Project Planning and Programming as Tool for Effective Project Delivery
CHAPTER ONE
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
Project planning process involves the determination of the project objectives and contents which refers to definition of work requirement, definition of resources needed and definition of quality of work. This objectives are as follows;
- To organize project tasks to meet the classic triple project constraints.
- To show the use of different programming techniques.
- Ensure s determination of project objective and its contents.
- To show steps toward effective project planning.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
HISTORY OF PROJECT PLANNING AND
PROGRAMMING IN PROJECT DELIVERY
Project delivery was developed from different fields of applications which includes; construction, engineering and defence. In United States, the forefather of project management is Henry Gantt, called the father of planning and programming techniques, who is famously known for his use of Gantt chart as project delivery tool, for being an associate of Frederick Wilson Taylor’s theories of scientific management and for his study of the work and management of navy ship building. His work is the popular techniques to many modern project delivery tools including the work breakdown structure system (WBS) and resource allocation.
1950s marked the beginning of the modern project delivery era, prior to 1950s, project were delivered unplanned and using Gantt Chart mostly and informal techniques and tools. At that time, tow mathematical project scheduling models were developed, namely
- Programme, Evaluation and Review technique (PERT), developed by Booz –Allen and Hamilton as part of the United States Navy’s (in conjunction with the Lockheed coporation) Polaris missile Submarine Programme.
- The critical path method (CPM), Developed in a joint Venture by both DuPont corporation and Remington Rand corporation for managing Plant maintenance projects. This mathematical technique quickly spread into many private enterprises.
Effective project delivery will require relevant information to be obtained, analyse and reviewed timely to draw accurate and meaningful information. The component of effective project delivery revolves around it’s planning and programming.
PROJECT PLANNING
According to Engr. O.S.V Oduwole in computer application in project management (2009), project is a temporary endeavour with a finite completion date undertaken to create a unique production or services. A plan can be considered as the listing or visual display that results when all project activities have been subjected to estimating, logical sequencing, target timing and the determination of priorities, or a plan is a communication as well as evaluation document. Project planning determines what has to be done to accomplish a project, establishing a sequence of work and specifying the interrelationship between jobs. This involves stating the objectives, contents of the project and its representation of interrelationship like the arrow diagram.
For a good project planning, the items need to be defined, which may include:
- Definition of work requirement
- Definition of quality of work
- Definition of resources needed.
This definition of items may or may not depend on project constraint that is time, cost, and scope including quality. project planning are among the most challenging task faced by planners. This responsibility involves co-ordinating design with construction to produce the necessary plans and specifications to package them along recognised trade and to carry out their work efficiently and economically by providing a detailed planning that is needed to sequence operations properly. In modern construction management by frank Harris (2005), a number of people are involved in planning and in some cases it is provided as a service, by a central planning department, for estimators and engineers and others must rely on their own planning skills. For work of varying complexity for varying purposes, the estimating department requires a project plan of work to develop proposed construction methods and hence estimates, the site manager, at the start of the project, needs plans or work programmes to determine his resource equipments and during the execution of the project to monitor progress and to evaluate the effect of the changes that may be imposed by varying productivity, by mistakes, by the weather or by the client, engineering section need a detailed plan of the week’s work.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This chapter deals with the methods with which the research is carried out. This chapter presents research design, Area of the study, Population of the study, sampling methods, method of data collection and analysis, sources of data collection, instrument of data collection and method of data analysis.
RESEARCH PLAN
RESEARCH DESIGN
The design of this study is a survey research design where information are collected for further examination of data. Through questioning, the opinion of individuals and firms as a unit of analysis and to achieve a set objectives.
CHAPTER FOUR
DATA PRESENTATION, ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
The aim of this chapter is to present and analyse the data collected in the course of carrying out the research. There will be analysis of questions that are based on the responses from the questionnaire distributed. For the data analysis, the simple percentage was used at the responses to the questions, out of thirty (30) questionnaires distributed, twenty six (26) were retrieved and they are used for data analysis done below, and the remaining four unreturned was as a result of limited time to reach the respondents after it has been sent out.
CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS.
In this chapter, the researcher tends to bring the key points of the topic to realization through principal findings, conclusions, recommendations and references.
PRINCIPAL FINDINGS.
These are presented in a clear statement involved a summary of the findings discussed in the previous chapter.
- The project manager is not the only person that plans and programme project, it involves other managers and supervisors.
- Scope, time and cost are the only project constraint as shown in the field work.
- Bar chart is more in use that critical path method to compare with any other techniques and few site foremen still don’t use them in delivering project.
- Many organizations archive their goal, through planning and programming while few have no idea on the usage and operate without programme.
- Ineffective project delivery partly results to low development of our environment.
Project planning and programming are essential to the development of an environment as organizations achieve their goal through its techniques in project delivery, maintaining the triple project constraint (scope, time and cost), Project planning and programming involves many professional according to their sections and departments, bar chart is the easier and cheapest techniques used by planners and programmers in delivering projects, in some cases where bar chart can not suit, critical path method is used to deliver the project and other type of techniques like progress (or project) evaluation and review techniques (PERT), graphical evaluation and review techniques (GERT), line of balance and precedence network diagram are also used for a particular type of project through their planning. Planning involves definition of work load, definition of duration and resources needed, for a particular section of work.
These are suggestions that will lead to improvements in the topic and the associated problem, these suggestions includes:
- Project manager should plan and programme the activities of his profession and allow the heads of other section / department to plan and programme their event.
- Appropriate calculation of time and resources within elapsed time for contingencies and adhere to the scope lay down
- Organization should train workers/operatives in the skills of planning and interpreting drawn programme and relating it to the progress of the work.
- Critical activities should not be delayed to achieve the stated goal during project delivering.
- The programme of the project should be referred to the delivering progress, to achieve the project goal.
REFERENCE
- Agbakwuru O.A, Eng. O.S.V Oduwole and Babatunde B.O (2009);
- Computer Applications in Project Management; (A practical Approach).
- Aham Anyanwu, Ph.D (2000); Research Methodology in Business and Social Studies.
- Boyd C. Paulson (1996); computer Applications in construction.
- Chris O.N & Alphaeus O.O Ph.D (2007): Technical report writing
- Dennis Lock (Gower) (2002): Project Management (Seventh edition).
- Frank Harris & Ronald M.C Caffer (2005): Modern Construction Management (Granada Publishing).
