Advanced Project Planning and Visualization, MSc Project Management

This project planning assignment, submitted by a student, examines project planning and visualization within the context of construction management, particularly focusing on the challenges and strategies involved in managing remote teams and multi-cultural stakeholders. The assignment del...Read More

Running Head: PROJECT PLANNING
Project Planning and Visualization in Construction management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Part 1:
Communication of project Manager with the remote team members
The key to communicate with the remote team members that work together are scattered
around the world. The first criteria is to have transparency. The documents related to the project
must be made available to all the members at the earlier time possible, the sharing of documents
must be effective. Then the decisions announcement must be done in an assembly so that all the
members get the update at the same time (Henderson, Stackman and Lindekilde 2016). The
context of the project must be clear to all at the beginning of the project so that short reply at the
later time are not confusing. Project manager must take daily update from all the team members
to keep every progress of the project. The project manager must have empathy towards all the
remote members and maintain a good relationship with everyone. Feedback must be collected
from every member as the loop holes of the project must be overcome at the earliest (Deshpande
et al. 2016). The right communication ways and tools must be used by the manager that fit to the
budget as well as perform efficiently. For communication with the remote members mostly the
form of interaction is in written form. Hence, project manager must carefully text or e-mail
details to the members. The scheduling of the tasks and assigning of the task must be done at the
beginning of the project with proper organization of work as per the geographic location of the
members. The team rules must be set to improve the efficiency of the team.
Management of multi-cultural project stakeholders
The presence of multi-cultural stakeholders in a project is challenging yet benefit in
international projects. The Project manager becomes more responsible to manage them
efficiently and balance the communication between them. The chances of more interaction
between the stakeholders benefits the project only. The most challenging part for the project

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manager is to bring the differences of culture, thoughts and opinions of multi-culture
stakeholders to a common ground. The international project is about maintaining the harmony
considering the people, culture and industry with the simultaneous integration of all the three
mentioned (Huang 2016). The cultural management is one of the prime concern of the project
manager. The development of the misunderstanding due to the cultural differences must be
solved by arranging engagement programs of stakeholders. In case of international project, the
scheduled meetings on Skype, conference calls, accounting everyone’s opinions as aspects
towards the project and reaching a common ground that is in favor of all the stakeholders. The
project manager must consider the new aspects of project and eventually the differences in
culture may bring innovation in the project. This is a huge benefit to the overall project. The
team members can exchange their cultural practices and enhance their personality and
perspective towards a new culture (Lückmann and Färber 2016). This process can only be
implemented by the Project manager. During the planning phase the project manager must aware
every stakeholders about the cultural background of each other. Communication is the key to
every solution. The manager also have to apply an effective communication model that
influences the stakeholders to participate actively in every meetings and channelize their need
and demands in the project.
Project Manager cope with stakeholder’s pressure from time and cost overruns
In every project the cost and scheduling is done at the planning phase. In terms of
construction project the estimation of the budget is done thoroughly by the contractor taken up
the project then the project manager along with the team members finalizes the total cost and
prepares the budget of the project (Shah 2016). The increased in the cost of the budget may occur
for the various reasons such as the need for new technology in the project, or machinery, change

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in scope or new demand from the stakeholders. The project manager must formulate a strategic
planning with the consideration of risk of budget overrun, the relationship with the vendors must
be maintained to stick to the budget and keeping update from the stakeholders to incorporate any
change at the earlier time possible. The schedule overrun can be minimized with the
implementation of project management tool and monitor every tasks and team members on the
same. The stakeholders must also have the knowledge about the schedule of the project to give
them a clear picture of the possibility of changes that can in incorporated in the project
(ASMITHA 2019). The project manager must initiate meeting and engagement programs with
the stakeholders to understand the changes proposed by them otherwise this becomes an added
pressure to the manager. This directly cause in the rise of the budget and disturbance in the
schedule of the project. The project manager feels pressured and the coping mechanism is to
follow the steps discussed above.
Advanced technique of scheduling and planning to overcome the issues
The advanced techniques for the purpose of planning and scheduling is that the process
can be optimized with minimizing the issues like the cost and time overrun. The advanced
techniques are mostly used for the complex project with lots of scope change from the
stakeholder’s side. The availability of modern scheduling techniques are mathematical analysis
that is the Critical Path Method, this can be obtained from several Project Management Tools
such as MS Project software (Braglia and Frosolini 2014). The CPM helps in visualizing the
dependencies, activities and deliverables. The next is the duration compression, in this the
schedule of the project is adjusted with hampering the scope. This is carried out by crashing and
fast tracking methods (Georges, Semaan and Rizk 2014). Crashing is about the addition of
resources so that the project meet its schedule. Whereas, fast tracking is about completion of

