and your own interpretation, please identify the funding, workers and equipment required for this project, as well as potential other resources. Don’t overthink this exercise and keep it short and simple.

Funding:	Funding of $10,000 is provided by parents as a personal loan which have to be repay after generating revenues from the farm house.
People:	To perform the furnishing task in the farm house, carpenter, painter and apprentice are hired.
Equipment:	Paint brushes, paints, curtain stand, inch tape, circular saw, hammer, wooden oil, varnish, bucket, container, etc.
Other:	Curtains, wall stickers, wall accessories,

1.6 Initial Stakeholder Identification

Based on the project brief, examples from the textbook and your own interpretation, please identify at least four stakeholders to the project, their interest and priority to the project.

Stakeholder	Interest in Project	Priority (High/Medium/Low)
parents	Interest in getting profit and revenues from farmhouse	High
workforce	Interest in receiving good payment	High
Project manager	Interest in getting profit share and high revenues from the rental income	High
supplier	Interest in getting payment against supplying raw materials	High

1.7 Team Operating Principles

Please list at least three Team Operating Principles you believe are important for your project (refer to textbook):

• ___________Coordination between the workforce. For Example- Carpenter, painter, and apprentice._______
• __Good Flow of communication with workforce. It is important for the project manager to communicate with workforce (Newton, 2015). _____________
• __Right Direction to perform work and Fair remuneration__________

1.8 Lessons Learned

Please list at least three Lessons Learned you believe can contribute to your project:

• _Planning- From the above project, it is got to learn that planning should be done before taking actions or making any crucial decision. Planning provides a direction to perform the task in a right way (Heagney, 2016).________
• _Preparing Budget– It is important to first create or prepare a right budget of the project. It gives clarity about the financial needs and requirements of the project._____________
• ____Allocation of Resources- The last and the one of the important lesson is learned is to allocate the resources in a right way without any wastage. ____________

Week 2 Exercises

2.1 Stakeholder Prioritization Matrix

Based on the project brief, examples from the book and your own interpretation, please identify as many stakeholders as possible. Rank their power, Interest, Influence, Impact, Urgency and Legitimacy on a scale of 1 to 3 (1 = low, 2 = medium, 3 = high) and add them in column ‘Total’.

Stakeholder:	What is the stakeholder’s main interest?	Power	Interest	Influence	Impact	Urgency	Legitimacy	Total	Priority (a score of 6-9 = low, 10 to 14 = medium, 15 to 18 = high))
Example: Stakeholder A	A clean, quiet environment	1	3	1	1	3	2	11	Medium
Parents	Effective utilization of money which is provided by the parents	3	3	1	3	2	3	15	high
Carpenter	Get the salary on time, well description of work and on time	1	1	1	2	1	2	8	Low
Apprentice	Get pay on time	1	1	1	1	1	1	6	low
Project manager (self)	Work done on time within the existence resources in an effective way.	3	3	3	3	3	3	18	high

2.2 Communications Matrix

Based on the project brief, examples from the book and your own interpretation, complete the communication matrix below. (It is possible that certain cells might be left open).

Stakeholder	Learn From Stakeholder	Share With Stakeholder	Timing	Method	Owner (responsible for communication)
Parents	Communicate about the budget and work instructions	Share things about the project and share information about the timeline of the project.	1 hour	Face to face	Project manager(self)
Carpenter	Take information about the budget and resources requitement to complete the work.	Discuss about the timeline that how much time it takes to complete the project.	20 min	Face to face	Project manager (self)
Apprentice	Help in the extra work and discuss about the payment	Provide details of the extra work and discussion about the parents.	25 min	Phones call	Project manager (self)
Supplier	Deliver the things and material on time	Discussion about the material and payment (Luff, et al., 2020)	20 min	Face to face	Project manager (self)

2.3 Work Breakdown Structure

Based on the project brief, examples from the book and your own interpretation, complete the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). Start with the first deliverable after ‘Charter signoff’ and finish with the ‘Project completed’. The number of sub-packages needed per deliverable is up to your discretion and the context of the project.

While you are working on the WBS you also need to provide the predecessors for each activity – what must be completed before this activity can begin. This dependency will be needed later in Week 3 to help create the AoN.

The table below is an example. Replace the text with your own interpretation of the project at hand.

[Project Name]

WBS code	Activity Name	Predecessor(s)
1	Contract sing	1
2	Discussion meeting and budget setting	2
2.1	First day of working	2.1
2.2	Resources, material collected by the supplier and put safely all the material and equipment.	2.2
2.3	Plaster and painting process has been done	2.3
2.4	Flooring and carpentering work (Carpenter, et al., 2021)	2.4
2.5	Painting	2.5
3	Electricity and light work	3
4	Cleaning	4
5	Set furniture	5
6	Decoration	6
7	Gardening work	7
8	Payment to workers	8
9	Project completed	9

2.4 The RACI Chart

Based on the project brief and the WBS, as well as example from the book, finish the RACI chart below. You decide how many people should be added to the table. You may need to add rows. Please make sure you replace the text ‘Person A, and B’ with your project team member identified.

