Conflict Resolution Assignment Report

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

1CONFLICT RESOLUTION
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

2CONFLICT RESOLUTION
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.

3CONFLICT RESOLUTION
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.