PPMP20009 Leading Lean Projects: Home Construction Project Report

This report discusses the application of lean project management principles to a home construction project with a fixed budget and timeline. It outlines project management processes, emphasizing scope, cost, resource, and schedule management. Effective stakeholder communication and vendor management are highlighted as crucial for project success. The report details how lean management can be implemented to finalize client requirements, improve communication, and manage subcontractors, ultimately ensuring project completion within constraints. The analysis incorporates the PMBOK guide and lean methodologies to optimize value and minimize waste throughout the project lifecycle.

Running head: LEADING LEAN PROJECT
Leading Lean Project
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................2
2. Selection and Explanation of Different Project Management Processes...............................2
2.1 Finalization of the Client’s Requirements in terms of Scope..........................................2
2.2 Proper Communications with all Relevant Stakeholders being Effective and Efficient. 3
2.3 Successful Management of the Subcontractors and Vendors..........................................4
3. Detailed Explanation of the Aspects for Achieving Lean Project Management for building
the Home....................................................................................................................................5
3.1 Explanation of Lean Management to be implemented for Finalization of Client’s
Requirements..........................................................................................................................5
3.2 Explanation of Lean Management to be implemented for Communications with all
Stakeholders...........................................................................................................................6
3.3 Explanation of Lean Management to be implemented for Management of the
Subcontractors and Vendors..................................................................................................7
4. Conclusion..............................................................................................................................8
References..................................................................................................................................9

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1. Introduction
Lean project management can be referred to as the subsequent usage of different
principles of lean manufacturing towards proper practice of PM. The major goal of the lean
project management is to increase the value during minimization of waste (Martínez-Jurado
& Moyano-Fuentes, 2014). The following report outlines a brief discussion on leading lean
project for a case study of building of houses. Project management processes would be
proposed for the project manager for properly managing, building and delivering the project
within time.
2. Selection and Explanation of Different Project Management Processes
2.1 Finalization of the Client’s Requirements in terms of Scope
A project manager works for a housing builder, who is responsible for constructing
homes for clients. A client wants to build his house with the organization and he has a budget
of 500000 Australian dollars and the timeline provided is for 12 months (Fullerton, Kennedy
& Widener, 2014). The project managers would be responsible for ensuring that the client is
satisfied after building the house and after following every requirement within timeline and
budget, provided by the client. The Project Management Body of Knowledge or PMBOK is
the collection of standard terminology as well as guidelines for any particular project. This
particular guide even overlaps with the generalized management about proper planning,
organization, staffing, execution as well as controlling the detailed operations of the
respective company (Eastham et al., 2014). The other disciplines of this management involve
financial forecasting, budgeting, management science, organizational behaviour and even any
other methodology of planning.
The requirements of the client regarding his house related to budget and timeline are
needed to be fulfilled. The various knowledge areas of PMBOK are needed to be considered
for the project, which include project integration management, project scope management,
project schedule management, project cost management, project quality management, project
resource management, project communications management, project risks management,
project procurement management and finally project stakeholder management (Eastham et
al., 2014). In this particular case study, the client has provided two constraints to be
maintained, which are budget and timeline. The budget provided by the client is 500000
Australian dollars and the timeline provided is for 12 months (Charron et al., 2014). As a
result, the project manager has to consider few knowledge areas of PMBOK, such as project

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scope management, project cost management, project resource management and project
schedule management.
i) Project Scope Management: As there is a chance that scope might change with the
project work, it is extremely important and significant to define the boundaries of the project,
only to be monitored regularly (Tenera & Pinto, 2014). The first step would be planning
scope management and then collect all types of requirements. The detailed requirements of
the final product are being assembled and itemized. As soon as scope is being defined, the
scope of the project would be validated and controlled properly. The scope statement should
be revisited regularly for ensuring that the current project status is being completed.
ii) Project Cost Management: The client has provided a fixed budget of 500000
Australian dollars for completing the entire project work (Goetsch & Davis, 2014). As a
result, it is needed to maintain a constant monitoring of the budget is required for planning
cost management and successful estimating costs and controlling of costs.
iii) Project Resource Management: The project manager has to manage the project
resources for ensuring that the minimum requirements for the roles are being fulfilled and the
overall project structure is maintained under every circumstance. The activity resources are
being estimated and these resources are being controlled after proper analysis to ensure that
the usage is not exceeded.
iv) Project Schedule Management: This particular knowledge area of PMBOK is
required to be ensured as the respective client has given a timeline of 12 months for the
building (Bhasin, 2015). To maintain this particular schedule, it is required to plan schedule
management and activities should be defined properly. It would ensure that the project is
being completed within 12 months and would not exceed the timeline.
2.2 Proper Communications with all Relevant Stakeholders being Effective and
Efficient
Proper communications with all the stakeholders is extremely vital and noteworthy
for a successful execution of this project work. Project communications management is the
next vital knowledge area of PMBOK. This particular knowledge area enables the
stakeholders to be completely satisfied as soon as any type of unexpected change would take
place and hence it is required to develop a proper communications plan for keeping the
stakeholders within the loop in the entire project work for communicating early and reducing
any kind of unexpected issue (McCann et al., 2015). The communications management plan

