Om Sri Ganapathiye Namaga Project Planning Management & Control.

1. Introduction: Project Management has now become discipline of Management and an integral part of almost all our Industries and society. Industries are now witnessing the change of many product based functional organizations are now focusing on Projects for many of their non routine activities like , New Product development due to todays short product life cycle, Facility enhancement due to the growth orientation. This transformation in Management is needed to sustain and success in the business which is now driven by the dynamic changes in the customers need, competition in the market and changing nature of environment ,where actually the business takes place. Project Management is now marching towards its advance level like, from a simple Project to technically complex, multinational, multi environmental & multicultural Projects, and from a simple Project Manager to Project Leader, and from a simple Project Management Office which were served only as a collection of Project achieves to its advanced level of facilitating Project training to Project Manager and Project team, and also raised to a level of facilitating Project audits.(1) AUDCO INDIA LIMITED (AIL) is a premier Industrial Valves manufacturing company, is jointly owned by Larsen & Toubro Limited (L&T) in India and Flowserve Corporation, USA. AIL s manufacturing operations commenced in 1962 and over last five decades the company has expanded to cater to the needs of the National & the International Valve markets. This Paper provides the background about various activities and need for having a separate Project Management Office in AIL. This first part of this paper also focus on the Organizational development like staffing the Project Management Office, re-designating Project Management Office personal , and also suggesting other initiatives need to improve the performance of the current level of Project Management activities in AIL. The second part of this paper focus on the key Project planning process which takes place in AIL while managing the various Projects , the effectiveness (i.e.) strengths and weakness of planning process are also discussed then finally suggestions for improving the efficiency ..

Is Project management is an Art? or Science ? or a Common sense.? [1] These are still debatable questions, but while doing a Project, the various Project Management activities confirm that it is of all the three mentioned above.

PMA-1 Who [Link]

AUDCO India Limited (AIL): AIL is a premier Industrial Valve manufacturing company, is jointly owned by Larsen & Toubro Limited (L&T) in India and Flowserve Corporation ,USA. AIL s manufacturing operations commenced in 1962 and over last five decades the company has expanded to cater to the needs of the National & the International Valve markets. AIL is widely respected for its Quality & wide range of Products. Now AIL can offer solutions to special & critical Valve applications through various New Product developments and has been significantly contributing to NATION BUILDING by supplies to various prestigious projects. Product types and Nature of Business: Product ranges is one of the strengths of AIL, as AIL is manufacturing standard Valves as well as Valves for Special & critical applications. AIL manufactures wide spectrum of Industrial Valves of types Gate Valves , Globe Valves , Check Valves , Butterfly Valves , Plug Valves , Ball Valves ,Valves for Water Service (VWS Valves) and Valves for Special applications like Cryogenic services. AIL can manufacture and supply of Valves from Size to 52 of size, similarly Pressure class from # 150 to #2500. Some of the Valves Products which are manufactured is AIL are shown below in Fig (1). AIL being a five decades Valves manufacturing company, the nature of business , the organizational structure and its activities are more of functional based , however due to the changing trends persist in the Valves market and in the society , AIL needed to implement many Projects in the organization to achieve its strategic goals in an improved way than the functional approach. The effect of overwhelming results yielded through Project base activities , made AIL to focus on doing more business through more Projects.

Level of Project Management Maturity in AIL: AILs apart of L&T, the top management of AIL is L&T , Indias most respected companies in Private sector (Source : *******) leading in Engineering , Technology and construction Projects is now introducing many new Projects in its associate company AIL , especially in the last 3 years in order to achieve the strategic Plans of the company for each target set in a particular time frame. This trend shows the interest and commitment of AILs top management in doing more business by doing more Projects. It is basic and important to understand the current Project management activities, performance and the Project management maturity level, when more Projects takes places in a Organization. [ 1 ]. With the background support of L&T as a Parent company which is a World leading Project Organization AIL has now come to a medium level [ 1 ] maturity in Projects Business as targeted versus achieved in Project Goals are mostly very nearer and not in an uncontrolled level.

Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 (Good) Level 4 Level 5

( Ad-Hoc level) (Abbreviated Level) (Organized Level) (Managed Level) (Adaptive Level)

(Good) Fig -1.2 - AIL's Present project Maturity level. (Picturised and compared based on the logic mentioned in the Capacity Maturity Model -Designed by " Carnegie Mellon University ) [ 2 ] Page)

This comparison is referred based on the logic mentioned in the Capacity Maturity Model designed by Carnegie Mellon University [ 2 ] PageAIL could able to reach this level in a short span of around 3 Years , mainly because of the strong commitment to excel , by Project Team Members , Department Heads , Project Manager , top management and also by the individual who work for the project from the company or outside. Most of the Projects performed in AIL are successful except few of them gone in vain. Especially the success rate is now in increasing trend. Implementation of Project Management Policies & Procedures: To ensure maximum success rate of Projects, and to improve the present level of Project Management Maturity, AIL requires systematic approach like implementation of Project Management Policies, Systems and methods to have better monitor and control of resources and activities.

Who or What Department is responsible?

The Responsibility of establishing, implementing and monitoring the Project Management Policies , Procedures , systems and methods are now assigned for the Newly formed Project Management Office on AIL , and previously similar works are done by the top management.

Do you have a Project Management Office or its equivalent?

A cross functional team who were involved in the improvement initiative activities at AIL, are recently 6 months back, re-organized with minor changes like removal of some of the senior functional Manager and addition of one junior level person by the top management and indentified as Project Management Office personals. The office which was used to meet and discuss about the improvement initiatives by this CFT team with and various department personals are now modified and inaugurated as Project Management Office.

Should you have Project Management Office in your company?

The Organization structure of AIL should have a separate Project Management office due the various needs and roles plays by Project Management office which are mentioned below pages. Project Management Office: A Central point of Contact in Status Reporting: AIL requires a Project Management Office mainly to serve as a Central point of contact in Projects and required to record , communicate & prompt each and every activities involved in the Project primarily to the end customers and to the members who are all participating from AILs in-house and also to the members involved in the Project from outside of the company. [3 ].The above mentioned requirement is very much need for AIL while doing Projects for an external client in the present change in trend of clients more expectations. For example any assigned activity in a Project meant for outside Client, got delayed from the actual Plan, client started disturbing and asking Project Manager to report root cause , catch-up Plan , then status of intermediate levels, frequent updates of Progress and need to attend the frequent follow-up calls from the client and so on.. Gap in the target versus achievement in many of intermediate stages in a Project is way of life for the Project Manager, however from the end customers perspective it needs to be immediately restored. Here the support of Project Management office is very much warranted to build customer confidence also allows Project Manager to concentrate on his subsequent activities. Project Management Office in Project Portfolio analysis: Suggested that Project Management Office personnel can play a major Role in selection of Projects which are now performed by the top managements core group team in AIL. It commonly known as Project council in many Project Organization. [ # ]. This role of Project Management Office personal will definitely yield more accuracy and effectiveness during selection of Projects, because they can effectively collect data and can give input to Project selection committee about the details of each department involved in the Project , each and every stages involved in a projects which were already executed. Hence AIL require Project Management Office.

Can Project Management Office improve Project performance to have it ? YES

Project Management Office as Project Trainer: When AIL is concentrating the business by functional Organization to Projects organization , the knowledge and the skill levels of Project personals need to be updated , trained with the help of functional department personals. This training to Project team can be facilitated by the Project Management office. By a vital activity, Project data record and re-trivial by Project Management office, will helps the New Project Team to know the Lessons Learned in the previous similar Projects which were gone in vain. This is needed to be communicated to the Project Team in-order to avoid or manage re-occurring of that mistakes or situation by taking Preventive actions by proper training. From the Performance of the Projects takes places in AIL , it has been understood that , AILs Project performance is highly depend on the planning, decision making, negotiating ,& other leadership skills & behaviors of the Project manager, hence it is possible to improve the performance of the Project by improving the skills set of the Project Manager. Project Management Office shall facilitate this training as to have this office in AIL.

