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Project Administration

19 January, 2016 - 17:37
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The administrative function provides project specific support such as the following:

  • Accounting services
  • Legal services
  • Property management
  • Human resources (HR) management
  • Other support functions found in most organizations

In most organizations, support for these functions is provided by the parent organization. For example, people assigned to the project will get human resources (HR) support from the HR department of the parent organization. Salary, benefits, and HR policies for employees assigned to the project will be supported out of the HR department. The parent organization will provide accounting functions such as determining the cost of cash, taxes, year-end project reports, and property disposal at the end of the project.

The project manager on smaller, less complex projects will have sufficient knowledge about these issues to coordinate with the parent organization’s functional leaders. On more complex projects, the project may have an administrative manager responsible for coordinating the administrative functions of the projects. On larger, more complex projects, an administrative function may be established as part of the project team, with many of the functions assigning a resource to the project. In all cases, the administrative function on a project is closely related to the legal and organizational responsibilities of the parent organization and close coordination is important.

South American Mining Project

The South American mine project has major design work to accomplish in three different design offices: Vancouver, Santiago, and Argentina. The project manager and the leadership team reside in Santiago, Chile. During the design stage of the project, the engineering manager in each engineering office is leading the work with project controls, procurement, and administration, each assigning resources to support the engineering activities at each location. The project engineer manager assigned the engineering work based on the capabilities of the office and coordinates the work between offices. The procurement, project controls, and administrative leaders assign resources to support the work in each office. For example, the project controls manager assigned a planner in each office to support the engineering manager in that office to develop and track the schedule. The project planner in Vancouver supports the development of the engineering schedule in Vancouver and communicates and coordinates with the planning activities in the other locations. When the project construction activities started, project controls, procurement, and administrative resources moved from supporting engineering to supporting the construction activity. The project organizational structure changed as the engineering manager and the engineering effort changed from primarily designing the project to supporting the construction effort, by answering construction questions and developing solutions to construction challenges. The procurement effort changes from managing the bidding and contracting activities to managing the logistics.

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Figure 3.5 Organization for Major International Project 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Key functions on a project include sponsor, project manager, controls, procurement, technical, quality, and administration.
  • The project sponsor has the organizational authority to provide guidance and resources and can overcome barriers for the project.
  • The project manager is the project leader with broad responsibilities for all phases of the project and for meeting project goals and client expectations.
  • The project controls manager is responsible for controlling the project processes, including cost estimating and tracking, developing schedules, tracking progress against schedules, managing changes to the schedule or budget, and analyzing trends.
  • The procurement manager is responsible for obtaining the services and materials needed to complete the project. This is accomplished by purchasing commodities, managing contractors who provide services and products, and working with partners.
  • The technical manager deals with the issues related to the technology of the project.
  • The quality manager monitors the project’s processes—not the quality of the product of the project—and takes steps to assure they are done correctly and meet specifications.
  • Project administration manages accounting, legal, property, and human resources.

EXERCISES

  1. Materials or services whose quality is standardized and that are usually purchased based on lowest price are                     .
  2. Major components of a project that are specialized and that require the provider to help with solving problems and share in the profits are provided by                     .
  3. Worker benefits would be managed by the                     function.
  4. Tracking costs and comparing them to the project budget is handled by the                     function.
  5. Buying concrete for a bridge project would be handled by the                     function.
  6. Checking to see that the work performed on the project is done consistently and up to specifications is managed by the                     function.
  7. The number of people who report to a manager is referred to as the                                (three words).
  8. If employees are responsible for estimating costs, to whom would they report?
  9. Refer to Figure 3.1. How many additional employees were added to decrease the span of control of the engineering manager, and how was this accomplished?
  10. Refer to Figure 3.4. How do partnerships affect the complexity of the project? Describe an example of a situation where the partnership could affect the complexity of the project.
  11. How is procurement from suppliers different from buying commodities?
  12. Refer to Figure 3.3. To whom does the procurement manager report? Provide an example of a situation where this reporting relationship might increase the complexity of the project.

Project Organization

Refer to the descriptions of the project functions and determine which manager would take care of each of the following problems. If you think the problem requires the attention of more than one function, explain why.

  1. One of the project team members has filed a sexual harassment suit against another team member of equal rank.                    
  2. A contractor is installing equipment that is substandard.                    
  3. The computer software used to make a step improvement in the client’s operations has a significant bug in it.                    
  4. The client wants to use higher-quality materials in the project than was originally agreed on.                    
  5. Your organization has announced budget cuts but you cannot afford to lose anyone at this crucial stage in the project.                    
  6. A contractor has complained that the procurement manager has a conflict of interest with a competing contractor.                    
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