Change control management- Lyle Construction project

Introduction

Change management process is referred to as a much essential and beneficial process that helps in identifying risk or challenges. As the risks will be identified respective management or mitigation strategies will be implemented for each of the identified risks. Engineering, construction, cost control and project scheduling are different project development criteria must be considered for implementing an error free project.

The analysis of the project scenario identifies that, there are certain major risks associated to this project that requires being resolved. The project management issues related to this project is identified in the paper. Based on the project management issues some required changes will be identified and along with that respective change control approaches will also be implemented, those are elaborated in the paper in details. The different changes essential to control the risks are identified in the plan. Accurate organizational changes and communication approaches associated to the project are elaborated in this paper. Moreover, it can be said that if these changes are successfully implemented then the identified issues will get soon resolved.

Case study overview

In the year of 1998 Don Jung was assigned as a project manager for Atlay Company and he was the project manager for the Lyle construction project also. The project manager’s supervisor Fred Franks mentioned in a meeting that the project is facing issues of man hour allocation. The project manager faced the same issues in two previous projects but never took this issue seriously. The behavior of the project manager was not enough cooperative towards the functional manager. Due to the behavioral, leadership issues with Don Jung the upper management of the Lyle project decided to change the position of the project manager. Frequent changes in positions caused major issues for the project associates. The material supplied for construction of the Lye project was in bad shape. The design packages of the materials were also not accurate. Therefore, it required an additional time 6 months for implementing the additional requirement. Poor design package was a major issues that requires definite changes for commercial success of the Lyle construction project. The purchasing department needs to arrange a formal take off but the department failed to do so. As a result the entire project faced a major loss even after the final implementation.

Project management issues

There are some potential issues that generally negatively impact any project. These issues are needed to be identified at the project initial stage and must be resolved before the final implementation of the project. The project management issues for the Lyle construction company are as follows:

Lack of leadership: The person who was assigned for Lyle construction project Don Jung was failed to lead the assigned project team members. As the project team was not properly directed towards the expected and identified preliminary project objectives and goals therefore, team engagement and team contribution was missing in some of the project development activities. Lack of team attention and leader’s association lead the project towards failure.

Delay: Time management is an essential factor associated to project success. Before final execution of any project, the project team should divide the work packages and divide the construction project into smaller segments. For each segment specific timeline must be assigned. It is duty of the project supervisor to complete the project activities within assigned timeline. For the Lyle construction project no additional time was considered earlier for repackaging. However, reshaping the material packages took additional time of 6 months and therefore, delay was occurred.

Over allocation of cost: The other issue that hampered the Lyle constriction project was overrunning cost. The initial budget considered for the project was less than the actual cost. Due to huge difference between actual cost and planned cost over allocation issue was occurred.

Internal team conflict: Due to lack of leadership and motivation from the project team members, huge misunderstanding and conflict occurred among the working team members.

Incorrect decision making: Negligence nature of the project manager Din Jung interrupted the expected project decisions expected to be made at the early stage.

Change control

Change control is a systematic approach must be used for managing changes identified for the Lyle constriction project. The change control approach is necessary because it helps to make sure that no unnecessary change are being incorporated or made, all expected changes are properly documented and resources are properly utilized. In order to make a controlled change in the project the steps those are to be followed by the project manager and project team associates include- Proper documentation of the requested changes, formal change requirement analysis, planning, designing and testing and final assessment.

For the Lyle construction project, also changes are needed to be controlled to avoid over allocation of budget resources and time. As the project was already running beyond a time of 6 months and the man hour allocation issues was already creating challenges for the project manager and supervisors.

Change identification

The project team failed to improve the difficult situation. Although, different engineering changes are implemented by the organization but not all the identified changed are incorporated to Kyle by Atlay Company. The project manager failed to arrange periodic team meetings. Apart from that, the project manager also failed to approve drawing, engineering, requisition and purchase orders on specific time. These are the major issues that cause project failure. In order to resolve these failures, respective change management program are needed to be identified and implemented as well.

Respective changes are requested to be implemented for the leadership strategies, time management, cost and resource management and team allocation issues.

Change impacts analysis

It has been analyzed that if the requested changes are implemented successfully, then the decision making issues will get resolved and all other operational functional risks will get resolved. Impact of these changes are analyzed based on three factors traceability, dependency and experimental. The traceability will create a link among specifications, tests and designs. The success of the project are dependent on the results generated from the details experiments.

Proposed changes risk mitigation

In order to mitigate the identified risks the different mitigation strategies those are to be implemented include:

• Allocation of proper resources to specific project activities
• Proper project time management plan implementation
• Implementation of accurate project leadership strategies
• Feasibility analysis to check feasibility of the construction project
• Use of proper decision making tool to avoid internal conflict

Organizational changes and communication

For the Lyle construction project it is identified that, non supporting behavior of the project manager was a major issues that requires to get resolved. Team contribution was never supported by the project supervisor professionally and also their feedbacks were never considered.

In order to improve internal communication among the team members the communication approach that has to be implemented by the project team is open communication. The open communication strategies give an open platform to the associates to share their ideas. The ideas given by the individuals are considered in this process.

Recommendations

Proper leadership: The project manager or the project team supervisors are needed to guide the project team members professionally to ensure that they are all serving according to the primary expectation of the project supervisor.

Proper time and cost management: Before final design and execution of the project the project manager needs to prepare the project time and cost management plan accurately to avoid issues of over allocation of time and budget as well. In order to make this possible, finance head needs to conduct a feasibility analysis. The feasibility analysis report will identify feasibility of the project and ensure whether implementation of this project will be successful or not.  

Man hour allocation: Proper resource allocation is the other important factor that leads the project team members towards success. Based on the complexity of each task, proper human and physical resources are needed to be allocated because unwanted allocation of resources can lead the project toward failure.

Conclusion

From the entire discussion it is concluded that, change management and change control plan can collectively bring series of benefits to the Lyle construction project and the project associate too. The project manager Don Jung will be able to take decisions faster than previous and it will also help to keep all existing resources aligned to the project and organization. These changes will reduce the issues of delay or time consumptions, over allocation of resources etc. Theses will allow the associates to give a faster response on anticipated challenges identified. The rate of Return of Investment will increase and also the leadership, team development will become easier than previous. The potential disruptive aspects will be reduced with this application.

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