Role of Project Management Office in Operational integration: AIL being a 5 decades company , provided with well established Customer backup , R&D , expanded with 3 modern manufacturing plants with more than 1100 live vendors & 4500 employees with versatile departments involves in Projects of non routine nature require a systematic operational integration and feedback systems, which can be facilitated by the Project Management office through systematic integration. Simple examples: Castings - a basic raw-material for AILs end Product Valves, many times it has happened that, the qty received physically from Foundry with shortage in Qty (example.) 9 nos. received as against 10 nos. as qty mentioned in the Suppliers Bill , when the supplier delivers shortage qty on the next day, due to lack of integration between Castings buyer and machining in-charge , castings would not have taken for machining and at a later date it will be realized that , 1 no. should undergo machining , when assembly is planned. Similarly many occasions the changes by customer or any order amendments released due to customers change in specifications are normally missed or not got updated at least any one department.

By close watch and triggering activities by Project Management office personnel, will reduce the idle time and this effective integration will yield good Project success.

Project Management Office as Project Archives office by Data administration: The basic documentation of the on-going project activities, preparation of reports for periodic forecast plan and project review meeting and also to ensure that the status of projects are progressing strictly as per the project plan , these are all the activities shall be taken care by Project Management Office as a Data administrator. By playing this archives role, helps the Project team, at any point of time can refer the previous tasks performed in any of the Projects which will facilitate a Project Manager to reduce many activities or analysis for the new projects For example : A Project introduced in AIL, is about to supply & commissioning of 3000 nos. of Gate Valves in various sizes suits for Cryogenic service to an EPC contractors site at Algeria within 8 months , the Project Manager can refer and get related inputs as ready reference , from the Archives maintained by the Project Management Office. Inputs like How to get Algerian Government Approval? , Who are all the certified sources for fabrication welding at Algeria? And lot more inputs which will cut-down many process like vendor development, decision making process etc, which will reduce the Projects delivery lead time and can get customer satisfaction by early completion of Project. We can give lot of such examples. This shows we must have Project Management Office in our Company. Project Management Office as via medium AILs Projects business is in a rapid increasing trend and, scenario of multiple Projects concepts is growing in the company , now AIL needs systematic ways of executing Projects in order to have monitor and control over it. The Procedure and Policies which are already well established towards Functional Organization has to be now modified or to be newly established, which suits for Projects business and its nature of operations. Establishing procedures specifically for projects will be massive job will be challenging as well. [ ], as a functional organizations AIL is having more than 240 nos. of Procedures under 14 functional categories including internal and external Procedures , Project Management office can be served as via medium for implementing the Project Management Procedures, methods and process, with the support of Project Management personals.

Project Management Office for Project excellence: One of the Strategic Plans of AIL is getting Business Excellence Award before year 2013. The objective of getting business excellence Award is to showcase the Best Management Practices which takes places in AIL to the market & to the society to get more market share and enhance the brand value. Example: In year 2011, AIL had released the Best Management Practices, as a functional organization to EXIM Bank a *****. Covering sheet of the Manual is reproduced here below to have an impact over it. [ ], Similar best Practices needs to be identified and to be implemented in the Project activities of AIL which shall be facilitated by the Project Management Office.

What Organizational changes will improve the current Project Performance: Project Management Office is a recent implementation in AIL. Exactly 6 Months back this Office is formed with expectations of facilitating many activities in the Project Management which are discussed in the beginning of this paper , however in order to improve the effectiveness and increase the performance , some organizational changes are required on the Project Management Office which are discussed in the below tables. Staffing the Project Management office: Changes first required in the Staffing the Project Management office with more numbers of personnel in order to make the office strength from inadequate level to optimum level. Care has been taken and impact is checked for the overall cost involved in the adding of people. The below Table 1.2.3 represents the existing and revised staff levels. Addition of Design personal especially one dedication person for each Manufacturing Plant is very much essential as the Projects introduced in AIL are now more of new product developments which require lot of Design co-ordination. Similarly customer co-ordinations & documentation personal are required to add as Project Management Office personals.

