Question no 1

What are the some of the crucial elements of successful

project plan execution? Describe a well-executed project
you are familiar with describe a disaster, what were are
same of the main difference between these projects?

Question no 2

Discuss the top management commitment and the

developed of standards for successful projects
management. Give example of projects that fail due to
lack of top management commitment and lack of
organizational standard.

Question no 1
What are the some of the crucial elements of successful
project plan execution? Describe a well-executed project

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 you are familiar with describe a disaster, what were are
same of the main difference between these projects?
• Success: A project that gets the bouquets and champagne sprays – for it
is completed on time, within budget, and has met all original specs.
• Challenged: A project that finally made to the deadline. Yet, there were
cost/time overruns, and perhaps not all of original specs were met.
• A project was
Failure: abandoned or cancelled due to Project
Management Failure.

Common elements of successful project

management

Simply stated, execution is the gap between promises and results. While
we don't live in a perfect world, there are some common elements that
ensure success. These include:

• Active Sponsorship: Making sure that somebody up top will not

put a kibosh on a project because it wasn't his or her idea. Make
sure somebody high up believes in and champions the project.
• Competent Project Personnel: Having not just subject matter
experts, but people who know the art and science of working with
others to achieve results is critical.
• Sufficient Resources and Funding: Assigning and funding
resources is always a challenge, so keep the expectations
realistic.
• Clear Roles and Responsibilities: The road to hell is paved
with good intentions. Even well-meaning people can trip on each
other if their roles are not clear. It should be especially clear who
is driving the bus and who is riding it.
• Proactive Risk Management: Identify the potential risks ahead
of time and be prepared to deal with them. As they say, it is
better to fix the roof before it starts raining.
• Change Management: Projects by definition change the status
quo. Any time there is a change to the status quo, it creates
disruption. Make a plan to manage the change consciously rather
than burying your head in the sand.
• Realistic Project Plan: Miracles do happen, so hope for the
best, but prepare for the worst!
• Vigilant Tracking: Identify what can be measured during the
progression of the project and track it methodically. What gets
measured gets done.

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 • Timely Issue Resolution: Issues will arise, so deal with them
before they grow out of control. Remember the old saying: a
stitch in time saves nine.

There are three simple steps you should follow:

1. Agreement: Make sure that there is a consensus among all key

stakeholders. This can be thought of as a contracting stage in a
project. Confirm and clarify assumptions and expectations regarding
project scope, constraints, deliverables, dependencies, impacts,
timing, and funding. If you don't know where you are going, you
might wind up someplace else.
2. Planning: A goal without a plan is just a wish. Without a detailed
project plan, it is impossible to see how all the pieces will fit together.
He who fails to plan, plans to fail. A carelessly planned project takes
three times longer to complete than expected; a carefully planned
project takes only twice as long!
3. Execution: This is where the rubber meets the road: Tracking
progress, reporting status, controlling change, managing issues. If the
project appears to be going well, something is about to go wrong! As
Shakespeare said, "The will is infinite and the execution confined."

The Burj Al Arab, A successful project

The Burj Al Arab (Arabic: ‫العرب‬
‫ب‬ ‫برج‬,"Tower of the Arabs", also known as
"Arab Sail") is a luxury hotel located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. At
321 m (1,050 ft), it is the third tallest building in the world used
exclusively as a hotel.[2] The Burj Al Arab stands on an artificial island
280 m (920 ft) out from Jumeirah beach, and is connected to the mainland
by a private curving bridge. It is an iconic structure, designed to symbolize
Dubai's urban transformation and to mimic the sail of a boat.

The hotel is managed by the Jumeirah Group. Despite its size, the Burj Al
Arab holds only 28 double-storey floors which accommodate 202 bedroom
suites. The smallest suite occupies an area of 169 m2 (1,820 sq ft), the
largest covers 780 m2 (8,400 sq ft). It is one of the most expensive hotels
in the world. The cost of staying in a suite begins at US$2,000 per night;
the Royal Suite is the most expensive, starting at US$28,000 per night.

