Project management - The project "Nunca mais en viveiro"

Index

I. Introduction – Project “Nunca Mais en Viveiro”

II. Theoretical Background of Project Management
2.1 Definition of Project Management
2.2 Process of Project Management

III. Planning of the Project “Nunca Mais en Viveiro”
3.1 Activity Planning
3.2 Time Scheduling
3.2.1 Work Breakdown Structure and Analysis
3.2.2 Precedence Network
3.2.3 PERT – Dealing with uncertainty
3.3 Costing and Resource Scheduling
3.3.1 Costing
3.3.2 Human Resource Scheduling
3.3.3 Cost Scheduling
3.3.4 Simple Cost Crashing
3.4 Risk Management
3.4.1 Theoretical Background
3.4.2 Project “Nunca Mais en Viveiro” – Example of Risk Management
3.4.3 Preventive Strategies

IV. Conclusion

V. Bibliography

VI. Annex

I. Introduction – Project “Nunca Mais en Viveiro”

Ten years after the disaster of the Agean Sea, the Galician coast is once again threatened by an oil spill. Ten years, during which no effective measures had been put in place to prevent such disasters.

“Prestige”, a 26 year old single hull oil tanker carrying 77,000 metrics tons of heavy fuel oil, began to break up in mid-November 2002 near the coast of Spain’s autonomous community of Galicia and towed out to sea, finally sinking 19th November at Cap Finisterre. This place marks the extreme western point of the Iberian Peninsula, where the Prestige has created an oil slick along the coastline of Galicia, and caused one of the major economic and environmental disasters. Fishing is the source of livelihood for an estimated quarter million families in Galicia.

In addition to contaminating of the Galician coastline, Europe’s richest in fish and shellfish, the oil has spread to Spain’s northern coasts of the autonomous communities of Asturias, Cantabria and Basque Country, the French and Portuguese coasts. The “Costa da Morte” is the name given to this coastline, which has seen many shipping accidents over years.

Many people from all over the world are cleaning voluntarily the Galician coasts affected by the spill. They have been duped “the white tide” for the protective uniforms they wear and for their work in defence of the environment.^[1]

Since it began spewing toxic fuel oil during a storm off the Galician coast on November 13th, the Prestige has been a major political headache for the Spanish government. The opposition Socialist party and local media have questioned Prime Ministers José María Aznar’s decision to send the tanker back out to the stormy Atlantic, rather than allow it into a harbour where spilling oil could be contained before the tanker broke up. Deputy Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is responsible for the coordination of the government’s crisis team to handle the oil spill.

The nature conservation department of the Galician regional department, Xunta, is working systematically towards gearing its activities to manage this crisis.

Now the oil slick is threatening the “Costa lucense” (also called “Rias Altas”) will arrive in the near future at two beaches on the northern Galician coast, next to the town Viveiro.

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Figure 1: Map of Galicia

Therefore this institution started the project “Nunca mais en Viveiro”, a small project with the objective to clean up the beaches of San Roman and Xilloi.

The objective of this project is to clean these beaches affected by the oil pollution. For this mission the project will provide a team with sufficient equipment to clean up the oil slicks during a period of 25 days. The project team will also provide technical assistance and collaboration to authorities on ongoing clean up operations.

This report will show that good project management deals with three factors: time, cost and performance. In order to bring the many components of this project into control, a large toolkit of techniques and methodologies will be applied to the “Nunca Mais en Viveiro” operation. There will be an emphasis on risk management, which embraces the identification, evaluation and handling of risks. Risk Management is an important element of the project planning, especially within this project, because this ecological and social disaster occurred mainly due to the lack of effective measures, which could have prevent such catastrophe.

The aim of this report is to perform a successful project, which fulfils the requirements of the environment, the Galician people and the official institutions.

II. Theoretical Background of Project Management

2.1 Definition of Project Management

To implement a project, it is necessary to understand some important points about project, project management and hereby the function of a project manager.