The first and second columns of this table should match the first and second columns of the table in Exercise 2.3.

WBS Code	Activity Name	Sponsor	Project Manager (you)	Person A	Person B
1	Contract sing	R	R	C	I
2	Discussion meeting and budget setting	C	A	R	I
2.1	First day of working	C	R	C	I
2.2	Resources, material collected by the supplier and put safely all the material and equipment.	R	A	R	C
2.3	Plaster and painting process has been done	A	R	R	I
2.4	Flooring and carpentering work	A	R	C	C
2.5	Painting	C	R	R	A
3	Electricity and light work	I	R	A	C
4	Cleaning	I	R	C	A
5	Set furniture	R	A	C	I
6	Decoration	C	A	R	I
7	Gardening work	C	A	R	R
8	Payment to workers	A	R	C	I
9	Project completed	R	R	A	C

Week 3 Exercises

Go to blackboard and download the additional information needed for this topic. Go to ‘Assessment Tasks and Submission’ > ‘Assessment 2 – The Workbook’ > ‘Additional Info on the Old Farm House Business Case’.

Use the WBS contained therein as the foundation for this week’s AoN.

It is still up to you to determine the predecessors in this WBS, which you will do in Exercise 3.2. You may like to complete Exercise 3.2 before you draw your AoN – this is up to you.

Remember, the Business Case outlines the resource limitations, that is, who can work on what activity. Consider these limitations as you develop your AoN.

3.1 AoN

Based on the information provided on blackboard, use for instance MS PowerPoint to create an Activity on Node diagram based on the WBS provided in ‘Additional Information WEEK 3’. Ensure that you have one node per activity.

Colour code each node to indicate which resource is assigned to each activity and include a resource key.

Make sure you save your work as we will change and add to it as we advance through the Exercises.

3.2 Time estimation

Based on the information provided, give a best estimate of the duration of each activity. Make sure you mention the unit you use (i.e. hours). Not each activity will have a clear answer, so use your best educated guess. Give a short explanation to each activity why you think it will take as long as you’ve estimated. Keep your explanation[2] as short and succinct as possible.

WBS Code	Activity Name	Predecessor(s)	Duration (hours)	Explanation on duration
1	Contract sign	0	24	For the legal evidence of the project, contract has to be signed. To complete all the legal work and formalities, it takes one day or 24 hours.
2	Discussion meeting and budget setting	1	48	For the preparation of budget and to estimate the total cost involved the project, discussion meeting with stakeholders is conducted which takes 48 hours.
3	Electricity and light work	2	72	The work of electricity and fixing lights in the farm house, takes total 72 hours (3 days).
4	Painting	3	37	After completing the work of electricity and lighting, the painting of farm house is done. Painting work takes 37 hours to get completed (Zecheru & Olaru, 2016).
5	Cleaning	4	24	To clean the waste materials from the farmhouse and to clean the entire farmhouse, 24 hours are consumed.
6	Set furniture	5	72	After cleaning, the furniture is to be organized and set in the farmhouse which takes a total of 72 hours to get completed.
7	Decoration	6	48	After cleaning and setting furniture in the farmhouse, the extra decoration takes 48 hours to get completed.
8	Gardening work	7	5	The farmhouse has a garden area which has to be completed in 5 hours. It includes cutting trees, sowing seeds, etc.
9	Payment to workers	8	2	The next work in this series is payment to workers who engaged in the work of repairing of the farmhouse. It takes 2 hours to compute every worker’s payment according to their work.

3.3 Enumeration Method

You can now update the AoN diagram with the time estimates. From these duration estimates you can now calculate the enumeration for each path. Provide the updated AoN and enumeration calculations below.

3.4 Two Pass Method

Now use Exhibits 8.11-8.14 (Pages 260-263) to create a Two-Pass schedule for your project.

WBS Code	Activity Name	Predecessor(s)	Duration (hours)
1	Contract sign	0	24
2	Discussion meeting and budget setting	1	20
3	Electricity and light work	2	24
4	Painting	3	37
5	Cleaning	4	24
6	Set furniture	5	72
7	Decoration	6	48
8	Gardening work	7	5
9	Payment to workers	8	2

3.5 Critical Path

Identify the critical path in your project.