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can recognize the requirements of regular communication with every stakeholder like
progress update and investor circular. Moreover, it even recognizes any type of specified
communication processes for the unexpected project change or issue.
It is also needed to manage communications during execution of the project work
after proper monitoring of this specific communications plan (Kreimeier et al., 2014). Since
the client has given the project to build a house, it would be extremely important and
significant to discuss the entire project plan sequentially with all the stakeholders, especially
the client. An effective communication would ensure that the stakeholders are receiving
information, which is accurate to the requirements and also building positive attitudes to the
organization or project successfully. Proper creation of influence and positive relations would
be effective for the business to influence source of power and maintain a strong stakeholder
relationship (Lawal et al., 2014). As the customers would be making purchasing decisions, a
strong position in the business would be maintained for checking if the project team is
fulfilling each and every requirement of the client.
2.3 Successful Management of the Subcontractors and Vendors
Vendors and subcontractors are extremely important for any project to make sure that
the raw materials and product and service is being obtained under every circumstance. It is
required to manage the vendors properly after enlisting that the vendors are providing proper
goods and services for helping the project to become successful (Stanton et al., 2014).
Vendor management is an important aspect to make the project a simpler one. Such
management exists in handling the complexity of the respective project work and it is a
discipline, which sources and researches vendors and gets several quotes for turnaround
times, quality, capabilities and pricing. It even covers relationship management, performance
evaluations, contract negotiation, job assignment as well as payment dissemination.
An effective and proper management of vendors is being applied for vendor
management (Kadarova & Demecko, 2016). The procedure of vendor management provides
the project manager in establishment of services, quality, and cost and job satisfaction
objectives. A proper management of vendors is needed to ensure the lean projects become
successful. As a result, project quality management is maintained on top priority. It is one of
the triple constraints, apart from time and cost. For this particular reason, the quality level
should be established during project planning for better analysis of the project. Quality
management is being planned for checking the quality specifications of services and products

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(Orzen & Bell, 2016). Moreover, quality of the processes is also managed on top priority for
understanding the quality of the deliverables and also for ensuring that the project is
conforming to proper quality standards.
3. Detailed Explanation of the Aspects for Achieving Lean Project Management for
building the Home
3.1 Explanation of Lean Management to be implemented for Finalization of Client’s
Requirements
Lean management comprises of becoming a universal management tool to deliver
different values as well as optimization of work procedures. Lean methodology is mainly
dependent on three simple and significant ideologies, which include delivering value from the
perspectives of clients, eradication of wastes and finally continuous improvement (McIntosh,
Sheppy & Cohen, 2014). Two significant pillars of this lean methodology include respecting
for people and proper improvement. It is the most significant approach for management of a
company, which could support the subsequent concept of constant improvement in the
project. Lean management is a long term approach towards work, which systematically seeks
in achievement of smaller and incremental changes in the procedures for the purpose of
improvement in high quality and efficiency.
The main purpose of this lean management is producing value for the customers
through proper optimization of different resource and creating a stable working flow on the
basis of real demands of customers (Tauriainen et al., 2016). As a result, it seeks in
elimination of any type of waste of time, money and effort after successful identification of
every vital step within the business procedure and then cutting out or revising the steps,
which do not create any kind of value. Such management majorly emphasizes on defining
value for the betterment of the end customers, elimination of every waste within the business
procedures and constant improvement of every working process, people and purpose
(Handel, 2014). It also facilitates responsibility and shared leadership for ensuring that
continuous improvement is required for continuing to the improvement procedure.
In this particular case study of house building, the client has provided a fixed budget
and timeline for completion of the work. The ten knowledge areas of PMBOK guide are
extremely helpful for the project to become effective and efficient. These distinct knowledge
areas of project management comprise of the major procedures that are required to be
performed within its own significant discipline (Urban, 2015). The knowledge areas are

