Conflict Resolution Assignment Report

Running head: CONFLICT RESOLUTION
Conflict Resolution: Holyrood Parliament construction project
Name of the student:
Name of the University:

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Introduction
Project management method and project management practices are referred to as two
most essential functions required for managing projects. The construction project nominated here
is the Holyrood, a project for the Scottish Government that was undertook to give a fantastic
construction for the usage of Scottish parliament (Swann 2016). It has been found that, in order
to accomplish any project the most essential indices on which the project manager and the other
project team associates need to focus are time, scope, quality and budget. Not only theses but
also, other factors that plays very essential role in project success are risk management,
stakeholder management, communication management and procurement management plan.
From the initiation stage upto project closure Holyrood project faced many challenges.
The conflict and stained relationship between project manager and project sponsor are elaborated
in this paper. Apart from that, in order to restrict the rise similar problems related to the effective
actions should be taken by the project sponsor and the project managers are also elaborated in
this report. In addition to this, the background of the conflict and the communication strategy and
its implications are all elaborated in this paper. After defining reason behind the conflict among
Project Sponsor (Mrs. Doig), project manager (M. Armstrong) and the Design Team, a detail
conflict management strategy is developed.
1. Strained relationship between the Project Sponsor and project manager
After investifating the detail scenario of Holyrood construction project it is identified that
the relationship between the project manager and the project sponsor was very poor. Due to
political issues the site selection was done accurately (Kerzner 2017). The project sponsor

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always expected a good project cost feasibility analysis report from the project manager.
However, the project manager failed to deliver a proper feasibility report to the project sponsor.
In other words, for estimating the project budget the feasibility study is very essential but the
project manager completed the project feasibility study very poorly which has no realistic value.
The other issues that impacted the relationship between both of them were lack of
communication (Heagney 2016). Due to lack of sufficient communication the project manager
failed to share the ideas and other project development aspects clearly to the project sponsor. In
case of such high level projects the choice of project sponsor plays significant role. However for
this project the project manager took political guidance instead of conducting discussion with the
project sponsor. Apart from that, project manager (My Doig) lacks construction related skills and
expertise as well which was another reason of poor relationship between the project manager and
the project sponsor. Though, change management is predictable for any project but for this
project change management was out of control because all the involved parties were not agreed
to all those decisions taken.
Responsible person for the delivery of the new Scottish Parliament Building
The responsibility to deliver a project is dependent on its nature, type and size (Meredith,
Mantel and Shafer 2017). The Scottish parliament building construction project was a complex
project the responbilities to deliver the project was on project manager, project sponsor and
design team.

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2. The emergence of conflict
Conflict emergence
Conflict is referred to as a situation which is completely unpredictable by nature. Neither
a project manager nor the project team members can realize or identify when a conflict can occur
within the working staffs and members. The stages of conflict must be understood by the project
supervisor to avoid unwanted and misunderstanding situation creating reasons. Conflicts emerge
on those stages where possibilities of misunderstanding present (Fleming and Koppelman 2016).
Latent conflict is that one, which exists for long time period after a certain period of time it
become visible to all the project team associates. As soon as the conflict becomes visible in order
to avoid further issues the team members automatically start behaving accordingly.
Its stages
Conflict emergence is comprises of 8 stages- latent conflict, conflict emergence, conflict
escalation, stalemate, de escalation or negotiation, dispute settlement and post conflict or peace
building.
Latent conflict: In order to meet project objective multiple numbers of members work as
a team. However, it is very common that the ideas, values, needs and personalities of different
member will be different (O'Sullivan 2017). It can create situation where taking one decision
may become difficult. This is not an issue unless in order to expose this type of differences an
event occurs.
Emergence: If it is found that the involved parties are failed to take one decision then a
conflict situation may rise. As soon as such conflicting situation occur it draw problems for
others as well. This type of conflict situations results tensions.

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Escalation: Sometime the involved parties fail to come on a resolution and for such cases
conflict may escalate.
Stalemate: Due to conflict escalation the stalemate may occur. In this situation neither
side of the conflict will be able to win.
De escalation: This is the stage where people who are actually unable to settle on a single
point start feel that this conflict has no end rather a conclusion. I this stage parties start
negotiating.
Resolution: The person responsible to make the resolution is the business owner after
listening opinion of all the involved parties.
Peace building: Once the involved parties reach a solution it become the project
supervisor responsibility to settle the relationship between the involved parties as well.
Different types of conflict
The diverse types of conflict that mainly occurs in office environment are task conflict,
relationship conflict and value conflict. Task conflict is the situation that occurs during serving
an activity, different people have varied norms, values and rules; the value conflict occurs when
it is found that multiple people from different cultural and religion background are working on a
same project (Van Gramberg et al. 2017). The other conflict is relationship conflict. It often
happens that parties involved in a project failed to take one decision. It leads relationship
between the team members downward.

