Importance of Project Closeout and Capturing Lessons Learned

This document discusses the importance of project closeout and capturing lessons learned. It explains the reasons why project closeout is important, such as confirming objectives and documenting project activities. It also explores the benefits of capturing lessons learned, including avoiding similar challenges in future projects. Additionally, it highlights how project teams, managers, and organizations can use lessons learned to improve project performance and document project failures.

Running head: PROJECT MANAGEMENT 1
Project Management
Student’s Name
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PROJECT MANAGEMENT 2
Table of Contents
Part 1.....................................................................................................................................................3
What are some of the reasons why it is important to close out a project?..............................................3
Why should projects capture lessons learned?.......................................................................................3
Part 2.....................................................................................................................................................4
Summary of the Project Undertaken......................................................................................................4
Problems Encountered in the Project.....................................................................................................4
Site accidents.....................................................................................................................................5
Environmental effects........................................................................................................................5
Defective design................................................................................................................................5
Shortage of labour.............................................................................................................................6
Materials and equipment failure........................................................................................................6
Strengths and Weaknesses of the Team.................................................................................................6
Strengths............................................................................................................................................6
Weaknesses.......................................................................................................................................6
Allocation of Tasks and Quality of Communication..............................................................................7
Lessons learnt........................................................................................................................................7
Conclusions...........................................................................................................................................7

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Part 1
What are some of the reasons why it is important to close out a project?
Project close out is the last phase of the project that indicates the formal accomplishment
of the work. It is a critical moment of the project life cycle, which is more of making a final
presentation to the client (Kerzner, 2018). In this sense, project close out is an important part
of the project in the following ways:
 Confirmation of whether the objectives have been attained: At the end of each
activity, it is relevant to check if all the outlined practices have been carried out as
planned, since the client hires a project team so as to help them realize certain
organisational objectives. The process of project closure allows one to obtain user
acceptance testing sign-off from the client (Meredith, Mantel Jr, & Shafer, 2017).
This implies that the project team has realized the project objectives are agreed upon
signing of the contract. Confirmation of objectives is a formal customer sign-off,
which has to be provided by the customer as a confirmation about the delivered
deliverables that marks the completion of the project.
 Documentation and validation. This closeout practice is done to ensure that all project
activities shortlisted n the work breakdown structure have been accomplished.
 Reviewing the business case study as well as the project charter to make sure that all
documentations regarding the requirements has been completed.
 It provides guidelines about the scope as well as responsibility for completion of the
project, maintenance and additional services that warranty liability for maintenance of
the work to be undertaken in future and any expansion required toward the project.
Why should projects capture lessons learned?
There is need to capture lesson learned because documenting these lessons describes
factors that led to the project going wrong and factors that led to the project moving in the
right direction throughout the project lifecycle (Duffield & Whitty, 2015). Although each
project face distinct set of challenges, but individual challenges repeat themselves. Therefore,
documenting the causes of variances helps to think about corrective measures to avert similar
challenges in future.

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What are some ways that the project team members, project managers and the
organization can use lessons learned?
 The project team will utilise lessons learnt to avert similar matters from happening in
future project, which hone the performance of the team and the project as a whole.
 Lessons learned can be stored in archives as organisational process resources that may
be made available for all future projects with similar requirements (Bertels, Koen, &
Elsum, 2015).
 Lessons learned allows the project team, the project manager and the organisation to
document the causes of the project failure so that they can improve on these
weaknesses to turn them into strengths.
Part 2
Summary of the Project Undertaken
As a result of the increase in population and absence of schools offering different
educational levels in Al Wathba region in Abu Dhabi, the project management team was
given the task to carry out a building project. The project name is “Al Wathba Privet School”.
The objective of this project is to develop a modern school, which comprises all education
level that is from early childhood education, primary education and secondary education. The
project will ensure that it provide Al Wathba region with advanced learning resources as well
as experienced staff that match with Abu Dhabi Department of Education and Knowledge
standers. The building of Al Wathba Privet School projects has been divided into various
parts such as project cycle, project charter, project management office organisational chart,
project resources, staffing and project progress tracking.
Achievement of Project Objectives
The objective of Al Wathba Privet School is to ensure that it delievrs a safe, clean and
sustiatianble setting for all students. In order to ensure that these objectives have been
attained the project will work in a well-organized manner sin its operations. On top of that,
the success of the project will require the school to be supportive by providing an extensive
range of learning techniques surrounding and learning resources with advanced technology.
On the same note, the building project has been categorised into five key deliverables such as
design, construction, site organisation, engineering works, testing and commissioning.

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Problems Encountered in the Project
In the course of the project it was faced by several problems such as site accidents,
environmental effects, defective design, shortage of labour, materials and equipment failure.
Site accidents
The problem of site accidents was a major issue in the building project. These
accidents consisted falls, truck by objects, ladder accidents, slip and fall and scaffolding
accidents.
 Falls: The injury of fall was particularly caused by project workers working near
open-sided floor steps sideways or backwards without looking. These accidents were
majorly happened on stairwells without guardrails (Kang, Siddiqui, Suk, Chi, & Kim,
2017).
 Truck by objects: Most of these type of accidents happened as a result of the project
using unskilled workforce who did not have trained skills regarding the use of
machinery and equipment.
 Ladder accidents: This was among the leading causes of injury during the project.
Most of the ladder accidents included falls which occurred due to workers using
wrong types of ladders in performing their operations (Wong, Wang, Law, & Lo,
2016). Additionally, most workers were victims of setting up the ladder in an
improper manner resulting in
 Slip and fall: Indeed, this is the most common accidents that was experienced in the
construction site. This type of accident is related to unsafe conditions such as exposed
stakes and holes.
 Scaffolding accidents: Due to the building reaching high levels it required to erecting
scaffolding to work at these high levels. The project experienced several cases of
scaffolding accidents due to poorly erected scaffolds.
Environmental effects
The construction project was faced by bad weather conditions particularly heavy
rainfall. heavy rains greatly impacted on the construction in a negative way since the rain was
experienced almost every day particularly in the mid of the day. Consequently, this led to the
contractor expending a lot of income on labour, which led to the project running short of
income to run other project activities (Durdyev, Omarov, & Ismail, 2017).

