Project Management Coursework: Hong Kong Ocean Park Hotel Analysis

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of project management principles and their application in a business environment, using the Hong Kong Ocean Park's Luxury Marriott Hotel project as a case study. The report evaluates the issues that led to the hotel's delayed opening, including cash flow problems, time and budget overruns, performance risks, operational risks, and strategic marketing risks. It explores the application of project management in a business environment, including stakeholder management and risk management. The report also examines the use of different project management tools and techniques, such as PRINCE2 methodology, Gantt charts, WBS, and the Critical Path Method (CPM). Furthermore, it assesses the impact of people skills on managing projects, highlighting the importance of decision-making, leadership, communication, negotiation, and risk management skills among project team members. The report concludes by emphasizing the need for training and development to ensure project success. The report references various academic sources to support its findings.

Running head: PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Project Management: Hong Kong Ocean Park's Luxury Marriott Hotel
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:

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1. Evaluation of the issues in Project management and its application in
business environment
1.1 Evaluating project management issues
Project management practices and applications are referred to as those essential functions
that are required to be used by any project associates and project leader while conducting any
project. Regardless of nature and size, project leaders should apply theses prcatices. According
to the nominated case project it has been determined that, Hong Kong Ocean Park's luxury
Marriott hotel is about to receive their first guests in the year of 2019 but due to delay of the
developers and some stakeholders the hotel authority failed to inaugurate the hotel on the
expected time.
Nature and features of projects are always unique and different. Diverse reasons are
there, for which the project failed to open in the assigned time one of the major issue that
negatively impacted the project progress line is cash strapped. The other issues or risks that
impacted the project are elaborated in the below section:
Cash-strapped contractor: Thousands of companies are there that, facing major
operational and functional challenges. These challenges are needed to be resolved. It has been
found that during project progress period, the contractors were asked to cut the project cost by
20%. The contract rules allowed the project leaders to increase the project scope by 10% or to
decrease it by 20%. The contractors failed to cut the cost by 20% as a result cash strapped risk
rise. This risk is needed to be resolved by the project developed to accomplish the project in the

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assigned time and fund. In fact the responses from the clients were also not proper from the
business and project management perspectives.
Overrunning time and budget: It is essential for any project to get accomplished within
the primarily assigned time and budget. If any project runs beyond the estimated budget then the
entire project will required additional funding for its completion. The additional budget mostly
requires for extra resources (human, physical). Due to poor estimation of cost t Hong Kong
Ocean Park's Luxury Marriott Hotel faced this risk.
Performance risk: If it is found that project associates do not have enough skills,
knowledge and experiences from any previous activities then, performance of the project
associates will be compromised and it will result performance risks. Hong Kong Ocean Park's
Luxury Marriott Hotel faced the similar challenge due to lack of skills and knowledge among the
associates.
Operational risk: If all accurate project operations are not followed by project operation
manager and project team associates then the entire project would fail to meet the project
objectives an aims. The Hong Kong Ocean Park's luxury Marriott hotel fails to meet the project
timeframe due to some operational risks.
Strategic and marketing risk: The Ocean Park Marriot will help to boost the visitor
numbers at 41 years old loss making theme park that was searching for its sole in the new
position within an extreme competitive market. In order to become a global leader in the
competitive market, any project leader should consider some business and marketing strategies.
It will help the project leader to meet the expected project outcome. The Hong Kong Ocean
Park's Luxury Marriott Hotel project failed initially to compete, the other similar project’s and

