Advanced Project Planning & Visualisation Assignment

School of Computing, Engineering and Digital Technologies, Teesside University

IN-COURSE ASSESSMENT (ICA) SPECIFICATION

Module Title: Module Leader: Dr Vladimir Vukovic

Advanced Project Planning and Visualisation
Module Code: CEN4009-N

Assignment Title: Deadline Date: 5th May 2024

APPV Assignment
Deadline Time: 11:59pm

Submission Method:
Online (Blackboard) 
Middlesbrough Tower 

Online Submission Notes:

• Please follow carefully the instructions given on the Assignment Specification
• When Extenuating Circumstances (e.g. extension) has been granted, a fully completed
and signed Extenuating Circumstances form must be submitted to the School Reception
or emailed to scedt-assessments@tees.ac.uk.

Central Assignments Office (Middlesbrough Tower M2.08) Notes:

• All work (including DVDs etc) needs to be secured in a plastic envelope or a folder and
clearly marked with the student name, number and module title.
• An Assignment Front Sheet should be fully completed before the work is submitted.
• When Extenuating Circumstances (e.g. extension) has been granted, a fully completed
and signed Extenuating Circumstances form must be submitted to the School Reception
or emailed to scedt-assessments@tees.ac.uk.

FULL DETAILS OF THE ASSIGNMENT ARE ATTACHED

INCLUDING MARKING & GRADING CRITERIA

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Advanced Project Planning & Visualisation Assignment
School of Computing, Engineering and Digital Technologies, Teesside University

Advanced Project Planning & Visualisation

Assignment

Submission deadline 5th May 2024, midnight

Your submission (including the front page and references) should not be
longer than 10 pages A4. You must adhere strictly to this page limit.
Writing beyond the specified page limit will be ignored.

You should not use font size smaller than 11, line spacing smaller than 1,
nor margins smaller than 2cm.

Marks will be awarded based on the following criteria:

• Your understanding of the main themes of the lectures.
• Evidence that you have read additional material and refer (using
references) to the contributions from relevant authors in the field.
• Clear structure and presentation of the software (MS-Project,
Synchro Pro) outputs and their analysis.

Report Submission
• You should submit on the Blackboard, No extension is given
• Report should be submitted in a single .doc or .docx format file; pdf,
.xls or other format is not accepted.
• File name of the submission document should include your first and
last names
• All output from used software (MS Project, Synchro Pro) should be
exported to your assignment document. No Excel, Project or
Synchro files are accepted.

The Assignment is worth 100% of the module. Each part of this

assignment is worth 25% of the module.

PART 1 (25% of the assignment)

Communication

There is an increasing demand in the international market for high quality project
managers to run multinational and multi-sites projects. As a Project Manager you have
been given the task by an international company to identify qualities and attributes of
project managers with emphasis on project planning and project organisation domain.

You need to include the following, backed-up with journals, books and references:

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Advanced Project Planning & Visualisation Assignment
School of Computing, Engineering and Digital Technologies, Teesside University

1. Communications, with emphasis on a project manager working remotely with project

team members. (9% of the assignment)
2. Managing multi-cultural project stakeholders. (8% of the assignment)
3. Develop scenarios where a project manager has to cope with pressures from
stakeholders with respect to cost and time overruns and outline how advanced
planning and scheduling technique can help overcome these issues. (8% of the
assignment)

Part 2 (25% of the assignment)

Quality Management

Discuss and analyse the application of systems and procedures for maintaining and
enhancing quality in the industrial sector in which you have experience. Provide outline
analysis of value and constraints of applying the approach. You need to build
bibliography of at least 20 recent (within the last 5 years) references from a range
of sources, including digital object identifiers (doi) for each reference. For
example, you may consider the following papers as part of your references (1000
words).

Sader, S., Husti, I. & Daroczi, M. (2022) A review of quality 4.0: definitions, features,
technologies, applications, and challenges. Total Quality Management & Business
Excellence 33:9-10, 1164-1182, DOI: 10.1080/14783363.2021.1944082

Parsamehr, M., Perera, U.S., Dodanwala, T.C. et al. (2023) A review of construction
management challenges and BIM-based solutions: perspectives from the schedule,
cost, quality, and safety management. Asian J Civ Eng 24, 353–389, DOI:
10.1007/s42107-022-00501-4

PART 3 (25% of the assignment)

Case Study

A Teesside PLC has won a contract to work on a major Project to start on 1st November
2024. As a Project Manager you need to develop and analyse the planning schedule for
this project using MS-Project. Your project team has identified major activities of the
project, their dependency and resources needed to run each activity (see Appendix 1).

Appendix 1 provides information about the project, which includes project logic (activity
links and their relationship – finish to start (FS), start to start (SS), and start to finish
(SF)), activity durations, resource allocation and work breakdown structure (WBS).

You have been asked to perform the following planning and scheduling processes
using Microsoft Project 2012 or later version.

A: CPM & WBS (10% of the assignment)

1. Draw a Gantt-Chart and CPM network for the project. Calculate early start (ES), early
finish (EF), late start (LS), late finish (LF) and total float (TF) based on As Soon as
Possible (ASAP) method and identify critical path.

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Advanced Project Planning & Visualisation Assignment
School of Computing, Engineering and Digital Technologies, Teesside University

2. Draw WBS for the project (must include Level 1, Level 2, Level 3 and Level 4) and
discuss the importance of WBS as a Project Management tool.

3. Explain why identification of the critical path is important? Also comment on the
changes to the Critical Path, if the project is developed using As Late as Possible
(ALAP) method.

