Weighting 

20%

Learning outcomes

1. Select project management tools and techniques to inform the development of a project planning chart for a small project.
2. Evaluate reporting, recording and reconciling processes to produce a project cost estimate for a small project.

Instructions

Complete and submit your assessment according to the Open Polytechnic’s Assessments webpage. This includes information on academic integrity, formatting, word limits and referencing.

• Include your name, student number and the assessment number.
• Number your pages.

Submission

• Submit your assessment in two files.
• Submit your work through your iQualify course.
• Emailed assessments will not be accepted.
• You will receive an automated notice advising you of your successful submission.

By submitting your assessment, you confirm that it is your own, original work.

Overview

Across each of the three assessments for this course, you will develop and update a schedule, Gantt chart, reports, and cost estimate for a project scenario. Each assessment will build on the work of the previous one.

The aim of Assessment 1 is for you to apply your knowledge of the planning phase of project management to generate a project schedule. You will select and use project management tools in order to do this.

There are two (2) tasks in this assessment.

For Task 1 you are required to create a draft schedule comprising a minimum of 30 tasks, showing the dependencies between tasks and their likely start and finish dates to achieve the project requirements.

• The schedule will be based on the NAP Student Accommodation Refurbishment Relocation Project Scenario provided for this assessment (additional supporting information is provided in Appendix 1).
• Use the template: BSNS4603 WBS Excel Template, to create a Gantt chart. The chart you create should include the information (as a minimum) shown in Appendix 2.
• Ensure you save all your assessment work as you will need it to complete Assessments 2 and 3 of this course.
• Should you require further information to support the completion of your assessment tasks, please use the talk channel to contact your facilitator.
• It is expected that your items will be written to an adequate academic standard using authoritative sources where applicable. APA referencing of any external sources is required.

For Task 2 you will evaluate the draft schedule and techniques for their usefulness.          

Scenario

NAP Student Accommodation Refurbishment 

You work for Nearly New Renovations Limited (NNR) as a trainee project manager. You have just been hired to help an experienced project manager, Gerry Atrick, who is running the National All Polytechnic (NAP) refurbishment of the Student Villas at the North Island campus. You were just getting acquainted with the project when Gerry fell ill and she asked you to cover. She has given you access to her notes and is confined to bed, so communication is possible but is slow and not recommended.

The student village (SV) within the campus grounds is a self‐catering complex of 10 villas housing eight students in each. The village adopts a modern, co‐educational, multi‐cultural student hostel concept. Both New Zealand and international students live together (mixed genders), and although each student has their own furnished bedroom, students share the lounge, kitchen, and bathroom facilities in each villa.

Each villa includes:  

• eight single furnished bedrooms (containing a bed with drawers underneath, wardrobe, bookshelf, study‐table with lamp, chair, bedside cabinet, a notice board)
• furnished kitchen (refrigerator, stove, microwave, electric kettle and toaster, dining table and 8 chairs)
• lounge (2 x couches, 2 loose chairs and TV)
• bathroom (shower, basin, toilet, storage cupboard)
• electricity

Your role was to manage components of the refurbishment of these 10 villas, but now you’ll need to run the whole thing! You’ve read Gerry’s notes and discovered the following.

The customer wants to update and refresh the look and feel of the villas. You will not be doing any demolition or construction of walls. Sam Wright, Head of Student Services, based at the Northern Campus, outlined some of the background information in an email about this project and you found it in Gerry’s notes. The notes give you the following information.

• The kitchens within the villas are 17 years old; they are tired and worn through.
• NAP wants to upgrade all 10 kitchens, not just for new materials, but also to ensure compliance with updated regulations.
• The project needs to be completed within an extremely tight deadline during the July break: the one month that the students will not be in occupation. There will be no room for manoeuvring on this timescale as the new tenancies commence on 25th July.
• The refurbishment will include refitting the 10 kitchens which need to be stripped, re-tiled and refitted with new wall and floor units, ovens, and extractor hoods.
• The kitchen floors will need to be retiled.
• The bedrooms and lounge will need less work, mainly repainting and refurnishing with new furnishings.
• The whole villa will need to be re‐carpeted.
• The bathrooms will not need to be touched as they were refurbished two years earlier.
• It is important that this project is completed on time.
• Ultimately NAP requires a proposal detailing the likely costs for budgetary approval in April. Assume that it is currently March.

You can only gain access to the premises from 1 July, but you can start working on the project from 1 May as the budget will be available then. There are up to five reliable engineering students who will be willing to help with the work. They are willing to work in the evenings and over weekends.

Gerry’s plans

Gerry had started a work breakdown structure (WBS) (see Appendix 3). It’s not perfect, but it’s a great starting point. It defines the scope as she understood it. Your first job is to review the WBS, add any missing tasks, decide what to include and what to summarise, then prepare a likely schedule for the proposal to NAP. Obviously, you’ll need to ensure that you can meet the timeline required.

Task 1: Create a draft project schedule

You will now need to apply your project planning knowledge to generate a draft schedule for the Refurbishment Project Scenario using the Excel template (BSNS4603 WBS Excel Gantt Template; see Appendix 2 of this document for an example).

Use the information supplied in the Scenario and in Appendix 1 of this document to complete the tasks. You are not required to include any people, tools or material resourcing, or costs for the project at this stage. This will be done in other assessments in this course.

a. Your planning chart must include the following:

• At least 30 entries in the schedule, organised as at least five summary tasks and appropriate sub-tasks. All tasks need to have an ID, description, start and finish date, duration, predecessor task(s) where appropriate, and their status – critical or not. At this stage, assume progress is zero per cent.
• Identify at least three (3) milestones in the project (zero duration tasks).
• Identify the critical path and critical tasks by highlighting them (typically in red, which is automatic on the Excel template).

(70 marks)

b. Your chart must identify operational tasks logically and be professionally presented. The information must be communicated clearly and effectively.

(20 marks)

For submission:

• display your schedule as a Gantt chart. Make sure the file is legible and shows the information required (as detailed above) for each task • ensure work at the site only occurs at valid times (1-24^th July) • refer to the marking schedule for further guidance.

Task 1 total: 90 marks

Task 2: Evaluation

The draft schedule you created in Task 1 will contribute towards a cost estimate for the project scenario in Assessment 2 of this course. How useful will the draft schedule you created in Task 1 be in contributing to producing a cost estimate for the NAP Student Accommodation Refurbishment project? Comment on the methods you used and whether there is anything that you think should be done differently.

(Word count guideline: 150 words)

(10 marks) 

(Total: 100 marks)

BSNS4603 Assessment 1 Marking schedule