Project Planning and Budgeting: Definition of Quality, Tools and Techniques, and Cost Implications

This article discusses project quality management, its definition, and the tools and techniques necessary for planning it. It also explores how poor quality affects project cost and client satisfaction. The article references ISO standards and certifications and the Sidney Opera House Construction failure as an example. The tools and techniques discussed include control charts, benchmarking, and flowcharts.

Running head: PROJECT PLANNING AND BUDGETING 1
Project Planning and Budgeting
Student’s Name
Institution Affiliation

PROJECT PLANNING AND BUDGETING 2
Question 1
How do you define quality on a project?
In accordance with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), it refers
to project quality as the totality of characteristics of an entity, which can meet user needs and
specifications (Chiarini, 2015). Accordingly, management of project quality is a procedure
that is required to make sure that a project is in the position to satisfy the requirements that it
is desired to perform.
Which tools and techniques do you think are a necessity for planning a project’s quality
management?
Quality planning management has seven major quality tools for usage in the management of
quality planning and quality control processes (Ashuri, Jallan, & Lee, 2018). These tools
include control charts, scatter diagrams, check sheets, cause-and-effect diagrams, Pareto
diagrams, histograms, and flowcharts.
How the project cost is affected by poor quality
Poor quality comes as a result of the negligence of the top management and that of the
project team. As a result, poor quality compromises the product to be delivered causing the
rejection of the products for failing to meet quality standards. It also results in incurring an
additional cost because if the product does not meet the quality standards, it will lead to a rise
in the cost because of reprocessing the project to ensure that it meets the quality standards
(Chiarini, 2015). Moreover, it leads to a lack of trust in the delivered products since clients
will have lost their trust in the project team thus reducing the chances of being awarded other
projects. For instance, due to poor quality, it led to the Sidney Opera House Construction to
fail at first such that instead of taking four years and cost of AUS $7 million, it took fourteen
years and cost AUS $102 million.

PROJECT PLANNING AND BUDGETING 3
References
Ashuri, B., Jallan, Y., & Lee, J. H. (2018). Materials Quality Management for Alternative
Project Delivery (No. FHWA-GA-2018-1622).
Chiarini, A. (2015). Effect of ISO 9001 non-conformity process on the cost of poor quality in
capital-intensive sectors. International Journal of Quality & Reliability
Management, 32(2), 144-155.

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Question 2 Discussion
RE: Defining quality in project management and its relation to client satisfaction, and quality
achievement in project management.
I greatly, concur with the definition of quality provided by Jackson De Oliveira that project
quality has to ensure that it meets the client’s specifications. In addition to that, the project
quality is supposed to be delivered in line with the ISO standards and certifications.
Furthermore, the project should not only satisfy the specifications of the client, but it has to
be delivered by the projects due date as well as within the set budget (Heldman, 2013).
As a result, I would add on by saying that the course of quality development involves certain
project tools which are essential to delivering quality projects. Some of these necessities
include:
Control chart: Some of the necessities for quality projects include the quality control charts.
Accordingly, quality control charts play a vital role in aiding to determine if the project is
within or outside the statistical control. Above all, the most significant task of control charts
is to monitor the Schedule Performance Index (SPI) as well as the cost performance index
(CPI) (Project Management, 2013).
Benchmarking: Benchmarking allows for the making of comparison to identify excellent and
outstanding practices that lead to exemplary project planning and management practices.
Poor quality is a major killer, particularly in the building construction industry. For instance,
because of poor quality and defective construction approaches it costs the Sidney Opera
House Construction failure at first making it incur additional construction cost of more than
AUS $95 million and ten years. I found your concept on flow chart as a useful tool since it is
one of the tools that helps project managers to understand the cost of quality to avoid cases of

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project failure like that experienced by the Sidney Opera House Construction in the initial
phase.

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References
Heldman, K. (2013). Pmp: project management professional exam review guide. Retrieved
from https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.laureate.net.au
Project Management, I. (2013). Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge
(PMBOK® Guide)–Fifth Edition. Newtown Square, Pennsylvania: Project
Management Institute