These additions of staffing will facilitate swift co-ordination in the Project activities.

Organisational Change parameter

Existing Project Management Office in each Manufacturing Plant

Proposed Project Management Office in each Manufacturing Plant

Staffing the Project Management office

Staff List & size : Design person (common for all three plants) Manufacturing (in/house) Customer co-ordination Documentation support : 1

Staff List & size : Design person : (dedicated to each Plant ) (common for all three plants) : Manufacturing (in/house) : Manufacturing (out-sourcing) : Industrial engineering personal: Supply chain member materials: Customer sales co-ordination : Documentation support : 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 3

: : :

1 1 2

Total office strength

: 4 + 1 Common

Total office strength

: 10 + 1 Common

Need of Full time Office personal: With the addition of staffs in Project office, also need to employ a very minimum of at least one among them as fulltime personal as suggested in the below mentioned table 1.2.3, mainly on customer co-ordination side, many times observed AILs Project Managers are concentrating on the tasks to be performed next, rather than giving status reporting at each stage to customer, which is a tormenting factor in customers perspective.

Organisational Change parameter

Existing Project Management Office in each Manufacturing Plant

Proposed Project Management Office in each Manufacturing Plant

Extent of Work by Project office personal

Total staff of 4 dedicated and 1 common personal for all three Plants. All of them are with part-time employed in Project Office.

Total staff of 10 dedicated and 1 common personal for all three Plants. Out-off 11 personal, strongly suggested to have min one personal needs to be

worked as full time basis.

Role clarity and reporting structure of Project Management Office personals: It has been observed that, while doing Project activities in an environment where predominant functional activities takes place like AIL , one of the challenging issues will be reporting structure [# ] and authority. Presently due to the lower authority given to the Project Manager, the project management team which is also inclusive of Project Management office personal are administratively reporting to their original department heads. Hence their works are not well noticed or felt by the department heads and leads to lesser reorganization during Performance Appraisal, though Project Manager is consulted only by words and not by sprit. So most of the Project Personals showing less moral and un-willing to be as Project Office personal. Here suggested to change the Reporting structure of Project Office personal to Project Manager as the chances of seeing their work efficiencies are more which will help the growth of the Project Office personals. Also more people will show interest for becoming a Project Office personal.

Organisational Change parameter

Existing Project Management Office

Proposed Project Management Office

Reporting structure of Project Management Personals

Formally reporting to Project Manager and administratively under Functional departments heads.

Need to be reported directly to Project Manager. Performance evaluation and decision making on employee benefits should be done by the Project Manager and functional department heads shall only be consulted.

Similarly instead of forming a Project Management office team alone , and call based on their functional based , individual Project personal shall be re-designated , based on the Role they play in the Project Management office. This will improve the moral of the staff and also have good impact of the influencing the customer relationship. [ #]

Organisational Change parameter

Existing Project Management Office

Proposed Project Management Office

Role clarity and designations

Project Office Design co-ordinator Senior engineer Customer coordination Engineer Tech support Junior executive - Documentation

Project Management Executive Project Portfolio Manager Methods Engineer Projects Project Management Mentor Project Trainer Data administrator

Some of the other suggestion needs to be thinking over by AIL as organization, in order to improve the overall Project Management performance. Establishment for AILPMBOK : AIL Project Management Body of knowledge, through which archival of notes, journals & books about the Best Procedures and tools shall maintained so as to use the same by the Project Management office personal by them first [#] , Project Manager , Project Team members & other functional department peoples also can make use of them to get more proficiency in the bset Project Management Practices.

AILs top management shall allow a Third-party opinion or shall gave an assignment work to a Project Management consultant periodically at least once in a year, to measure and suggest the effectiveness of Project Management office design , view and comment the responsibilities and authorities if any of Project Management office and AIL shall also allow the consultant to go through and suggest about the top management movements with respect to Projects as well.