Construction of Burj Al Arab began in 1994. It was built to resemble the

sail of a dhow, a type of Arabian vessel. Two "wings" spread in a V to form
a vast "mast", while the space between them is enclosed in a massive
atrium. The architect Tom Wright[8] said "The client wanted a building that
would become an iconic or symbolic statement for Dubai; this is very
similar to Sydney with its Opera House, or Paris with the Eiffel Tower. It

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needed to be a building that would become synonymous with the name of
the country."[9]

Several features of the hotel required complex engineering feats to

achieve. The hotel rests on an artificial island constructed 280 m (920 ft)
offshore. To secure a foundation, the builders drove 230 forty-metre (130
ft) long concrete piles into the sand.[11]

As recently as late 2008 Dubai was still announcing gigantic schemes like the
$US95 billion ($A105 billion) Jumeirah Gardens new town and a one-kilometre-
high structure,

Terms Sindh education project a failure

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has described the $97 million
‘decentralised elementary education project’ of the Sindh government as
a failure.

The scheme had to be closed one year before the stipulated date because
of poor financial performance and lack of progress on the ground, ADB
said in its project completion report.
The main objective of the project was to improve access to good quality
elementary education in the province. For this, it was to be implemented
in all 16 districts of Sindh from July 2003 to October 2008 at a cost of $97
million. Of the total cost, $18.8 million was in foreign exchange.

Under the project only 208 primary schools were upgraded to the
elementary school level against a target of 1,200 schools, and only 104
pre-primary classes were started in elementary schools against a target of
1,000 classes.

According to the report, 204 English-medium schools were to be

established but not a single one could be set up.

The ADB report said the project failed to achieve targets largely because
of its complex and ambitious design which made productive interaction
between the bank and Sindh education department difficult. The overall
rating for the project was “unsuccessful”.

The province of Sindh accounts for about 25 per cent of the total number
of Pakistani children of elementary school-going ages.

Put differently, the province has a quarter of the country’s population of

children who could be enrolled in classes 1 to 8.

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 Primary school enrolment in the province mirrored that of the entire
country in 2000, with 67 per cent of the eligible students attending
classes 1 to 5. However, only 38 per cent of the 12 to 14 year olds
progressed to classes 6 to 8.

Although the project was consistent with priorities of both the provincial
government and ADB, its scope was too ambitious, with the Sindh
education department tasked with implementing as well as monitoring
it.The department lacked the capacity to simultaneously run and oversee
the project, said the report.

As a result, the public elementary education system could not be

established, and issues of access, quality, efficiency and equity remained
unaddressed.

Why projects fail: different perspectives

Standish group’s line of rationale, trying to explain the trillion-dollar
question of why Project Management Failure occurs so often, makes
insightful reading. According to them, projects that “succeed” do so due
to the following reasons:
• The end users were apparently involved right through the development
of the project.
• The project manager had full backing of the executive management.
Whatever hurdles came up during the project were promptly looked into
by the latter.
• Specifications were clear-cut. This was also possible due to close-level of
interaction between the end-users and the project team.
• Expectations from the project were realistic. There was nothing overly
optimistic about what could be achieved within the project’s constraints.
• Various interest groups
Yet another take on the reasons why some projects succeed and a lot
others fail attributes three variables whose impact on project performance
is the maximum:
• Good Planning: The more forward, future-oriented and in-detail
planning, the higher the chances of success. Each and every activity that
is expected down the line gets due attention. Not only is this pre-
planning well-documented, but also even after the project has taken off,
if things don’t exactly pan out as planned, the project manager does not
hesitate to re-plan, avoiding Project Management Failure, and readily
incorporates the changed circumstances in their new version, so that
future events are controlled.

