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Kombs Engineering Case Study

Name Course Institution

Kombs Engineering Case Study Reason for the loss of contract From the foregoing, it is evident that the Department of Energy (DoE) failed to award the contract to Kombs Engineering for the simple fact they lacked faith in Kombs project management systems. This response is based on the sense that DoE gave questions to Kombs regarding their project management systems. However, the results underlined the failure of the company to implement an effective project management system. In this case, Kombs had interacted with the DoE for a period of five years and it never took time to develop a proper and mature system of managing projects during the time it was contracted. In fact, Kombs hired a contractor who effectively trained the entire company on the subject of project management for a period of one month only. Thus, Kombs never realized that the dynamics involved in project management had changed since it was contracted first by DoE in 1988. In order to sense and react quickly and to insure rapid decision-making in a project, lines of communication should be the shortest possible between all levels of the organization (Kerzner, 2009). In this case, once all line managers, like in the case of Kombs project management systems, managing a project decision makes decision making a long process and effectively compromises the efficiency of the project. People with the most knowledge must be available at the source of the problem, and they must have decision-making authority and responsibility. Meaningful data must be available on a timely basis and the organization must be structured to produce this environment (Kerzner, 2009). Hence, the failure to provide such a project management system by Kombs complicated its chances for getting this contract.

The accountability for the success of the project is viewed as shared accountability between the project manager and all affected line managers. With shared accountability, the line managers must have a good understanding of project management (Kerzner, 2009). However, this is not the case for Kombs Engineering; the company had only trained everyone in the company on the dynamics of project management but rather failed to establish a line of command on a specific project management system. As it should be, project managers should focus more on managing the projects deliverables rather than providing technical direction to the project team. On the other hand, management of the assigned resources is more often than not a line function. Clearly, these two are factors that Kombs Engineering never set to consider. Kombs Engineering lacked a proper project management system designed to have shared authority and responsibility between the project and line managers. In this regard, the role of the project manager should be to plan, monitor, and control the project, whereas on the other hand the functional managers perform the work (Kerzner, 2009). However, Kombs project and line managers are the same people changed with the management and overseeing a project worth $ 10 million each year. In such a situation, there will be conflicts arising and effectively jeopardize the quality of work that Kombs will deliver. Hence, this is the more reason that Kombs failed to get the contract form the Department of Energy. Averting this situation This situation could have been averted long before the tentative date of awarding the second contract. In this case, Kombs should have used the five years when they were carrying out the other project to develop a fully mature project management system integrating the technical expertise that the company had amongst its ranks. Although the DoE never refuted

the expertise the company had, Kombs failed to implement measures that could have ensured a proper system that combined the technical expertise with a proper management system to manage future projects. Rather, the company carried out a one-month course on its employees and taught all of them about the dynamics involved in project management. From this case, it is evident that Kombs was a project driven organization whereby all work is characterized through projects, with each project as a separate cost center having its own profit-and-loss statement (Kerzner, 2009). In effect, the company should have ensured existent of proper project management systems to manage projects effectively and efficiently. However, the systems in the company appeared to resemble those in a product driven organization since it lacked a proper project management system. Nevertheless, had the company recognized the nature of their organization, that is a project-driven organization, the company should have averted the loss of this contract by ensuring that it laid the best structures within its ranks for project management. However, it never recognized that the dynamics had changed and the awarding of the contract was a little bit different. On the other hand, instead of hiring a consultant to train the companys employees on project management, the company should have outsourced a project management consultancy to spearhead the project while using the companys expertise. This is a short-term measure because the company never engaged itself in implementing a project management system within the first five years of its initial project. In effect, outsourcing a project management would have averted the loss of this contact to other parties albeit as a short-term measure. Significance of project management expertise as technical ability

The most significant factor why the proposal evaluation committees consider project management as technical expertise when awarding contracts relates to the fact that, project management involves managing and leading diverse people to get things done. In this regard, this is something that technical expertise will not be in a position to achieve and effectively manage a project to its conclusive stage (Frigenti and Comninos, 2002). Therefore, project management will involve consideration of motivating and leading people as a cardinal rule before considering awarding a contract to any company involving managing a project. On the other hand, technical expertise focuses on the technicalities of the project at an operational level and fails to focus on the management issue. This effectively means that the project is ineffectively managed and the other members of the team start to feels less motivated since the focus is more on the technical instructions directed on a detailed approach (Frigenti and Comninos, 2002). A project does not only involve implementing the development stage or structural stage of a project, but also entails carrying out feasibility study. Base on the foregoing, the technical ability in a company will always consider carrying out a project without considering other options most crucial to the success of the project. In this case, project management will involve the feasibility or research stage that establishes whether the project is feasible and establish the risks and key success measures. This is not possible in a company that relies on its expertise only. Therefore, organizations require identification of external resources that can be useful or can affect the quality of the outcomes in the contract (Turner, 2007). One final reason why proposal evaluation committees consider project management expertise to be as important as technical ability is that the planning stage is crucial to the

project. In this regard, project planning will specify the goals and deliverables of the project and the major activities that will be performed to achieve those goals. On the other hand, technical expertise does not consider this factor. Thus, project management will schedule prioritize, and assign tasks to the team members a role that technical expertise may not incorporate properly. In addition, project management will also evaluate the project at stages in its implementation in order to account on the resources so far utilized (Frigenti and Comninos, 2002). .

Reference Frigenti, E., & Comninos, D. (2002). The practice of project management: a guide to the business-focused approach. London, United Kingdom: Kogan Page Publishers. Kerzner, H. (2009). Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons. Turner, R. (2007). Gower handbook of project management. United Kingdom: Gower Publishing.