Introduction
This assessment is focusing on a real-life project and assessing it and finding all management strategies that have been involved in it. A project has to be chosen and assessed along with its QRP management for explaining functionality and effectiveness of project. It follows various knowledge areas of involvement of QRP management in managing projects. This report focuses on a project Digital City which is an initiative of Australian government for upliftment of city and keeping it alive in a rapidly growing world. This project comes under Sustainable Sydney initiative which focuses on keeping Sydney eco-friendly, and globally-connected, and bring it into a digital world. This report focuses on all key-points of project and explains functioning of project.
Case Project Identification and assessment
Project Digital City comes under plan of Sustainable Sydney 2030. Sustainable Sydney 2030 refers to a collection of objectives that have been set for Sydney to transforming it as much green and globally connected as possible by 2030 (Digital city – City of Sydney, 2020). This plan believes to change lives of people and way in which they play and work. Plan Sydney 2030 was made after gathering information from various people such as workers, businessmen, and visitors and understanding their mindset. After proper feedback, it was deduced that people demand a city that should be globally-connected, economically good, and eco-friendly.
Project Digital city aims Sydney to be considered as one of most livelihood and innovative cities across globe. For keeping city competitive, government of Sydney aims at harnessing opportunities for use of data and technology in a smart manner. Harnessing opportunities will attract workforce which will help in keeping country’s economy alive and will help in upliftment of local businesses (Paraschivescu, 2016). This project aims at benefit of residents of city through exciting opportunities and aims at a digitally equipped future. A digital strategy has been made which defines various principles to be followed for providing programs and projects to residents of city, visitors, and workers. Along with a digital strategy, this project also created a strategic framework for a smart city which explains way of using data and technology for making better decisions and improving living style for diverse communities.
Digital Strategy and its need
Digital strategy was introduced back in 2009 with a motive of “green global connected”. Digital Strategy points to a roadmap for achieving a digital future in a rapidly changing environment. This strategy provides a framework for achieving digital transformation and things need to be considered for successfully achieving and articulating things. It aims at helping communities to be a proactive participant of a digital era. It aims at paving a mode of greater accessibility to services and information which has been never done before. It is also much beneficial for people with some sort of disability. In 2015, six years after launch of this project, a consultation community revealed that digital strategy has been proven useful in past 6 years and more than 74 percent of people are happy with this initiative. It was also mentioned that though it was a challenging task for creating a digital strategy and implementing it, but it is showing positive results. Digital strategy was introduced along with six principles that have to be followed for its successful implementation.
Strategic framework for smart city
Strategic framework was designed for defining proper use of data and technology for improving decision-making skills and providing a better life to people by making efficient use of data and technology. Digital disruption was main cause of introducing this framework and for creating a leading place for working, learning, visiting, and living in diverse communities. It is an evidence-based and problem-driven approach for ensuring a tangible impact on different communities. It also focuses on a dynamic building that unlocks new opportunities along with evolvement of city.
A master plan cannot make a city smart, it needs a proper execution of certain steps and a proper follow up of various guidelines. This framework refers to an action for stakeholders across city. It also focuses on communal organisations, evolving start-ups, academic institutions, already established businesses, and people who enjoy city. Creation of a framework cannot result in achieving a vision for future and does not make city enable us to meet all infrastructure requirements for supporting an eco-friendly, and globally connected world. It points out to globalisation, and rapid urbanisation in this faster evolving world, where new technologies are disrupting economy.
QRP Management Plan
QRP refers to quality, risk, and procurement. QRP management is a way of managing efforts being taken for successful execution of project.
Quality Management
Quality management is a way of managing all tasks and activities that needs to be accomplished for maintaining a certain measure of excellence. It includes determination of a policy for creating and implementing planning and improvement of quality. Quality management of a project has to be mandated for achieving long-term deliverables by implementing short-term deliverables (Bacoup, et al., 2018). Quality of a project can be efficiently managed by considering project deliverables. In this project, quality management is efficiently taken care of with creation of digital strategy and strategic framework and regular monitoring at success rate of Sustainable Sydney 2030.
In this time of continuous technological change, uncertainty, and disruption, all communities of people should be focused. Every need of people should meet expectations of communities for making necessary modifications in a fast-evolving digital world. As population of Sydney is growing, needs of their communities are increasing day by day and there is a huge impact on budgets, infrastructure, and services and proper technology and data should be used for addressing these challenges and building resilience. It has not been launched to be a stand-alone warrior, rather it has been launched to collaborate with supporting government agencies, businesses, and universities for maximising gains of community.
For managing quality, digital strategy principles are taken into consideration which states lifelong learning and digital inclusion, creating people-specific digital services and programs, transforming way of engaging with communities, supporting businesses for building digital infrastructure, skills, and knowledge, active participation in Sydney’s urban renewal for ensuring its global competitiveness about smart infrastructure, and innovating ethics in marketplace of information containing important aspects of societal and communal affairs. These principles of digital strategy ensure a better quality of Digital city project. Sydney is ranked among top 10 world’s most livelihood cities.
But still if that has to be maintained, proper follow up of all technological advancements should be taken care of, and this project is a step for keeping Sydney alive in this ranking. One principle of digital strategy, digital inclusion focuses on increasing civic and social engagement and providing more interesting opportunities to their residents. During celebration of New Year’s Eve, real-time updates of city are being provided at Sydney Harbour to millions of people for making its proper use. It results in enhancing safety of people around there.
