Significance of Project Planning and Scheduling: Glasgow Queen Street

This report provides an analysis of project planning and scheduling, using the Glasgow Queen Street Station redevelopment as a case study. It explores the significance of project planning and scheduling, detailing the various phases involved, from initiation to closure. The report highlights the importance of scheduling for setting timelines, resource allocation, and timely completion of tasks. It examines the tools used for scheduling, such as Gantt charts, and discusses the benefits of effective planning, including improved productivity, efficient resource utilization, and cost control. Furthermore, the report delves into the challenges associated with planning and scheduling, such as the time and cost involved, and the potential for work pressure and conflicts. The report includes a task breakdown with durations for each phase of the project, emphasizing the critical dependencies and the need for proper project execution and control. It concludes that effective project planning and scheduling are crucial for achieving project goals, optimizing resource allocation, and ensuring the successful completion of the Glasgow Queen Street Station redevelopment.

Project Management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Task 1...............................................................................................................................................1
Analysing the significance of project planning and scheduling.............................................1
Task B..............................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Project management is the system of planning, organizing, securing and managing
resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives. It is
the planning and scheduling of resources of an organization in order to achieve specific task,
events or goals towards completion. It involves the management of all the resources that includes
human, financial and material. It is the discipline of procedures, technologies, practices and
know how that helps in performing managerial functions to the activities of the project for
successfully managing a project. The need for project management was driven by businesses that
realized the benefits of organizing work around projects and the critical need to communicate
and coordinate work across departments and professions. The present study is based on Glasgow
Queen Street, a railway station, deals in delivering fully accessible and modern transport hub to
Scotland at the Glasgow's gateway. Furthermore, it explains about the significance of planning
and scheduling of the project.
Task 1
Analysing the significance of project planning and scheduling
Glasgow Queen Street station is the third busiest station of the Scotland, facilitating the rail
connections to wider area in the city and throughout the whole country. The station will be
redeveloped till 2020 and will offer various facilities to the passengers such as Contemporary
building externally as well as internally, expanded concourse, improved and accessible entrances
on George Square and the Dundas Street. Glasgow Queen Street Station, lastly redeveloped
between 1969 and 1973 (Talman, 2018, August). New station will provide facilities including
lost property, accessible and clean toilets, retail space and ticket office. Platform extension for
accommodation of longer trains of eight carriages will also be offered by the station. They are
seeking for transforming the future and creating the space in order to expand the railway station.
The redevelopment of company will lengthen the platforms for longer trains. The shape of the
new station as revealed by the engineers will be built as the steel skeleton of new concourse
expanded.
Importance of scheduling and planning of project-
As (Cha, Newman, and Winch, 2018), suggested, For making the project planning
effective, project scheduling plays a crucial role because it is an internal part of planning process
of the project. For the smooth functioning of the project, it is essential to prepare a project plan.
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In accordance with the (Nissen, and et.al., 2019), it is reviewed that, Glasgow adopted the
scheduling for setting the timelines, availability and delivery of the resources of project including
both capital and inventory. A duration is assigned to each activity in a logical order for
performing the task so that timely completion can be attained. Zwikael, Chih, and Meredith,
2018, identified that, This scheduling and planning helps the Glasgow in achieving their goals
effectively and as per the strategies set. Experience is the key ingredient in the planning process
and scheduling the project. For example- this process requires the assumption of time needed for
completing a particular task before moving on to other task. Glasgow uses the tools for
scheduling their project. For instance- Gantt chart has been executed by them where a graphical
presentation of the time period of tasks are plotted against the progression of time. Project
schedulers uses this chart for planning and charting out the task of the projects. This acts as the
base for success as establishing a particular plan with specified desired outcome by a date of
completion leads to standardization in the productivity and successful implementation of the plan
in meeting the goals.
(Anbari, 2018), also analyzed that, scheduling or planning need not be overwhelming as it is not
something that the owners or managers enjoy after spending over business plan. Without
scheduling and planning, a project cannot be performed and high ambiguity indulges in the
functioning of the project. According to (Hallo, Gorod, and Morriss, 2018), this aims at
generating high revenues by resulting excellent marketing and strategies in relation to advertising
as well as the productivity and capabilities of fulfillment are gained. It enables the Glasgow in
making the time for revising and reviewing the business plan so that controlling function can be
executed efficiently. On the other side, (Agyei, 2015), also stated that planning and scheduling
assists the firm in looking back to the success and failures that are faced by them so that the
difference between right and wrong can be enumerated and if their exist any deviation then
necessary actions can be taken by the company. Assessing the right and wrong leads to develop a
growth plan for the Glasgow. Strategies can be redirected by reviewing the plan on a quarterly
basis so that vision and mission of the enterprise can be met. On the contrary to this, ( Zareei,
2018), determined that, this scheduling and planning process involves a huge cost and consumes
a lot of time of the corporate due to which major time of the project manager has to be devoted to
this process and could not focus on the other important tasks. However, (Beşikci, Bilge, and
Ulusoy, 2015), also mentioned that special and larger projects needs panning for successful
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completion. Resource management, cash-flow and timing are the vital aspects of the projects.
For instance- for implementing a new training program for the team to improve the morale of the
company, planning and scheduling act as a perfect strategy.