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tasks parallel to another one to speed up the completion of project at the stipulated time. The
advanced technique for planning of project is brainstorming, it helps in developing creative
thinking and planning the process of project in an effective manner, the creation of effect and
cause diagram of the project such as fishbone diagram. It will consist of the important factor
required in the project and the pictorial representation helps in sticking to the plan and schedule
of the project.
Part 2:
Multi- Constraints Planning
The practical application of the multi-constraints planning is possible in the scenario where a
project involves several involving partner and activities all at the same time. Taking an example
of a MEP system that is Mechanical, electrical and plumbing (Hu et al. 2006). It consist of
several subsystems within it. This system is mostly used in every construction project. The
project consist of several parallel activities and involvement of multiple participant (Lequay et
al. 2016). All these combines to form a multi-constraints approach toward the project. In the
situation of a concurrent and complex project of construction that involves pressure on the
manager to complete the project before the deadline and without disturbing the budget and
resources of project is hard and difficult to manage by the Project Manager only (Ke et al.
2016). It requires vigorous planning and collaboration to hike the process of supply chain
management in both upstream and downstream directions. In any construction project the
management of information and visualization is all about strategic planning. On such approach is
the use of multi-constraints planning system, this is one on the innovative approach in
construction management projects (Jin 2016). The approach of multi-constraints planning
techniques is based on five aspects as those are follows:

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 Uncertainty Handling- All the occurred uncertainties are identified well and then
incorporated in during the project without hampering the schedule of the project. This is
done by including buffer in the schedule of the project (Zhou et al. 2017). The generation
of backlog and protecting the tasks of the project from constraints are implemented so
that the variable inflows are restricted from effecting the project.
 Multilevel and collaborative planning- The phase of the construct must include both the
upstream and downstream participants of the project those are planners of the project and
the workers of the project (Shu et al. 2017). The effort exerted by the collaboration of
both the participants are effective.
 Practicality Optimization- The software used in any particular project must have simple
approach as well as the heuristic approach to optimize the activities of the project
(Ravadanegh et al. 2016). This technique of hybrid optimization is essential to obtain the
best results.
 Consideration of multiple constraints- The possibility of all the constraints in any
construction project are estimated, evaluated and documented (Zeng Et al. 2016).These
constrains must be devaluated before presenting to work force for the execution.
 Adequate visual representation- Predicting the output of a project is done through proper
evaluation of the planning and make aware the workforce of the project about it (YU et
al. 2015). The technology of visualization is best to predict and lay out the output. Hence,
those can be obtained in the form of bar graph, charts and worksheets. This will help is
providing a pictorial form of the result to the crew.
At the advanced level the decision support system also uses the multi constraints planning
system to provide its output. The approach is also about extending its capacity to provide

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technologies of virtual reality and four dimensional visualization (Fan et al. 2019). The
application like Visual Basics and AutoCAD are the prime basis for its operations. The
optimization of the multi constraints approach is done to reschedule the planning of the project
with constraints like limitation on the area of work, specified resources and sources and
dependency between several activities (Ma et al. 2019).
The scheduling of the project in construction is all about the presence of the constraints
that are typically of the particular type, those are contract, physical, information and resources.
The planning in any construction project t requires a huge amount of strategic planning and
scheduling (Kangsheng et al. 2016). The above discussed constraints are common to present in
all the project. Hence, the new innovative approach of multi constraints planning application is
effective yet requires extended learning to properly regulate the processes inside it (Zhao et al.
2020). The value obtained by the use of this application is that it resolves several issues of the
project at a time. Along with this it invites innovation as collaboration between the two divisions
of the project occurs as discussed above. In this fast growing world the expectation of the
stakeholders to complete a project on time with the minimum usage of the constraints are
essential (Doshi and Kamdar 2018). The constraints that may come on the path of implementing
the application of multi constraint approach are the project manager may not have complete
knowledge about the procedures of the approach, the different levels of the project that are the
planners of the project and the workers executing the tasks may not communicate well and move
forward in different directions (Chanjuan et al. 2016). All the constraints of the project may not
be acknowledged by the planning team, the visual representation of the project may not be
obtained at the required time due to technical failure.

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The involvement of huge risk of no coordination with the participating workforce and the
stakeholder’s engagement, the communication is not managed or planned effectively
(Sivasundari and Ramakrishnan2019). The application may fail t6o provide the adequate
optimization to the project at time of executing of the tasks. It lacks in flexibility that is if the
additional task is required to squeeze in the schedule of the project it becomes difficult (Zhang
2017). The collaborative approach makes it difficult for the manager to bring dynamic changes
to the project schedule, he has to consult with both the planning team as well as the workers and
then introduce any task. Hence, this will take a huge amount of time (Qingyang 2017). The
overall process will be affected and disturbed with small changes. The incorporation of changes
from the demand of the stakeholders will become difficult (Wei, Wang and Ma 2019). This
approach cannot be applied to small project as it includes various number of operation which are
not necessary in a small project (Liu et al. 2016). The approach may remain busy in optimizing
the tasks and ignore the possible risks that may occur during the process.

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