Conclusions :

PMA-2 Discuss how effectively your existing standard company Project Planning process deals with typical Projects in your company. Identify strengths, weakness and improvement possibilities. ****************** Why Project Planning is important? In a Project life cycle, the most challenging and the key factors to achieve Project goals whether the Goals set for the benefit of the end customers or the goals set for the organization where the Project takes place, is Project Planning. Project Planning is very important as through this process only the Project Manager communicates the answers for the following key questions to the Project team members and to the top management as well in order to achieve the Project goals.[ 1 p-239] What is to be achieved in this Project? Who are all responsible and what are their responsibilities? How much is affordable to spend in terms for cost and time? When each activity involved in the Project needs to start and finish? Hence the more and more efficient Project Planning involved throughout the Project life cycle the more and more likelihood success of Project objectives. The detailed Project Planning process which takes place in AIL are discussed in the subsequent pages. AUDCO India Limited (AIL): AIL is a premier Industrial Valve manufacturing company, is jointly owned by Larsen & Toubro Limited (L&T) in India and Flowserve Corporation ,USA. AIL s manufacturing operations commenced in 1962 and over last five decades the company has expanded to cater to the needs of the National & the International Valve markets. AIL is widely respected for its Quality & wide range of Products. Now AIL can offer solutions to special & critical Valve applications through various New Product developments and has been significantly contributing to NATION BUILDING by supplies to various prestigious projects.

Product types and Nature of Business: Product ranges is one of the strengths of AIL, as AIL is manufacturing standard Valves as well as Valves for Special & critical applications. AIL manufactures wide spectrum of Industrial Valves of types Gate Valves , Globe Valves , Check Valves , Butterfly Valves , Plug Valves , Ball Valves ,Valves for Water Service (VWS Valves) and Valves for Special applications like Cryogenic services. AIL can manufacture and supply of Valves from Size to 52 of size, similarly Pressure class from # 150 to #2500. Some of the Valves Products which are manufactured is AIL are shown below in Fig (1). AIL being a five decades Valves manufacturing company, the nature of business , the organisational structure and its activities are more of functional based , however due to the changing trends persist in the Valves market and in the society , AIL needed to implement many Projects in the organisation to achieve its strategic goals in an improved way than the functional approach. The effect of overwhelming results yielded through Project base activities made AIL to focus on doing more business through more Projects.

PROJECT PLANNING IN AIL

Project Planning activities in AIL: Project planning in AIL is a process of collective activities which includes

Project Kick-off Meeting (Scope Planning, Defining the Project objectives

in detailed )

Preparation and release of Statement of Work (SOW) also called as

Project Inter office Memo.

Preparation and release of work breakdown Structure. (WBS) Development and release of Project Schedule Resource Planning & allocation (M&M&M)
Staffing ( Man-power planning) Cost estimation (Money ) Material Resource Planning (MRP)

Procurement Planning Quality Planning Budgeting Risk Planning and Management Work authorization. Planning for crisis ( adversity) Plan for Project close & Termination.
Before explaining the above mentioned Project Planning activities of AIL , it is meaning full to discuss the Warm-up activities which takes place in Project life cycle prior to Project Planning. They are.

Project Feasibility Study : AIL's Corporate Team also called as Core-group who are mostly the Head of the Departments and other functional experts (example : A Welding specialist ) and in some Projects the third party Inspectors also will be called by Top Management for meeting to conduct a the Feasibility study on doing that Project. The Each one of the Core-Group team members need to submit their report and Project will be approved for execution by CEO based on the study report. Project Introduction: A general meeting Project planning process will be started only after the Project introduction meeting to the Project team members who are selected by the Project Manager in consulting with the functional Head of the departments and approved by the top management. Top management explain the importance of executing that project with respect to companys strategic plans and goals. Project team members will understand the support of the Top management and the expectation of the Management in doing that Project.