The critical path in my project is Furniture work___________, and takes __72_________ (hours)

Week 4 Exercise

4.1 Progress report

Please assume that you have now completed the first three milestones of your project, as stated in Exercise 1.3. Using Exhibit 14.6 as a guide for the information that is needed, develop a brief progress report.

With the help of discussion meeting with the stakeholders, all the milestones that is relevant for the project are developed that gives a direction. The milestones are the major work and the functions that are performed to complete the repairing and refurnishing of farm house. The major milestones that are developed includes Charter signed off, Planning of changes or task that is made in the farmhouse, Selection of the supplier, Delivery and transportation of raw materials, Selection of human resources like the painter, apprentice, and carpenter, Performing decided fixes in the farmhouse, and Project completion. Of these milestones, some are successfully completed.

The contract for repairing and refurnishing the farmhouse is successfully signed off and all the paperwork is done. It takes one day to get completed. The other milestone is the planning of the tasks and functions that have to be performed. After, developing a complete plan regarding the project, the best supplier of the raw materials is selected. All these tasks are successfully completed. One of the important tasks or milestones is the selection of a skilled and experienced workforce that is responsible for the entire repairing and refurnishing of the farmhouse. It includes the hiring and selection of the best carpenter, painter, and apprentice. The experts and skilled workers are successfully hired and their work is in progress. The work of hanging curtains, decoration, extra work like cleaning the entire farmhouse, and some work of lighting are remaining which are in progress and supposed to be completed soon before the deadline and time duration of the contract.

4.2 Gantt chart

Go to blackboard and download the Gantt Chart Template. Go to ‘Assessment 2 – The Workbook’ and locate ‘Gantt Chart Template’

Using the template provided, create your Gantt chart based on the AoN developed at 3.4.

Filling in your Gantt chart:

In column A name the activity, in column D enter the start (in hours) and in column E enter the duration (hours). Tip: the start time for each activity should be the same as the ‘early start’ of the activity as shown in Exercise 3.4. The duration and resource should also be the same as for Exercise 3.4 AON.

Assign the resource to each of the activities from the dropdown box in column ‘F’. From column H onward, simply place a ‘1’ in each cell corresponding to your start time and duration. As an example, activity 2 – buying supplies has already been entered for you.

Once all of this data is entered, the project cost overview will be updated in the graph below the Gantt chart and the histograms will be updated on Sheet 2.

DO NOT WORRY IF YOU PROJECT COST IS OVER BUDGET OR THE ALLOCATED TIMEFRAME at this point. You are not being assessed on your ability to schedule so that the project meets these parameters. You only need to ensure that your Gantt matches the 2-pass AON at 3.4.

Post here your final Gantt chart with resource allocation, including project cost overview and histograms.

Tip: select the cells in excel you want to display here, for example A17 to CI37, and press CTRL-C. Switch the window to Word and select the location you want the graph to appear and press CTRL-ALT-V – and select Picture (Enhanced Metafile) for the best result.

Please do not paste as a Microsoft Excel Worksheet Object.

You can leave the picture in the size it appears, the marker will be able to zoom in and see the details.

You can follow the same process to copy the project cost overview and histograms. Simply select the graph in excel, and press CTRL-C. Switch the window to Word and select the location you want the graph to appear and press CTRL-ALT-V – and select Picture (Enhanced Metafile) for the best result.

You can leave the graph in the size it appears, the marker will be able to zoom in and see the details.

References

Carpenter, N. C., Whitman, D. S., & Amrhein, R., 2021. Unit-level counterproductive work behavior (CWB): A conceptual review and quantitative summary. Journal of management, 47(6), 1498-1527.

De Marco, A., Rafele, C., & Thaheem, M. J., 2016. Dynamic management of risk contingency in complex design-build projects. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 142(2), 04015080.

Heagney, J., 2016. Fundamentals of project management. Amacom.

Lauff, C. A., Knight, D., Kotys-Schwartz, D., & Rentschler, M. E., 2020. The role of prototypes in communication between stakeholders. Design Studies, 66, 1-34.

Mhetre, K., Konnur, B. A., & Landage, A. B., 2016. Risk management in construction industry. International Journal of Engineering Research, 5(1), 153-155.

Newton, P., 2015. Principles of project management. Retrieved from www. free-managementebooks. com.

Zecheru, V. and Olaru, B.G., 2016. Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) in Project Management. Review of International Comparative Management/Revista de Management Comparat International, 17(1).

[1] For this case the carpenter/ painter does not need to be present to have the apprentice working on site.

[2] There is not a right or wrong answer in this section on the time you’ve estimated, it is designed to stimulate your estimation skills. However, there is a reasonable expectation on timing. An estimate of multiple months on one activity for a project that is planned to take two weeks is unreasonable.