More and more engineering and technical professionals are making career transitions from product design into project management. This, however, requires formal training and a willingness to learn new skills. All the technical know-how in the world will not deliver a project successfully, without proper project management skills. Unfortunately very few engineering professionals have any degree of formal project management training, which results in a great deal of personal stress as well as cost blowouts and other woes.

To address this problem, the course will focus on the critical project related activities such as work breakdown, scheduling, cost control and risk management, and show how these can be performed with software to lighten the project manager's workload. The 'soft' (but equally important) aspects such as team leadership and contract law are also covered in detail. All topics will be supplemented with practical exercises focusing primarily on the areas of electrical/electronic (including instrumentation) and mechanical engineering. If delegates wish to do so, they can choose small projects from their work environment as a basis for the practical exercises.

 

YOU WILL LEARN

• Create computerised PERT and Gantt charts for your projects, add and level resources, and monitor/report on your project effectively
• Define, analyse and manage the risks associated with your projects
• Avoid the pitfalls caused by a lack of understanding of the legal issues pertaining to projects
• Use appropriate software to leverage your time and expertise

 

WHO SHOULD COMPLETE THIS COURSE

• Engineering professionals
• Information technologists
• Maintenance/supervisory managers
• Project team members
• Technical personnel

 

COURSE OUTLINE
FUNDAMENTALS OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT

• Overview of the project environment
• Project life cycle and phases
• Project organisations
• Project success
• Project definition
• Project planning
• Case study - An exercise in developing a work breakdown structure

 

TIME MANAGEMENT

• The precedence method of schedule analysis
• Presentation of the schedules
• Resource analysis
• Monitoring and reporting achieved progress
• Selection of software
• Case study - Application of the precedence method analysis technique

 

COST MANAGEMENT

• Cost estimating
• Budget presentation
• Financial control
• Change control
• Cost reporting
• Value management
• Case study - Preparation of a project cost report with variance analysis

 

QUALITY MANAGEMENT

• Defining quality and quality management
• Quality systems
• ISO 9000
• Project quality assurance
• Preparation of ITFs
• Case study - Preparation of inspection and test plans

 

RISK MANAGEMENT

• Risk management defined
• Risk identification
• Risk analysis
• Risk management responses

 

INTEGRATED TIME AND COST MANAGEMENT

• The Performance Measurement System (PMS) defined
• Determining cost and schedule variance
• Computer software PMS tools
• Case study - An exercise in integrated time/cost analysis

 

MANAGEMENT OF THE PROJECT TEAM

• Management and leadership
• Organisation and project team cultures
• Motivation and employment
• Authority and power of the project manager
• Required attributes and essential functions

 

CONSTRUCTION CONTRACTS

• Procurement strategies
• Responsibilities of the parties
• Tender and contract documentation
• Conditions of contract
• Contract disputes

 

AN INTRODUCTION TO CONTRACT LAW

• The legal system
• Essential elements of contracts
• Factors destroying the legal force of contracts
• Termination of contracts
• Breach of contracts
• Time extensions and liquidated damages
• Case study - Analysis of contractual situations