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also the online marketing activities applied by the company was much weak which caused
marketing and strategic risks.
1.2 Application of PM in business environment
Project management is referred to as an essential as well as core process that should be
used by any project leaders while conducting projects in the business environment. This process
helps to connect different project development activities successfully. Four major project
development phases are there, required to be followed by the project team associates thoroughly
to meet the project objectives in terms of project initiation, planning, execution, control and
monitoring and project closure. The different project management prcatices applied in the
business environment includes:
Stakeholder management: In order to manage all project stakeholders the project leader
should apply accurate stakeholder engagement strategies. The key principles those are to be
considered by Hong Kong Ocean Park's Luxury Marriott Hotel to keep the stakeholders engaged
to the assigned roles and duties include proper communication, resource management and risk
management. Power and influences of the stakeholders are very important which is measured in
terms of low and high. The stakeholders are needed to be included in the organizational decision
making process.
Risk management plan: In order to manage a business environment risk management is
the other application that stands beneficial. Risk management is comprises of risk identification,
risk analysis, risk prioritization, risk ranking and risk mitigation. However, each time risk cannot
be mitigated thus, based on the risk priorities it needs to be either transferred, acceptance, avoid
etc.

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Time and cost management: Before implementation of a project, time and cost are
should have been estimated by the Hong Kong Ocean Park's Luxury Marriott Hotel project
associates. In addition to this, a feasible analysis is required to be conducted to measure the
success or failure of any project.
2. Application of different project management tools and techniques
Different project management tools and techniques are there requires being followed and
applied by the project supervisors and project team associates to accomplish any project in the
assigned time and budget. For developing and implementing any project it is the responsibility of
the project associates to follow one specific project development tool or model. For this
particular Hong Kong Ocean Park's luxury Marriott hotel opening project the developers should
have applied PRINCE2 project management methodology followed by the project development
phase. Each one of the project development phases are interconnected to each other. Therefore,
each phase should have been implemented professionally because the output of one phase acts as
the input for another. If any failures occur then the entire project may be interrupted or failed to
meet the client’s expectation.
PRINCE2: This methodology is comprises of seven different stages. This method
initiates with development of the business case. Then the business case is organized accurately
maintaining quality, plan and risk analysis as well. Then respective changes should have been
implemented so that the project can incorporate continuous improvement plan in their activities.
In this method a project can be divided into multitasking levels or stages.
In order to manage any project successfully the techniques those has to be followed by
the project leaders and project team members are Gantt chart, WBS, Critical Path Method (CPM)

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etc. The Gantt chart is a project progress tracking technique that helps the project leaders to
identify that whether a project is running towards the expected direction or not. During the
project monitoring phase this technique is applied. In this phase if it is determined that, the track
is wrong then respective project change management plan s needed to be implemented by the
project manager.
It has been found that there are different ways through which a project can be directed
however among those the possible shortest route is needed to be identified by the project leaders
to avoid overrunning budget, over allocation of time and overrunning project resources. In order
to measure the simplest path the critical path method technique needs to be applied by the project
manager. As Hong Kong Ocean Park's luxury Marriott hotel inaugurated with a delay therefore,
the company authority should have applied WBS to breakdown the large project into smaller
segments For each of the project activity different project resources both physical and human are
assigned. It can be said that it is duty of the project manager and project team members to
complete the assigned project activity within the assigned time and budget only to avoid over
allocation of cost, overrunning budget and overrunning resource management risks.
3. Impact of people skill on managing different projects
It is recognized that success of any project is dependent on not only the overall
performance of the organization but also the performance and skills of the individual project
associates. If any single project team members is found to have with no previous experience,
knowledge or skill then a project can be a failure. Therefore, it can be said that skills are essential
for managing any project. The essential skills that a project manager and also all the project team
members needs to possess are as follows:

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Project decision making: Project team associated and project manager are required to
have proper decision making abilities so that they can operate all the project development
activities properly.
Leadership and motivation skills: In order to govern any project successfully the
project team associates must lead, guide and motivate each other. It will help to keep everyone
engaged to their assigned roles and duties.
Powerful communication skill: Communication is referred to as one of the most
essential knowledge areas in project management. The leaders should use open communication
techniques while sharing information with each other. It will generate an open forum to the
project team associates and allow them to share ideas and needful information
Negotiation skill: A project leader should know where and how to negotiate.
Risk management skill: The project leaders are also needs the ability of risk management
to avoid future challenges. The Hong Kong Ocean Park's luxury Marriott hotel development
team members should also possess these above mentioned skills. In order to make the team
members familiar to the project requirements the development authority should have organized
training and development programs.

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