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• Clear responsibility and accountability: All team members have a
clear understanding of their roles and duties. There is clear awareness of
what exactly is expected from them.
• Schedule control: Project managers are constantly on their toes,
recording time elapsed, milestones reached, change in people/task
allotments, and the like. This helps in fine-tuning the schedule on a real-
time basis.

Question no 2

Discuss the top management commitment and the

developed of standards for successful projects
management. Give example of projects that fail due to
lack of top management commitment and lack of
organizational standard.
The bottom line is that effective execution is difficult. There are
formidable roadblocks,
hurtles, and changing dynamics that get in the way and can injure the
implementation of a
good strategy. But well run companies do this all the time! Although
there is no singular
process to manage the execution of a business plan, there are basic
processes and
fundamentals to be followed.
The organization must be evaluated. Do you have the right people
with the right skills in the right jobs? Should human resources be
reallocated? Do you have the right number of employees in the
appropriate departments?
Identify the key initiatives and broad actions that must be
accomplished to
achieve the strategy. Identify the transitional issues, or the “gaps”,
between

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where you are today and where you plan to be. Push the initiatives
throughout the organization. They must be consistently understood in all
functional departments. Every employee needs to understand their
individual role in accomplishing some aspect of the plan.
Develop a budget to support the plan. This may be an iterative
process until the right combination of strategy, tactics, and financial
prudence is achieved.
Communicate, communicate, communicate! Get the message out to
the entire organization. Develop compensation and reward systems to
support the future Vision of the organization. Create decision filters that
help guide the organization through a thought process for those times
when the organization wrestles with a concept that may stray from its
strategy.
Establish a review process. As the markets, customers, competitors,
government regulations, economy, etc. evolve, some priorities, and
possibly some goals, may change. Go back to the beginning, review each
step, and determine if further changes are necessary.

Example of projects that fail due to lack of top

management commitment and lack of organizational
standard.
The most viable solution to solving Karachi's transport problems is the
construction of a mass transit system using both Bus Rapid Transit (BRT)
lines and metro railway lines by upgrading Karachi's existing 90km of
disused and underused railways.

The Karachi Mass Transit Programme, which is the only viable option to rid
the city of ever increasing gridlock, has not been implemented over the
last two decades despite the huge amount spent on foreign tours of
officials studying mass transit programmes. Nazim Karachi Syed Mustafa
Kamal has said that the long term solution to traffic problems in Karachi
lies in the Mass Transit System without which the city would have worst
condition in terms of traffic after 8 to 10 years.

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Over a decade on, these problems have increased. The traffic snarls that
grip the city are more frequent than ever. Commuters struggle each day
to get to work or to schools and colleges. Those dependent on limited
public transport suffer most.. The successes of these projects need to be
studied so an attempt can be made to replicate them. The increase we
are seeing in the number of vehicles on the road is simply unsustainable.

Its impact on air quality and the life is disastrous. We need action. The
approval for the new railway in Karachi is therefore welcome. But the
challenges will lie in how well the project can be implemented and how far
it serves the requirements of people. The location and quality of stations
set up along the route, the punctuality of trains and the cost of the service
will all determine this. We must hope it works so we can move towards a
new age of commutation.

Regarding Karachi Circular Railway, he said he was told that it would be

completed with Japan’s cooperation with an investment of Rs 1.7 billion
while KRTS project will be accomplished with an investment of Rs 450
million dollars with the cooperation of Asian Development Bank.

The Mass Transit System would be on build, operate and transfer (BOT)
basis. It implies that a foreign agency would build the mass transit system
and operate it for a period of years. Once the foreign agency has
recovered its investment it will hand it over to the local government or
agency.

But un fortunately provisional and federal government does not any

interest in mass transit system in Karachi. They said at the time lack of
funds and other political problem and issues for mass transit system in
Karachi.
Insiders say the KMTP failed to make any headway mainly for want of
political will on part of the government and the authorities, who failed to
make their case whenever it was taken up with the federal government.
The project, if implemented, would have provided substantial savings in
fuel and relieved traffic congestion, as well as providing clean and
efficient transport service.