Project Management: Office Refurbishment Project Analysis

This project management assignment analyzes a 6000 sq ft office refurbishment project, including electrical, plumbing, and interior renovations, with a focus on safety and improved facilities. It outlines the importance of task monitoring to prevent scope creep, ensure safety, and facilitate change management. The assignment details the process for monitoring tasks, including project metrics, team performance, and scope management. It also describes the change management process, involving issue logs, change request forms, and feasibility tests. Furthermore, the assignment emphasizes the significance of managing milestones and timings, highlighting the use of project management software like Microsoft Project and Gantt charts for effective scheduling and resource allocation. The project references key project management concepts and tools, providing a comprehensive overview of project planning, execution, and control within the context of an office renovation.

Running Head: PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Project Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University

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Introduction and Background
This project is based on the refurbishment of a particular office within a specified period
of time. The dimension of the office is 6000 square feet and the refurbishment activities will
include electrical works, plumbing, works on floors, ceiling and walls, renovations on various
rooms and others (Kerzner and Kerzner 2017). The project also aims to address a number of
specific aspects of the building that includes environment, healthcare and safety for the office
employees and workers and the overall get up of the entire office building.
The office building has become quite old and poses a lot of problems and threats to the
people working inside the office every day. In addition, the facilities like water, electricity and
others are also showing significant problems and hence, need to be fixed. In the refurbishment
project, all of these conditions will be addressed as the entire building will be repaired and
modified and the utilities will be redone.
Process for Monitoring Tasks
Monitoring of tasks in the project is necessary due to a number of reasons that are as
follows.
Prevent Scope Creep – In any project, scope creep may occur if the tasks are not
monitored in time. Hence, to prevent this issue, the tasks are to be monitored and change
management may be introduced.
Safety – One main requirement of a construction or refurbishment project is the safety of
the workers (Schwalbe 2015). In these projects, the workers often have to work at a high place

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for repair and color of upper floor exteriors of the building. Hence, it is required to monitor
whether the workers are safe and immediate actions are to be taken if safety issues occur at any
instant.
Change Management – Projects often require change management and in order to
introduce the changes, task monitoring is to be done to identify exactly what changes are
necessary.
The process for monitoring of the tasks includes the following stages.
Project Metrics – The first requirement is to keep track of all the project metrics that are
set during the planning phase of the project. It is to be determined whether these project metrics
are met and if not, changes should be introduced accordingly.
Team Performance – Identification of team performance is an essential aspect of
monitoring (Fleming and Koppelman 2016). The performance of the team must reach a certain
standard or else, new team members should be recruited in place of the members who are not
performing as per expectations.
Scope Management – Task monitoring is also done for the scope management of the
project. Often the project moves out of scope due to monitoring and hence, monitoring is
required to ensure creep does not occur.
Collective Action – Finally, task monitoring is only possible when collective action is
taken. For instance, it may not be possible for the project manager to monitor the progress of the
project every day (Harrison and Lock 2017). In that case, the supervisor should take initiative of
monitoring and report to the project manager.

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Change Management Process
Change management process directly follows from the project monitoring and is done by
the project manager based on the progress of the project. Change management is required when
the project progress is not satisfactory and requires positive changes (Walker 2015). However,
change management cannot be simply done by implementing the changes. There are certain
stages that are as follows.
Issues Log – The project supervisor needs to identify all the issues encountered in the
project and create an issues log document. In this document, all the issues are mentioned in a list
format along with the recommended strategies for change management as suggested by the
project supervisor.
Change Request Form – This is a paper / online form that the project supervisor has to
fill in order to request changes. After filling this document, the project supervisor will have to
attach the issues log and forward it to the project manager (Heagney 2016). The changes can
only be implemented after the project manager approves the form and provides budget and
resources for the changes.
Feasibility Test – In spite of suggested and approving changes in the project, there is
another important step i.e. the feasibility test. Not all suggested changes will be feasible for the
project in terms of time and budget and some others will not have sufficient cost benefit for the
project. Hence, testing the feasibility of the change is necessary in order to ensure resources are
not wasted non-feasible changes.

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Managing Milestones and Timings
Managing milestones and timings is an important aspect of project management.
Milestones are specific points in the project that define the initiation and progress of the next
phase of the project. Timings are specific durations that are set for the project work packages and
must be followed accurately (Verzuh 2015). In order to manage all the work packages within the
allocated durations in the project, specific management plans are necessary.
There are some cases when during a project, milestones and timings are not met as per
the plan. If the project is not controlled at this stage, it will slowly start losing time as well as
resources. This will also promote scope creep and finally result in failure of the project.
There are some tools that are being used for developing a particular schedule for the
project. Manually developed schedules are more prone to errors and result in loss of time and
budget. Some of the popular project management softwares used are Microsoft Project, Project
Libre and others. These softwares can be efficiently utilized to develop project schedule and set
milestones for the project (Boud, Cohen and Sampson 2014). Gantt chart is a tool that is
developed using one of these softwares that can be very useful in developing the milestones and
durations of the project. In order to control allocations of time in the project work packages, the
work packages are linked with each other based on the predecessors and the priorities of the
activities. Also the expected duration for each of the activities are to be set and the software will
allocation time to each activity accordingly.

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References
Boud, D., Cohen, R. and Sampson, J. eds., 2014. Peer learning in higher education: Learning
from and with each other. Routledge.
Fleming, Q.W. and Koppelman, J.M., 2016, December. Earned value project management.
Project Management Institute.
Harrison, F. and Lock, D., 2017. Advanced project management: a structured approach.
Routledge.
Heagney, J., 2016. Fundamentals of project management. AMACOM Div American Mgmt
Assn.
Kerzner, H. and Kerzner, H.R., 2017. Project management: a systems approach to planning,
scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Schwalbe, K., 2015. Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.
Verzuh, E., 2015. The fast forward MBA in project management. John Wiley & Sons.
Walker, A., 2015. Project management in construction. John Wiley & Sons.