Risk Management
Risk management in a project is a very important aspect that has to be considered while creation of any project. Risk is a part of planning project deliverables; it commences from thought of failures that can take place during creation and implementation of a project. Thinking of failures and a method to prevent them from occurring is a strategy to be followed for preventing future failures. It seems too pessimistic as thinking of failures in projects, but it is a preventive step that has to be taken in advance for dealing with such a situation if it occurs by any chance.
It is a process of finding, analysing, and resolving any risk which may arise during project development lifecycle (Derenyielo & Joseph, 2018). A risk can have a potentially harmful impact on project performance, budget, or timeline, and if these risks occur in a project, they are termed as issues. In large scale projects like these, risk management techniques may contain extensive planning for every risk. Risk management can be efficiently done with help of objectives, deliverables, project vision, and scope. By knowing all this, risk can be identified at every stage of a project. Entire project team should focus on identification and prioritisation of risks, and how to plot a project risk. Risk management should not only be done at planning phase but it should also be tracked at a regular interval of time.
In this project, risk management has been properly done using various digital strategies and implementing required services. It has been already considered while creation of project that no future loss should be occurred. Communities are already adopting digital services and data that are being provided by city. Engaging online in a program will lead to a better local government. For sake of people’s safety, real-time updates of data are being shown to local people as before happening of any incident, people may get aware of it. Digital infrastructure of cities was improved with help of public Wi-Fi. The initiative of digital city has to be implemented across city, and all prevention steps have been taken in advance like proper internet set up with high-security features. As, city was about to transform into a digital world, so all digital environments and platforms have been made robust and checked that no vulnerability should be present which could directly or indirectly affect any citizen.
Procurement Management
Procurement refers to a process of identifying and accepting terms for acquiring services or goods from an outside source. It involves decisions that have to be taken for buying any commodity required for successful project execution. It is a good move to use different types of analysis such as cost analysis, and economic analysis. Procurement is used for ensuring proper receipt of work, commodity, or goods by recipient. In terms of project management, procurement management refers to collaborating with external sources or to make a contract with them for dealing with any sort of requirement fulfillment.
Procurement management in a project has been down in various steps such as planning procurement management, conducting procurement, controlling procurement, and closing procurement. In this project, procurement management has been effectively done to fulfill all sorts of needs (Hong, et al., 2018). Many people do not possess any computer, so implementing this project on that targeted people is not possible. Here, procurement management has been proven effective as government dealt with industries for improving digital infrastructure, and focused on creating digital libraries. Digitalisation focuses on keeping every record of a person in a digital environment that needs storage-space, so cloud space has been provided by organisations for storing data. An increase in accessibility and improvement in data signals have been done very efficiently. Use of social media platforms brought an extensive change as well (Rane, et al., 2018). For ensuring that people are meeting their needs, a strategic framework has been released which includes its outcomes as, providing support to empowered and connected communities, embracing digital disruption by retaining talent, cultivating liveable and vibrant places, strengthening resilience, and providing services that are customer-centric.
In respect to sustainable Sydney 2030, procurement management has to be done for keeping world connected. A globally connected world will lead to an efficient plan. This global connection is also increased by collaborating with other authorities for execution of a task. It is a fulfilling motto of initiative as well as ensuring that proper deliverables are being achieved. Community needs to be integrated across city and join delivery services. Community co-creation also helps in procurement management as it emphasises on escalating development and growth and communities are being created on basis of various factors. A governance model has been built with effect of enabling city to use new technologies.
Conclusion
A government project for maintaining sustainability across Sydney by year 2030 has been chosen and explained very well in this report. Digital City is a project which comes under Sustainable Sydney 2030. This report focuses on identifying all factors influencing digitalisation across city, and various management techniques that were applied during project creation. Various methodologies have been explained in this report and their practical implementation has been shown into it. Explanations of methodologies have been given in very simple terminology that can be easily understood.
References
Bacoup, P., Michel, C., Habchi, G. & Pralus, M. 2018, “From a Quality Management System (QMS) to a Lean Quality Management System (LQMS)”, TQM Journal, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 20-42.
Derenyielo, B. & Joseph, E.M. 2018, “RISK MANAGEMENT AND ENTERPRISE RISK MANAGEMENT IN NIGERIA: IMPLICATIONS FOR NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH”, Kuwait Chapter of the Arabian Journal of Business and Management Review, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 29-40.
Hong, Z., Lee, C. & Zhang, L. 2018, “Procurement risk management under uncertainty: a review”, Industrial Management & Data Systems, vol. 118, no. 7, pp. 1547-1574.
Paraschivescu, A.O. 2016, “Risk Management and Quality Management an Integrate Approach”, Economy Transdisciplinarity Cognition, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 55-61.
Rane, S.B., Yahya Abdul, M.N. & Bhandarkar, B.M. 2019, “Developing strategies to improve agility in the project procurement management (PPM) process”, Business Process Management Journal, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 257-286.
Digital city – City of Sydney (2020). Available at: https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/vision/sustainable-sydney-2030/digital-city (Accessed: 8 May 2020).