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needed to be considered on top priority to check whether the project outcomes have a general
mapping of the respective procedures, belonging to these areas. The scope of the project was
needed to be determined and finalized as well as the effect of lean management over the
work. Although, a fixed budget and timeline is maintained in this particular project of house
building, lean management could be implemented in the process and proper improvement
would be successfully involved without any type of complexity or issue (Hafey, 2017). The
five distinct principles of lean management are being involved for this purpose, which
include proper identification of different values, mapping of value stream, creation of a
continuous working flow, establishment of the customers’ pull system and even facilitating
constant improvement in the project (Hartini & Ciptomulyono, 2015). Since, it is a budget
bound project, the respective project manager would be highly benefitted by properly
implementing lean management in the specific project work and hence project scope would
be maintained properly.
3.2 Explanation of Lean Management to be implemented for Communications with all
Stakeholders
The stakeholders are certain people and companies, whose actions and attitudes
comprise of a major effect over the project success (Minh, 2015). These stakeholders mainly
involve employees, suppliers, investors, shareholders, customers, labour unions, regulators,
government authorities and business partners. Various stakeholders comprise of different
priorities, attitudes and interests and an effective and efficient communication is responsible
for ensuring that they are receiving data, which is highly relevant and accurate to the needs
and also is building a positive attitude to the project or organization (Herzog & Tonchia,
2014). Communication with the project stakeholders helps to understand the goals and also
provide maximum advantages to the client, when they are helping in successfully achieving
the goals and objectives.
When the client plan any type of changes in the project, it would be having a positive
effect on the local community, communications with the local governmental agencies and
learning about the objectives (McIntosh, Sheppy & Cohen, 2014). They also try to create
major influences as well as positive relations amongst all the stakeholders. The most
significant and important examples of ensuring communication with the stakeholders include
specialized interest groups and media. The interviews, press releases with the journalists as
well as meetings with the interest groups are responsible for better understanding of the
ongoing and also to ensure that the operations and business processes are being executed

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successfully without much complexity (Orzen & Bell, 2016). This type of communication is
required for building a dialogue. After setting up of forums and even involving any other
form of feedback, the management could obtain an effective communication and
understanding of the interests and attitudes of the stakeholders for maintaining proper
communication. As a result, communication with all the stakeholders is extremely important
and significant for all the members and client of the project work, since it influences several
sources of power (Kadarova & Demecko, 2016).
Lean management is responsible for ensuring that the work flow of the respective
project team is progressing smoothly and also is preventing any kind of constraint or bottle
neck, which might take place with the cross functional team works. With lean management,
the respective project manager would have been successful in improvement of the overall
performances of the organization (Lawal et al., 2014). The most basic examples of lean
management involve lean manufacturing, software development, six sigma, value based
healthcare and lean start up. There exists some of the most significant and important aspects
of lean management, which are responsible for ensuring that the communication within
different stakeholders are proper and accurate, as per requirement. As a result, the respective
organization and project manager would get the most subsequent and noteworthy advantages
from the project without any type of complexity (Goetsch & Davis, 2014). The critical
success factors of this particular project, such as budget of 500000 Australian dollars and
timeline of 12 months, are needed to be shared with the project team, so that the project
outcome is proper and perfect.
3.3 Explanation of Lean Management to be implemented for Management of the
Subcontractors and Vendors
The approach of lean makes an obvious requirement that it reduces every aspect,
which do not add value to the project work. It is helpful for improvement in the total
customer value, in spite of having different varying perspectives for achievement. These
organizations work on several projects, which involve expansion of products, services as well
as procedures (Fullerton, Kennedy & Widener, 2014). This lean project management utilizes
different data driven methodologies for the purpose of managing projects after emphasizing
on continuous improvement of the process. There are some of the most significant and
important benefits of lean project management, like reduced lead time, low inventory,
decreased expenses, improved efficiency and productivity, better quality and high customer
satisfaction.

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The five vital principles of lean project management include specification of values,
mapping of the value stream, making flow of value after elimination of wastes, making flow
of value at the customer’s pull and finally accepting continuous improvement for gaining
perfection. It is the subsequent application of all types of lean concept such as lean thinking,
lean manufacturing as well as lean construction towards PM (Tenera & Pinto, 2014). The
vendors and sub contractors of any particular project work are responsible for ensuring that
the materials are being sent to the client or customer on time and that any type of appropriate
engagement with the stakeholders is being established for bringing out success in the project
work. Selection of vendors or suppliers is considered as one of the easiest tasks and should be
taken into consideration on top priority.
Lean management is considered as the most effective technique for ensuring that
these vendors are sending the products and raw materials within time and with proper quality.
Two knowledge areas of PMBOK are to be considered for this purpose and more
effectiveness and efficiency is gained regarding vendor management, which are project
quality management and project schedule management (Eastham et al., 2014). As it is a
construction project, the raw materials are the most important requirements and should be
fulfilled in correct capacities, also within budget. They should consider local vendors or
subcontractors for this purpose and proper management of vendors would make sure that the
value is being received for the resources that the company is spending with their suppliers
(Martínez-Jurado & Moyano-Fuentes, 2014). Lean management allows to make a proper
structured program for the project manager to get scope for managing the vendors and also
improvising an overall effect of the business. Hence, lean management is highly beneficial
and effective for the project of house building.
4. Conclusion
Therefore, a conclusion could be drawn that lean project management comprises of
several ideas and the major principle is to deliver more value with lesser waste in a project
context. Various aspects of lean project management are being emphasized for this matter,
which include quality, empowered cross functional working teams, analysis of data, increased
customer value and even elimination of wastes through proper utilization of time, financial
resources and materials. This report has provided a detailed analysis of the leading lean
project with proper description on the processes of PMBOK with proper details.

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