B: Resource Planning (10% of the assignment)

1. Produce and draw smoothed resource histograms for the skilled labour resources
used in the project. Critically assess the output identifying the maximum units of each
resource required for this project.

2. Carry-out resource levelling for Unskilled resource only (do not use automatic
resource levelling) and discuss how activities might be delayed beyond LST to cater
for the limits on Unskilled resources as a result of levelling. Consider resource pool
for unskilled resources as 7 units per day.

3. Explain and discuss the process of resource levelling.

C: Cost Analysis (5% of the assignment)

1. Calculate the cost of each activity in the project (level 3). Consider the standard cost
of a skilled labour as £20/hr, unskilled labour as £10/hr and equipment as £50/hr.

2. Produce cumulative cost-time curve for the project.

Note:
• Start the project on 1st November 2024.
• Use default UK working calendar (i.e. Saturdays and Sundays are non-working
days, 8 working hours in a day, bank holidays should be considered as non-
working days)
• Use resource unit as decimal.
• Use fixed duration and set unit as days.
• Clearly identify each part of the answers to the questions.
• Use captions and axis labels to clearly indicate what each chart/graph is showing.

PART 4 (25% of the assignment)

4D Planning

1. Use Synchro Pro software and link the Building Project planning data with the given
3D CAD Building Model. Use both Assignment2.1.xml and Assignment2.2.xml with
Assignment2.dxf. You will have two different models to review. Identify issues and
conflicts with the proposed plans and changes. You should provide the pictures of
the visualisation on your assignment. Briefly discuss the linking procedure carried
out. (13% of the assignment).

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Advanced Project Planning & Visualisation Assignment
School of Computing, Engineering and Digital Technologies, Teesside University

2. Define 4D planning. Discuss the purpose and benefits of 4D systems as a Project

Management tool in an Engineering industry (12% of the assignment)

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Advanced Project Planning & Visualisation Assignment
School of Computing, Engineering and Digital Technologies, Teesside University

Appendix 1 Details of activities, relationships & resources for the Project

Work Activity (Level 4) Immediate Type of Lag Duration Equipment Skilled Unskilled
Level 1 Packages Description Predecessors Relationship (Days) (Days) / day Worker / day Worker / day
(Level 2) (Level 3) (numbers) (numbers) (numbers)
+ -
Project Start - - - FS - - 0 - - -
A1 - Project Start FS - - 10 3 2 3
P A2 - A1 FS - - 9 2 2 3
R A3 A2
O - FS -
3 23 1 1 4
J A4a A3
E FS - 8
C A4 13 1 2 2
T A4b A4a
FS 1 -
Activity A 7 3 3 3
X A5a A4b FS - - 24 1 3 3
A5
A5b A5a FS - 1
Project 5 1 2 2
Start date A6a A5b FS - - 15 2 3 3
01/11/2024 A6
A6b A6a FS 5 - 6 2 3 3
A7a A6b FS - - 20 2 3 3
A7
A7b A7a FS 3 - 17 2 1 1
B1a B1b
FS 6 -
17 4 1 1
B1b A7b
FS - -
Activity B B1 11 2 1 1
B1c B4a FS
- -

B4b FS
- -
23 2 - 2

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Advanced Project Planning & Visualisation Assignment
School of Computing, Engineering and Digital Technologies, Teesside University

Work Activity (Level 4) Immediate Type of Lag Duration Equipment Skilled Unskilled
Level 1 Packages Description Predecessors Relationship (Days) (Days) / day Worker / day Worker / day
(Level 2) (Level 3) (numbers) (numbers) (numbers)
B2b FS - -
B2a
B1a
P
FS - 4
R
B2 28 3 2 2
O
B2b B1b FS - -
J 21 1 1 2
E B2c B1c
C FS - -
16 3 - 3
T
B3a B3b FS - -
X Activity B B2a
FS 2 -
B3 12 3 4 1
Project B3b B2b
Start date FS - - 13 3 3 3
01/11/2024 B3c B2c FS 2 - 19 3 - 3
B4a B4b FS - -
B3a FS - - 37 3 3 3
B4 B4b B3b
FS - -
12 3 3 3
B4c B3c FS - - 15 3 - 3
Project B4c
- - FS 6
Completion 0 - - -

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Advanced Project Planning & Visualisation Assignment
School of Computing, Engineering and Digital Technologies, Teesside University
Assessment criteria

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Advanced Project Planning & Visualisation Assignment
School of Computing, Engineering and Digital Technologies, Teesside University

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Advanced Project Planning & Visualisation Assignment
School of Computing, Engineering and Digital Technologies, Teesside University

Learning outcomes

This assignment contributes to the following learning outcomes:

Research, Knowledge and Cognitive Skills
1. Systematically acquire a comprehensive and critical understanding of project management principles, project models and planning.
2. Interpret knowledge of current planning practice and demonstrate originality in the knowledge together within visualisation understanding of
how planning techniques are used to interpret the engineering projects.
3. Evaluate commercial risks through understanding of the basis of planning risk including multi constraint techniques.
4. Integrate and synthesise the theory and practice to resolve the planning conflicts in engineering projects.
5. Make logical and argued conclusions on 4D visualisation and project costs.

Professional Skills
6 . Synthesise complex customer and user needs and ensure fitness for purpose by demonstrating technical calculation skills on engineering
project cost, logical visualisation and propose collective suggestion.
7. Act autonomously in planning, implementing and evaluating outcomes on the engineering project planning and visualisation.

Personal and Transferable Skills

8. Communicate complex academic and professional issues clearly to specialist and non-specialist audiences.
9. Collaborate and show effectiveness in use of IT skills that are commensurate with the demands of engineering projects.

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