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Provide a brief background to this conflict
For the Holyrood construction project the significant obstruction started with cultural
difficulties. The parties involved in the joint project were belongs to different cultural
background. Due to this reason the team members failed to work for the project as a team
effectively throughout (Hann, Nash and Heery 2019). The adopted construction project
management approach and the design criteria chosen for the project were very poor. The project
sponsor pointed this thing but project ignored this. It was another reason behind the conflict.
The ideas of varied project team were also different thus; the project has no clear
direction and stage control. In fact lack of leadership was the other reason of conflict. The
assigned project manager has not even a single authoritative command for the team thus due to
lack of leadership and assistance intra conflict occurred (O'Neill and McLarnon 2018). There
was no teamwork influence of political power; insufficient communication and poor
management were the reasons of the conflict.
3. Ways to stop repetition of the problem (pretending to be Paul Curren)
After investigating the detail Holyrood parliament building design project scenario it is
identified that the most important project development aspects and some project management
practices were missed by project manager (Mrs. Doig). As a result problems like time slippage,
cost slippage and communication issues occurred. In order to make sure that list of problems the
project manager had with the project sponsor not to repeat, a solution is provided in this section.
In order to overcome such conflict situation and ensure no repetition of the problem a conflict
management plan is developed.

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Conflicting situations can be resolved by avoiding conflict, competing against conflict,
accommodating, cooperating, collaborating and compromising. The situation faced by the
Holyrood construction project is unavoidable. Infact compromise such situation cannot give a
successful end result (Flores, Jiang and Manz 2018). The conflict management strategies that are
applicable for the construction project are- collaboration and cooperation.
The project team members had issues due to cultural gaps, In order to resolve this issues
the project supervisor need to implement specific norms, regulation and values. It is essential for
the project associates including project sponsors to maintain that particular norms and regulation
successfully throughout the project development life cycle period. The other issues that the
project faced is lack of communication. Due to insufficient communication the project team
associates failed to distribute their ideas and creativity with the rest of the team members (Broda
2017). As a result, coming to a particular resolution becomes hard for the project team. In order
to overcome this issue the best applicable option is implementation of open communication
strategy. Open communication provides a best applicable platform to the project team associates
to share their ideas and creativity with the rest of the team.
It helps to conduct discussion over debate. With the help of open communication team
members would be able to come to make effective decision without any sort of conflict. The
other issue that caused conflict was time slippage and cost slippage. Time and cost are the two
most effective and important factors or knowledge areas of project management. In order to
ensure no repetition of this problem the project manager need to design and conduct a feasibility
study to check feasibility of the project (Medina et al. 2019). If the project is found not to be
feasible then respective change management actions are needed to be taken by the project
manager after taking approval from the project manager and all other team associates. It has been

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found that for this project the project manager was unable to bring all the team members together
to take one decision. The feasibility report including the time that project will take to be
accomplished should be submitted to the project sponsor for final approval. If the above
mentioned aspects are properly followed then the problems occurred earlier will never occur.
4. Preparation for this negotiation
Issues those have been identified for the Holyrood Scottish parliament construction
project are vital and require major attention. The issues that are identified for the project are
either irreconcilable or neutral or negotiable.
For this particular project it is identified that all the identified issues are irreconcilable or
conflicting. The issues lead the project situation towards massive conflict. As a result the project
manager had to resign from her project manager position (Izmailov, Korneva and Kozhemiakin
2016). However while preparing for this negotiation the issues that have been identified are as
follows:
Issues Scale
Cultural gaps between the project team members Irreconcilable
Time slippage Irreconcilable
Cost slippage Irreconcilable
Lack of communication Irreconcilable
Lack of knowledge lack of leadership strategy Neutral