According to the Project Management Institute, an international organization dedicated to advancing the state-of-the-art in the profession of project management:

- A Project is:

“Any undertaking with a defined starting point and defined objectives the achievement of which identify completion. In practice most projects depend on finite or limited resources with which the objectives are to accomplished.”^[2]

- Project Mangement is:

“The art of directing and coordinating human and material resources throughout the life of a project by using modern management techniques to achieve predetermined objectives of scope, cost, time, quality and participant satisfaction.”^[3]

Consequently, the Project Manager’s must fulfil several functions:

- Attain the willing commitment of people to assigned tasks;
- Achieve the coordination and collaboration of different work groups, responsibility centres, and entire organizations, including those of the owner;
- Achieve cooperation by placing a high premium on reliability and timeless of information, and by discouraging unnecessary or irrelevant information;
- Steer the project to completion in an orderly and progressive manner;
- Ensure that trade-offs between scope, cost and time are satisfactory and acceptable, and are seen to be so; and
- Perpetuate development of personal and professional skills and the potentialities of project participants.^[4]

2.2 Process of Project Management

The basic process of management control can be easily remembered by the POEM standing for Plan, Organize, Monitor and Control.^[5]

- Plan

The first step is to plan the project with respect to scope, time and cost.

- What is precisely to be done? Why?
- How is the work to be done?
- What resources in terms of materials, manpower, finances, and time are required?
- What risks are involved?
- What strategies are required to deal with unplanned occurrences (contingency plan)?

The cost and timeliness of all these various activities required to fulfil the project to the required quality will together, and in large measures, determine the project’s success.

- Organize

The basic step is an extension of the planning process. A careful analysis must be made of the various activities required in planning and executing a project, to provide a closely related project team structure. For every project activity there must be a very clear definition of who is responsible, and who has the authority to execute the activity. That person must have a very clear definition of the scope, cost and time budget for that activity.

- Execute

The methods by which the Plan is executed or implemented are critical. No project manager and (or other member of the project team) will be successful unless he/she understands the basic needs of human beings, their strengthens and weaknesses, mental and social abilities, and how to weld a complex mixture of humans into a dynamic and productive team. The single most important characteristic of a successful project manager is his/her ability to manage people.

- Monitor and Control

Continued monitoring, reporting and forecasting must take place during project implementation, and the forecasts compared to the Plan. Deviations must immediately receive management attention, either by reallocation of resources or modifications to the plan (with the client’s approval if his objectives are affected). Without a detailed plan, there is no basis for comparison, no determination of deviation, and hence no satisfactory basis for corrective action. Clearly then, a successful project management system is one which monitors and responds by a control action as early as possible after an event.

The diagram below shows the relationship, which makes project management both universally applicable and unique to all project work.

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Figure 2: Project Management^[6]

This report will mainly focus on the aspect “Plan” and outline the general stages to complete the project.

III. Planning of the Project “Nunca mais en Viveiro”

The proposal of this project is to clean up the beaches of San Roman and Xilloi and to prevent the damage of further oil slicks. Therefore the project management will work closely with the nature conservation department of the Galician regional department, Xunta. The Xunta decided that volunteers will not participate in spill cleaning activities. Thus follows tests done in the last few days, which confirm the oil to be quite toxic. Therefore, at the present, only experienced and specialized persons in oil pollution situations (with special equipment) will remove the oil.

While the sunken tanker sill leaks tons of oil each day from the ocean floor, the project team should work 10 hours per day during 25 days, cleaning the beach and caring for oiled birds caught in the slicks. The project main activities will be the following:

- Train the team on how to clean-up beaches and birds, and what chemical products should be used
- Clean-up measures / Take animals to special centres
- Advise local authorities on clean-up measures

In the next stage the project tasks will explained in detail.

3.1 Activity planning

The project management established an “activity plan” for this project. The following tasks have to be carried out to guarantee the process of the project:

A: Analyse environment (two beaches), discuss with experts/partners of company define/estimate following items:

- time / costs
- equipment (clothes, boots, masks, boxes and other cleaning tools)
- workforce (quantity/specifications)

B: Search for workforce, put announce at the city council and the local press.

C: Recruiting workforce

D: Meeting with workforce:

- Explain situation
- Working instructions:
- How to put the clothes on/off
- How to clean the beach
- How to treat animals who are affected with the fuel
- What to do in case of urgency (e.g. bad weather, intoxication)
- How to care the own health conditions

E: Start working: clean up beaches and rocks.

F: Keep attention to affected animals, death animals, collect them.

G: Keep up the boxes, fill them in big boxes (prepare for cleaning trucks).

H: Clean up the working equipment.

I: Analyse the result of the cleaning work – more time or / and workforce needed?

J: Clean up everything, pay the workers.

K: Write a report about the project.

[...]

^[1] WWF (2002): www.panda.org

^[2] See: PMI (2002), www.pmi.org

^[3] See: PMI (2002), www.pmi.org

^[4] See: Wideman (2001), p. 8.

^[5] See: Wideman (1991), p. 3.

^[6] See: Wideman (1991), p. 6.