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Defective design
The problem of defective design happened because of failure of the contractor to
produce an accurate and well-structured construction documents.
Shortage of labour
Shortage of labour in the construction industry is not only a problem in this project,
but it is a problem that affects Abu Dhabi as a country. Many young people are not ready to
work in the construction industry. Therefore, the Al Wathba Privet School Project has been
faced by a similar challenge of labour shortage. Due to lack of labour force the project could
not manage to deliver the project based on the planned schedule (Aziz & Abdel-Hakam,
2016).
Materials and equipment failure
The project was also faced by the problem of equipment and material failure. Due to failure
of equipment the project would be forced to hire materials and equipment from outside at an
additional cost, which caused the project to run short of resources to run other project
activities.
Strengths and Weaknesses of the Team
Strengths
Good judgement and ability to prioritize: The project manager was continuously involved in
making decisions on every matter. The ability to prioritize activities is a key element toward
the success of the project. The ability to prioritize activities allowed budgeting, and
scheduling decisions.
Efficient and effective communication skills: Communication key to successful relations as
well as effective working of project teams for a common objective. The ability for the project
to communicate effectively allowed the team to be outcome-driven.
Ability to strategize: All project activities are lead by the project manager, which help to
ensure that each aspect of the project is effectively controlled starting from initiation to
completion.
Ability to track the project process: Tracking the project progress is significant in the sense
that it becomes easier to locate any problem and resolve it early enough. Similarly, tracking
progress allow the manager to ensure that the project is in line with the project plan to avoid
going off the track.

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Weaknesses
Lack of sufficient labour force: The project was faced by shortage of labour. As a result, the
project had to move on at a slow pace, which means that the project could not be delivered on
time and within budget.
Challenges in controlling site accidents: The project has been faced by numerous cases of site
accidents, which has caused the project to incur additional charges on treatment of its
employees. On the same note, the many accidents shows that the project did not have a well-
planned strategy on how to counter issues of site accidents like training employees on ways
to enhance site safety.
Allocation of Tasks and Quality of Communication
The allocation of task has been undertaken in the most effective way. The project
manager has allocated the project activities in an equitable manner among the project team.
For instance, the project has been divided into departments like the role of the administrative
department is to aid the project manager in ensuring that project becomes profitable (Landau,
2018). The administrator collects data, assess the data and giving a recommendation
regarding the direction that the project should take.
Lessons learnt
There are various lessons that I have learned:
The project manager plays a critical role toward the project success because they are tasked
with the responsibility to control and guide the entire project.
The success of a project calls for multifaceted efforts from all project stakeholders whereby
each contributes to different activities.
Communication is paramount for any project. Through communication the project manager,
project team and the organisation are able to discuss different matters related to the project
(Ray, 2017). Also communication allows each project member to be aware of the project
requirements and work toward attaining these requirements.
Conclusions
In conclusion the building project of Al Wathba private school in this region is
essential because it would cater for the needs of the large population that currently do not
have access to schools in the region. To ensure that the project becomes a success, the project
planned its activities by categorising them into different parts such as the project cycle, the

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project management office, project charter among others. By doing so, it would be easier to
manage the project because each category was assigned a leader that would report to the
project manager the progress of the work in each activity.
References
Aziz, R. F., & Abdel-Hakam, A. A. (2016). Exploring delay causes of road construction
projects in Egypt. Alexandria Engineering Journal, 55(2), 1515-1539.
Bertels, H. M., Koen, P. A., & Elsum, I. (2015). Business models outside the core: Lessons
learned from success and failure. Research-Technology Management, 58(2), 20-29.
Duffield, S., & Whitty, S. J. (2015). Developing a systemic lessons learned knowledge model
for organisational learning through projects. International journal of project
management, 33(2), 311-324.
Durdyev, S., Omarov, M., & Ismail, S. (2017). Causes of delay in residential construction
projects in Cambodia. Cogent Engineering, 4(1), 1291117.
Kang, Y., Siddiqui, S., Suk, S. J., Chi, S., & Kim, C. (2017). Trends of fall accidents in the
US construction industry. Journal of Construction Engineering and
Management, 143(8), 04017043.
Kerzner, H. (2018). Project management best practices: Achieving global excellence. New
York: John Wiley & Sons.
Landau, P. (2018, July 3). Project Cycle Management. Retrieved from:
https://www.projectmanager.com/blog/project-cycle-management-a-quick-guide
Meredith, J. R., Mantel Jr, S. J., & Shafer, S. M. (2017). Project management: a managerial
approach. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

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Ray, S. (2017, June 22). Project Management Office. Retrieved from:
https://www.projectmanager.com/blog/guide-to-pmo-project-management-office
Wong, L., Wang, Y., Law, T., & Lo, C. T. (2016). Association of root causes in fatal fall-
from-height construction accidents in Hong Kong. Journal of Construction
Engineering and Management, 142(7), 04016018.

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