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No risk management plan Negotiable
5. The ways through which the issues are identified
The issues related to the Holyrood parliament house construction project are identified
through RIBA planning strategy. It is observed that at each stage of project development the
project was facing massive issues. The complete evaluation of the projec6t went wrong due to
lack of understanding of the project objectives and clients expectations. Managing a large project
is not an easy job. In order to manage any large and complex project the project managers mostly
divides it in small segments (Brester, Ryzhikov and Semenkin 2017). However, all of the project
development stages are interconnected to each other. In other words, the output of one project
development phase leads as an input to the very next phase. It is observed that in case of the
Holyrood construction project all the project development stages were connected to each other.
On the other hand, it is also observed that the completely well structured project help the project
team member to control and monitor the project accurately by ensuring timely correction over
some of the development actions (Adake, Lakade and Gupta 2019). The objective of the
Holyrood construction project was to give a home fit for the Scottish parliament.
The business case developed for the project was absolutely justified. The scope of the
project was not well defined therefore, interrupted the project quality. The estimated project
beget was not feasible and followed by the project development life cycle. Infact the time tale
developed by the project manager was also not up to the mark (Novo, Landis and Haley 2017). It

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is also observe that the project scope was not developed considering the clines requirements and
expectations.
The project planning and development phase was also comprises of some issues and
major risks. It is observed that, due to lack of appreciation for the project plan the budget was
under estimated. The design procurement approach selected for the project was not correct. The
communication maintained across the project development network was very poor thus
information were failed to share among the project associates frequently. No systematic
approach was taken to handle the PPQ of the project. Project sponsor plays vital role in every
project but for this project before taking any decision the sponsor was not found to be informed
thus he was unaware of the status of the project and also not aware of how to control and monitor
the project and make it successfully completed within assigned time and budget maintaining
expected quality. Issues were also occurred during the execution and project control stage.
However above all these issues it is also recognized that, the quality of the project has
successfully met the client’s expectation.
6. Explain the strategy & its communication implications
The specific strategy which gives high level communication implications as well is RIBA
plan. The purpose of using RRIBA plan of work is to deliver better building and places with
sustainable environment and stronger community support as well. There are many countries
where no particular building design plan is available. According to this strategy the particular
stages that are to be followed during the design and evaluation of any project include:
 Agree appointment with the professional project team
 Developing brief with the clients

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 Creation of concept design options
 Design coordination
 Planning the detail application
 Development of an accurate construction instruction
 Tender design
 Consent needed before the construction
 Award the building contract
 Construction of the building
 Inspection of the progress
 Final handover
According to this plan a project manager needs to control and monitor the project
progress until it is handover to the client. The pre design, design and post design stages are
different from each their but interconnected. If any one of the stage if nit monitored accordingly
then the project manager will fail to meet the expectation of the clients (Fletcher and Satchwell
2019). According to RIBA planning strategy the development ideas and design strategy are
directed by the design team. In case of Holyrood building construction also the design team
performed their assigned roles and responsibilities according to the project requirements.
The core members of the project team who plays essential role include lead designed and
architect. All design principles are needed to be well maintained and followed by the project tea,
associates to make sure that the project has met the expectation of the clients (Sinclair 2019).
However, a construction programme is also needed to be prepared as per this strategy. This
strategy gives better communication opportunities between the clients and the project team
members. In other words, the project team members get opportunities to share their creative

11CONFLICT RESOLUTION
ideas with the rest of the project team member with this strategy. In order to implement effective
team work, RIBA work plan is one of the most widely used planning strategies these days. Apart
from this, it helps to give good risk management and stakeholder management, communication
management plan for the project team members.
As per this plan the project team would get opportunity to share the status with the
clients. If the client gives feedback on the project progress then based on that further changes are
needed to be implemented by the design team. It helps to improve the team coordination resolve
intra team project conflict. Apart from that, it also helps the team to keep the project within
estimated budget and timeline without delay and over allocation budget issue. It successfully
increases the balance between the project sponsor and team associates. The procurement
strategies become successfully implemented and the building regulations are also done
accurately based on the project requirements. The design plan developed through RIBA work
plan ensure that expected outcomes are generated from the project development activities
successfully.
Conclusion
The entire discussion concludes that, Holyrood constriction was a long run project that
gained success in the field of construction projects in Scotland. During the progress of this
project time slippage and cost slippage occurred but rest of the project related knowledge areas
were well maintained in the Holyrood construction. Each and every project related indices were
properly managed. The situation become worse, due to the intra team conflict between project
manager, sponsor and the design team. In order to such difficult and complex situation a conflict
management strategies is developed consists of some steps. It is recognized that if strategy is

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properly followed then a project team would be able to work all together without any kind of
communication gaps or misunderstanding. Time and cost were the first priority for the project
and quality required for the project was very high. However, actually the team failed to meet the
time and cost expectation and resulted significant slippage. However, at the end of the project
expected quality was achieved. A negotiation is prepared followed by the challenges and their
possible consequences. A detail communication strategy is prepared in this report. Apart from
that, the benefits that a project may get from the communication are also elaborated successfully
in this paper.
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