Project Kick-off Meeting: The first official meeting normally held with the presence of Top management, Project Manager, Functional Heads and the Project Team is the Project kick-off meeting. Mostly CEO or CFO will launch the Project with a speech about the expectation of the management in doing the project and also will assure their supports in terms of technology and resources. Based on the nature of the Project the activities and members present in the Kick-Off meeting will vary. For example if the Project is just about to launch of a Technical symposium then inorder to familiarize the concept , interestingly the management will call all the employee of the organization during the kick-off meeting. If the project is set for a specific end customer, then representatives from the end customer will be also present in the kick-off meeting also called as Project launch meeting. Activities and out-come of the Project Kick-off Meeting: Scope and Definition of the Project given by the top management will be discussed in details and based on that, objectives are defined and a out lined road map for achieving the objectives will be set in this meeting. The various functional departments Heads present in the meeting are closely discuss with Project Manager and team members about their functional support to this project and area of concerns in their department for meeting the Project objectives. Finally a common understanding and agreement of the requirements are documented and thus the establishment of Project objectives. In case if the Project is to Design , develop , manufacture and supply of Special Valves to an end customer , then an outlined discussion on the objectives like expected date of delivery of these Valves , Technical requirement of the Valves , infra structure required for the manufacture of these Valves will be discussed.

 Risk Management Plan also will be discussed in the Project launch meeting. The various sources of Risk involved in this Project, area of concerns proposed by the functional Managers will be taken for Risk analysis. Risk management experts, Risk co-ordinates are indentified and informed to all other departments during this meeting. Finally the success of this meeting is based on the constructive discussions made in defining the clear objectives of the Project, hence now days the representative from AILs end customer side also participates in the Project Kick-off meeting in order to inform their requirements precisely on the day one and to clarify the team members regarding any doubts rise in setting the objective of the project. With the above activities finally Project-kick-off meeting always ends with get-together lunch or dinner in order to mingle the Project Team members with each other right from the day one. Preparation and release of Statement of Work (SOW) : Next to Project kick-off meeting, the complex tasks identified in the Project are divided in to the maximum extent of simplest measurable task, so as to assign responsibility to a single participating Project team member or to a specific department to carry out that task. In case for example, the Project is for Design, Manufacture and supply of 100 nos. of each 2 size Gate Valves and Globe in a Special Chemistry material, with a delivery lead time of 20 weeks to AIL s domestic end customers M/s Reliance Industries Jamnagar site , the Project manager prepare and document the Statement of Work from start to end of this Project as mentioned in Fig 2.1 which is shown below. Activity Dep Start Date End Date

What is important while preparing the Statement of Work in planning stage for a Project?

It is not only important that a Project Manager need to list down each and every meaning full task in the Statement of Work, but also the scope of each task and its inter relationship with precedence task needs to be interpreted precisely with its complete details of Technical and commercial specifications given by the end customer in order to avoid conflicts at Project execution stage or any stage in the total Project life cycle as well.

Why it is important? Statement of Work will be sent for clients Approval here it is Reliance Industries or its approved consultants however if any misinterpretation occurred after Customer approval will lead to create conflicts among AIL Project team members , functional team members and mainly between AIL and the end customers. This birth of conflicts will delay the Project in terms of lead time and cost aspects as well. Suggestions to avoid the impact of discrepancies in the Statement of Work: a) Read the detailed Specifications of the objective given in the Customers Specification sheet. b) In any incomplete or ambiguity saw on the customers specification , shall be immediately taken-up with customer for clarification and shall be documented appropriately c) Any additional scope asked by the end customer needs planned and to be routed as mentioned above in the point c). Preparation of Statement of Work is one of the areas of concern in Project Planning stage and some lessons learned from the previous Projects shows chaos stage occurred due to mistakes done in this activity. Hence suggested that Preparation and documentation of Statement of Work and the interpretations used should be simple and justifiable for anyone who involved in the Project and it should facilitate a common understanding between team members and the end customers as well. Preparation and release of work breakdown Structure:

Strengths of AILs Project Planning process: A panoramic view of the Project

Strengths of AILs Project Planning process:

Weakness in present Project planning process: Risk Planning: Re-Planning during Crisis situation: Contingency Planning: Cost evaluation method

Suggestions for improvement: Improvement always can be initiated from the weakness