Advanced Project Management

Introduction

In today’s climate of global competition, tight financing, and demanding clientele, top performance is essential for business survival. Projects are an integral part of any business and include construction, information technology, manufacturing, petrochemical, and others. Too many of these projects suffer from cost overruns and schedule slippages. This program presents practical tips and state-of-the-art tools and techniques for the successful completion of complex projects. In this program you will:

• Enhance your leadership and management skills
• Engage in new project management paradigms
• Sustain project momentum
• Establish effective cost schedule control systems
• Implement advanced techniques for tracking project progress

Objectives

By the end of this course participants will be able to:

• Evaluate various project delivery approaches for construction
• Learn advanced project planning, scheduling and control skills
• Manage large, complex projects
• Lead multiple projects simultaneously
• Share resources effectively
• Learn how to set up teams; motivate, delegate, and negotiate
• Learn how to tailor reports to summarize appropriate information
• Learn how to estimate effort, duration, and cost of a project
• Learn advanced project management tools for planning and control
• Achieve measurable performance improvements
• Generate staff ownership and responsibility for change
• Handle Proactive and Reactive techniques for project management

Target Audience

Senior Project personnel and those employees involved in Process Improvement Teams, decision-makers and business planners

Purchasing & Logistics Outline

The course covers the following topics:

Project Delivery, Financial Analysis, and Scope

• Project Delivery Systems
• Cash Flow Analysis
• Review of Project Economic Evaluation
• Project Objectives and Stakeholder assessment - who wants what?
• Defining Quality
• Communications and Change control - eliminating scope creep
• Working with different personalities
• Quality planning, Assurance, and Control

Project Time and Cost Planning and Risk Management

• Risk Assessment
• Advanced Estimating
• Resource Estimating
• Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
• Organization Breakdown Structure (OBS)
• Estimating using Crews
• Contingency and Escalation
• Parametric Estimating

Advanced Topics in Projects Scheduling

• Task Characteristics and Duration Assessment
• Planning and Scheduling Methods
• Critical Path Scheduling
• Resource Allocation Methods
• Time-Cost Tradeoff
• LeadLag Scheduling
• Critical Chain scheduling
• Effective status and review meetings

Monitoring, E-Commerce, IT and Human Resource Issues

• Using Earned Value to report accomplishment
• Efficient progress reporting using short, meaningful status reports
• Lean Construction Strategies
• Information Technology Adoption Issues
• E-Commerce and its impact on the Industry
• Staff Acquisition
• Team Development and Motivation
• Management styles and Conflict Handling

Advanced Project Management Technologies

• Advanced Scheduling
• Parametric Estimating
• Solid Modeling and CAD standards
• Personal Digital Assistants
• Discrete Event Simulation
• Geographic Information Systems (GIS)