Project Monitoring and Controlling for ATA Solar Panel Installation Project

This essay discusses project monitoring and controlling tools for ATA's solar panel installation project in Quelicai, East Timor. It highlights the importance of project status dashboard and Gantt chart in keeping the project on track and within budget. It also emphasizes the significance of regular reports and governance meetings in ensuring smooth execution of the project. The essay also mentions the stakeholders involved in the project and the reports required for communication with team members.

The ATA Case Study
Assessment 3
[Name]
[Student no.]
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A non-profit and non-government organization – ATA, has proposed a project of installing 100
solar panels in the faraway areas of Quelicai, East Timor. The proposed project includes project
plan preparation, funds collection and selection of beneficiaries. In this essay, two important
aspects of project management shall be discussed – project monitoring / controlling and
communication. Monitoring shall ensure that project always remain on track and should be
completed under the assigned budget and time. Two monitoring tools have been taken up to in
this essay for monitoring and controlling the ATA project – Project status dashboard and Gantt
chart.
Project status dashboard shall help in monitoring six critical aspects of ATA. First is the budget.
ATA is looking after 1000 solar panels which have a considerable cost. They are required to be
stored in a warehouse which also consumes a part of budget. With the help of dashboard, all the
costs shall be displayed there and project manager can point how many solar panels should be
ordered on which day without adding much cost to warehouse pricing. Being a non-profit
organization, ATA cannot afford to hire or bill extra hours for any human or non-human
resource. To resolve this, dashboard shall keep updating the number of hired resources and
number of hours they have or are working. This will help in predicting in case any resource is
required to complete the work on time. ATA also needs to be informed about the tasks
completed or in-progress to monitor whether the project is on schedule. For instance, if the after
receiving the panels, installation work is not started within 20 hours (La Trobe University, 2017),
then this status should be communicated to management so that necessary action can be taken to
avoid delays. Monitoring also includes keeping the information update regarding the number of
employees on project and what tasks have been assigned to them. For instance: if ATA finds that
5 labours and 5 plumbers are assigned a task of cleaning the panel then it can instantly de-
allocate the plumbers from that job and assigned a plumbing job to them. Even though, work
hours of cleaning task get increased but plumbers can be utilized for efficiently in dealing with
drilling job. This ensures that there is a fair distribution of workload.
Another efficient monitoring and controlling tool are Gantt chart. It uses a combination of charts
to track the progress of the project i.e. Tracking Gantt chart (Kerzner, 2017). It uses combination
of graphs for depicting the milestones and activities of the project. ATA needs to know at what
date solar panels shall be received or ordered on what date they shall be installed or which
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activities are required to be completed for each of the above task. Gantt chart shows all such
milestones in the chart forms (Australia & Blanton, 2016) and also list of all tasks required to
complete a particular milestone. Gantt chart demands to follow a sequential way to implement
the project by the project manager. As a result of this, there is a constraint in implementing the
project using Gantt chart and hence may impose some challenges in project implication with
varied phases (Adler & Smith, 2009).
In order to keep every stakeholder informed about the status of the project, regular reports should
be shared with them along with weekly status meetings. Project governance meetings shall help
in fast decision making to ensure smooth execution of the project. These meetings shall also help
in evaluation of ATA solar panel installation project (Taylor, 2006). These meetings should take
place at regular interval so that project can be implemented in an optimized manner. East Timor
solar project is a complicated project so governance meeting should be held every month. The
complication arises because ATA is established in foreign country which is formed by the
licensing bodies of East Timor. Hence, conducting monthly meetings would ensure that project
does not face any hurdles in the final phase. The project requires different kinds of reports for
communication with team members. For instance: before starting the project, an initiation
document is prepared which includes title of project, duration of project, stakeholders of project,
deliverables and author. A status report is the key report of the project which contains elements
like – total number of activities, number of activities completed as on date, number of delayed
activities, number of activities to take place and completion status of project. Another report is
the risk report which contains complete list of the likely risks which may take place along with a
description of their impact on project and contingency plan. Risks may include rusted
equiupments, machine breakdown, etc. Another report may include change request report,
resource overview report, resource cost report and expense report. Change request report
includes number of change request reported, number of requests fulfilled and number of requests
implemented. The attendees of the project governance meetings include various different
stakeholders. The meetings should include the resources which are responsible for scrutinizing
the project’s requirements and also those resources which are decision maker. Another
stakeholder which should be a part of these meetings is the contact person of the contractor who
is responsible for installation of solar panels (APM Group Ltd., 2017). During the meetings,
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finances can be cross-checked and costs can be compared with records of ATA. This will
facilitate the transparency among the team members and management. Another stakeholder to be
present in these meetings includes the representative of East Timor company (Taylor, 2006). The
relevance of this stakeholder lies in the fact that installation of solar panels requires approval of
the local residents. Also, this stakeholder is responsible for implying the cultural challenges of
the resident to the team. This will help in removing any bottlenecks in initiation time. Along with
this, local residents are not familiar with the language of ATA as it is a foreign company, hence a
representative from the local community should also be present in the meeting. So that, negative
impacts of non-installation of solar panels can be communicated to the residents after consulting
with the East Timor.
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References
Adler, T., & Smith, W. (2009). How organisational cost reporting practices affect project
management: the issues of project review and evaluation. International Journal Of
Project Organisation And Management, 1(3), 309. doi: 10.1504/ijpom.2009.027541
APM Group Ltd. (2017). DEFINING RISK: THE RISK MANAGEMENT CYCLE. Retrieved
September 14, 2017, from https://ppp-certification.com/ppp-certification-guide/52-
defining-risk-risk-management-cycle36
Australia, C., & Blanton, S. (2016). Information Technology Project Management (2nd ed., pp.
12-14). USA: Pearson.
Kerzner, H. (2017). Project management metrics, KPIs, and dashboards (3rd ed., pp. 22-24).
USA: Pearson.
La Trobe University. (2017). Video 4: Project Risks. Retrieved September 14, 2017, retrieved
https://lms.latrobe.edu.au/mod/book/view.php?id=2493632&chapterid=201714
La Trobe University. (2017). Video 3: Stakeholder Engagement and Management. Retrieved
September 14, 2017, retrieved https://lms.latrobe.edu.au/mod/book/view.php?
id=2493632&chapterid=201713
Taylor, J. (2006). Project Scheduling and Cost Control (3rd ed., pp. 22-23). Ft. Lauderdale: J.
Ross Publishing Inc.
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