On the other hand, it is also evaluated by the (Pellerin, and Perrier, 2018), that deadlines set by
this process induces work pressure on the team and this results in conflict among the members
and ineffectiveness in the task occurs. If the team works under the pressure, possibility of errors
increases as they will be rushing in meeting the deadline. Due to this, group members might miss
the important details and the little things get skipped by them to timely finish the task. On the
positive and essential note, planning and scheduling assists the Glasgow in day to day scheduling
of the activities which keeps the enterprise on track with the working of the employees. Because
of this, a quality of wisely managing the time and operating as much as possible with the best of
their potential rises in the work environment. This leads to planning for productivity so that
production target can be achieve with high level of efficiency. For example- enterprise can hold
the meeting of the client on a regular basis in morning and block out the time for meeting of the
team, administrative tasks and efforts for marketing, at afternoon so that everyday tracking is
possible which helps in attaining the sales target and higher revenues. On the other note without
project planning and scheduling, the workers will not be dedicated towards their work and delay
in completion of the project increases. Thus, it is a crucial role for the project manager of the
Glasgow to follow the planning and scheduling process of the project for attaining the objective
of task completion with improved performance and coordination of efforts. It helps in optimum
utilization of resources so that wasteful activity reduces and facilitates control over the cost of
the corporate in order to achieve larger profitability and sustainable growth in the inevitable
environment.
Task B
Task Duration(in Days)
Phase 1 Project Initiation
1 Project purpose 15
2 Project phases 30
3 Initiating project Sizing 15
4 Conclusion of project initiation 30
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Phase 2 Project planning
5 Scope and value of project plan 24
6 Determining support 18
7 Conducting extensive research 45
8 Check time line 30
9 Breakdown further 3
10 developing draft plan 30
11 Creating baseline plan 30
12 Monitoring progress 57
13 Documentation 60
14 Update each aspect 15
Phase 3 Project execution
15 Developing team 30
16 Execution of task assignments 45
17 perform time management 30
18 Perform cost management 30
19 Perform quality management 24
20 Perform change management 30
21 Perform risk management 24
22 Perform issue management 30
23 Procurement 45
24 Perform acceptance management 30
25 Communication 30
26 Perform phase review 15
Phase 4 Project Monitoring and control
27 Monitor and control project work 30
28 Perform integrated change control 27
29 Validate scope 18
30 Control scope 24
31 Control schedule 30
32 Control cost and quality 30
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33 Control risk 30
34 Control procurement 24
35 Control stakeholder engagement 12
Phase 5 Project closure
36 Confirmation of work as per requirements 22.5
37 Completion of procurement closure 30
38 Formal acceptance 15
39 Complete final performance reporting 15
40 Release resources 7.5
1080 days
In the above scenario, there are major 5 phases which comprises 40 tasks and completed
in 36 months that is 1080 days. As this is software development project, so the highest time
would be consumed in project execution and followed by project planning. There is presence of
key dependency on every activity and phase as well. In case project initiation is not done
appropriately, then every step would go wrong and so on every step. It has been articulated that
project execution is third phase in project life cycle of software development project. In this
phase, physical project deliverables are build and represented to customer for sign-off. It has
been stated that, it is the longest phase and typically consumers most resources and energy. For
purpose of enabling this, it is required to monitor or control project during this particular phase
and need of implementation of range of processes of management. Indirectly, it would lead to
control and monitor project and helps for managing time, quality, cost, risk and issues as well.
Simultaneously, this will lead to manage customer acceptance, communication and procurement.
With context to prject closure or software development project successfully, every
assignment of its resources are closed, lessons learned input through project resources are
gathered and then released significantly. It has been extracted that, project closure is important as
other phases so thers activities must be concerned for bet outcome in next projects.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it is concluded that project planning and scheduling enables the
Glasgow Queen Street station in defining the goals and objectives of their project. It determines
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the time period within which the project need to be completed and the tasks are assigned to all
the employees for facilitating smooth functioning. It also helps in creating quality control checks
to ensure that tasks completed meet a certain standard or not. Through the planning and
scheduling Glasgow can redevelop its infrastructure with all the facilities and requirement of the
people. It helps the company in understanding all the aspects of the process of production which
results as an outcome of integration of efforts of the schedulers in planning for the group. It
integrates the people, materials, machines, quality requirements and customer demands in
finalizing the priorities. Scheduling makes it possible by determining the ending and the starting
point of completion data for each of the operations.
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REFERENCES
Books and journals
Agyei, W., 2015. Project planning and scheduling using PERT and CPM techniques with linear
programming: case study. International journal of scientific & technology research. 4(8).
pp.222-227.
Anbari, F.T., 2018. Innovation, project management, and Six Sigma method. In Current topics in
Management (pp. 111-126). Routledge.
Beşikci, U., Bilge, Ü. and Ulusoy, G., 2015. Multi-mode resource constrained multi-project
scheduling and resource portfolio problem. European Journal of Operational
Research. 240(1). pp.22-31.
Cha, J., Newman, M. and Winch, G., 2018. Revisiting the project management knowledge
framework: Rebalancing the framework to include transformation projects. International
Journal of Managing Projects in Business. 11(4). pp.1026-1043.
Hallo, L., Gorod, A. and Morriss, A., 2018. Toward “Satisficing” Creativity Effort within Project
Management. HUSO 2018. p.38.
Nissen, V. and et.al., 2019. Creating a Digital Consulting Solution for Project Management
Assessments at Dr. Kuhl Unternehmensberatung: Development and Initial Demonstration
of a Fully Automated Asset-Based Consulting Approach. In Digitalization Cases (pp. 225-
247). Springer, Cham.
Pellerin, R. and Perrier, N., 2018. A review of methods, techniques and tools for project planning
and control. International Journal of Production Research. pp.1-19.
Talman, J., 2018, August. Enhancing Teamwork in Group Projects by Applying Principles of
Project Management. In Innovations in Teaching & Learning Conference
Proceedings (Vol. 10, pp. 3-35).
Zareei, S., 2018. Project scheduling for constructing biogas plant using critical path
method. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. 81. pp.756-759.
Zwikael, O., Chih, Y.Y. and Meredith, J.R., 2018. Project benefit management: Setting effective
target benefits. International Journal of Project Management. 36(4). pp.650-658.
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